Bill Skarsgård Had 'Weird' Dreams of Being Pennywise the Clown Stalking His Hometown After Filming "It" Movies
:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():format(jpeg)/Bill-Skarsgard-pennywise-split-111324-tout-3cc1116b4047443d9c3b805cbed081a7.jpg)
11/13/2024 03:28 PM
"It was this weird thing where I was trying to separate myself from this thing," said the actor
Elizabeth Goodenough/Everett Collection; Warner Bros/Courtesy Everett Collection
Bill Skarsgård; Bill Skarsgård in "IT" (2017)Bill Skarsgård's twisted Pennywise performance had a lasting grip on his psyche.
The actor played the demented clown in the two recent adaptations of Stephen King's IT, released in 2017 and 2019. In an interview with Vanity Fair as part of its 31st annual Hollywood issue, Skarsgård, 34, recalled having nightmares after he finished filming.
"Those dreams were so strange," he said. "Either I was confronting Pennywise and I was upset with him, yelling at him — or I was Pennywise, but I was walking around in the streets that I grew up on, and I'm like, 'No, no. I shouldn't be out here in public walking around like this. This is not how it's supposed to be done.' "
"It was this weird thing where I was trying to separate myself from this thing, literally back in the place that I grew up in, in the same apartment that I grew up in," added the actor, born and raised in Stockholm.
Brooke Palmer/Warner Bros./courtesy Everett Collection
Bill Skarsgård in "IT: Chapter Two" (2019)In the new horror film Nosferatu, Skarsgård transforms into another iconic monster of cinema, a gothic vampire named Count Orlok who haunts Lily-Rose Depp, Nicholas Hoult and more.
Skarsgård says his latest role was "very different than Pennywise in a lot of ways."
"Orlok was even further away from who I am than Pennywise was, in the sense that my voice, posture, age, the look of it, it was just so far out there. That became the challenge," he explained. "Before putting on the prosthetics ... we explored so many trippy things."
ANGELA WEISS/AFP via Getty
Bill Skarsgard on Aug. 20, 2024Elsewhere, he told Vanity Fair that Pennywise "became my ultimate transformation" and he "just really enjoyed it." He added, "Now with Orlok, I really enjoy transforming as much as I humanly can. I think that's very exciting."
Speaking with Nosferatu director Robert Eggers (The Witch, The Northman) for AnOther magazine in September, Skarsgård shared more about what was different from his IT performance and Nosferatu.
Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE's free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.
"The closest I have in terms of this experience is obviously Pennywise and the Bob Gray thing, where you're creating something so makeup dependent, but also so abstract from who you are — it's an abstraction," he said. "But with Orlok I couldn't use any of myself in it. Like, Bill cannot be here at all. And that's terrifying."
"I had a hard time committing to performing it, it felt so strange and uncomfortable," added Skarsgård, who reportedly reprises his Pennywise role in the upcoming prequel series IT: Welcome to Derry on Max.
Nosferatu is in theaters Dec. 25.
