{"id":980017,"date":"2025-10-08T14:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-10-08T18:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/?p=980017"},"modified":"2025-10-07T14:08:47","modified_gmt":"2025-10-07T18:08:47","slug":"it-welcome-to-derry-creators-cast-pennywise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/tv\/it-welcome-to-derry-creators-cast-pennywise\/","title":{"rendered":"It: Welcome to Derry Creators and Cast Tease Pennywise&#8217;s Return"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>\u201cThe pressure that Barbara and Andy, and now HBO, have signed up for is immense,\u201d admits actor Chris Chalk ahead of the premiere of his new series, <em>It: Welcome to Derry<\/em>. \u201cThey made over a billion dollars, so now you have to make something good.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThey\u201d refers to brother-sister filmmaking duo Andy and Barbara Muschietti, whose landmark movie duology, an adaption of Stephen King\u2019s <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/it\/\">It<\/a>, <\/em>generated huge box office revenue alongside enough Pennywise the Dancing Clown merchandise to shake a red balloon at. Even with those two films encompassing over 300 minutes of screentime, there was still more material to mine from King\u2019s lengthy tome. Hence, the upcoming eight-part HBO prequel series,<em> It: Welcome to Derry<\/em>, which follows a flurry of new (and familiar) characters as they navigate an already turbulent 1962 setting with the added hiccup of evil entity Pennywise stalking the title town. The show feels just as cinematic (and gory) as the hit films\u2026 as it should, since Andy Muschietti himself directed multiple episodes, including the pilot.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n\t\r\n\n\t\t<div class=\"ad-dog__cnx-container\"><script id=\"0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796\">\n\t\t\tcnx.cmd.push(function() {\n\t\t\t\tcnx({\n\t\t\t\t\tplayerId: \"106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530\",\n\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t}).render(\"0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796\");\n\t\t\t});\n\t\t<\/script><\/div>\n\t\n\n\n<p>\u201cThey did the films and felt very close to the material, as did [showrunners] Jason Fuchs and Brad Caleb Kane,\u201d explains series lead Jovan Adepo. \u201cThey care for the IP and for the universe of <em>It<\/em> and Derry, but they weren\u2019t ever too precious. As long as we weren\u2019t trying to pull something out of a hat that makes no sense being in the IP, for the most part, they were like, \u2018That fucking rocks. Try it. Let\u2019s go for it.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Adepo (<em>Babylon<\/em>) plays Leroy Hanlon, a career military officer who is also the eventual grandfather of Losers Club member Mike Hanlon, while Taylour Paige (<em>Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F<\/em>) plays his concerned wife Charlotte. Chris Chalk (<em>Gotham<\/em>) takes on the role of Dick Hallorann from King\u2019s parallel novel <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/the-shining\/\">The Shining<\/a><\/em>, who is also featured in <em>It<\/em>. All three thespians, who share the screen with an equally talented group of child actors, have to navigate a complex, multi-narrative of mysterious goings-on in the town of Derry\u2014including murders and top-secret military ops\u2014that all point back to Pennywise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWhat I like about Stephen King\u2019s work is there are so many different communities experiencing the same thing, which allows so many different points of entry,\u201d says Chalk. \u201cThis show is a side note but really shines because there are 12 different kinds of people here, and 12 ways to experience this entity that you hadn\u2019t seen in the previous two versions.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-adapting-the-king-again\"><strong>Adapting the King Again<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>The cast is deeply reverential to the source material. Paige refers to its author as \u201cone of the greatest minds of all time,\u201d while Adepo had already appeared as protagonist Larry Underwood in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/tv\/the-stand-timeline-explained\/\">the 2020 miniseries version of King\u2019s <em>The Stand<\/em><\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cBoth experiences were really great ones,\u201d Adepo says. \u201cBoth filmed in Canada, the first one being in Vancouver. I had a blast filming in Vancouver, such a lovely city, and the same for Toronto\u2026 my first time in that part of Canada.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For the Muschetti siblings, it was a bit of a homecoming in more ways than one, since they were returning to the same Toronto locales where they shot the two <em>It <\/em>movies, including the town of Port Hope, which doubles for the ominous Derry once again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThey loved us because we bought a lot of muffins and coffee there,\u201d says Barbara. \u201cWe had a lot of hotel rooms there. The day after the show opens, we\u2019re gonna go to the Capitol Theatre and show them the first episode.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In 2016, this author got to visit the set of the first <em>It<\/em> movie, while Sophia Lillis, as Beverly, dangled from wires in the dank sewer set built at Pinewood Toronto. Barbara said at the time that their first Pennywise movie \u201cwinks to the \u201950s fears but is a little less na\u00efve.\u201d After all, that version of King\u2019s book was reset to the \u201880s. By contrast, the original book took place in 1958. So a certain cultural naivete became one of the key elements the filmmakers sought to reincorporate into the early 1960s setting of the show.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThe thing that connects me a lot with this era is it\u2019s 1958 when the Losers are kids,\u201d Andy says. \u201cIn many ways, this season is more similar to the experience of the kids in the book than the film was. Stephen King was a kid in that era, so it\u2019s not a coincidence that the book is filled with his own personal experiences growing up.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cPeople were scared of different things. In the \u201860s, we were closer to \u201850s B-movies about radioactive monsters. Pretty understandable, being in the middle of the Cold War. People were terrified of a nuclear attack, and kids were subjected to all these atomic bomb drills. There\u2019s a character in the show, Bert the Turtle, who is a real mascot created around those times to be a friendly figure in this warning PSA for schools.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>While the new show is built out from interstitial material from the original 1986<em> It<\/em>, these extrapolations are also pulled from the Civil Rights era itself. A palpable racial tension is a constant for the three Black leads in early episodes, a horror on top of the other horror happening beneath the town\u2019s surface. This includes the local Black projectionist at the movie theater having several gruesome murders falsely pinned on him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThere\u2019s zero naivete in this show in terms of the intensity of the experiences that the characters go through,\u201d Andy insists. \u201cAmong all the complexities of social and political stuff in the \u201850s, it was a simpler life\u2026 for some people. But it\u2019s not toned down. It\u2019s actually more gruesome than any of the movies. Because we have more screen time, we could explore more characters, more fears, and different scares.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Adepo believes that, no matter how outlandish the entity\u2019s supernatural antics get, it is important that they ground the setting in realism.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cEverything else is how it should have been in the \u201860s,\u201d Adepo elaborates. \u201cIf we were doing this and pretending that racism didn\u2019t exist in the \u201860s, that would turn into a stylized type of thing. That\u2019s just not what we\u2019re building. I don\u2019t think Stephen King ever shied away from what was real.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-shining-on\"><strong>Shining On<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThe fun thing about dealing with race and terror is racism is terror,\u201d says Chalk, whose Hallorann uses his psychic talents as a workaround to racial confrontations. \u201cWhat happens when an entity that doesn\u2019t care about anything other than your fleshy parts comes into the equation?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Adds Andy, \u201cThere are a lot of scares that are related to things that were happening culturally and socially in America, and segregation is one of them. And racism. It\u2019s all true to the book. We\u2019re not inventing anything, we\u2019re just expanding it and throwing light on certain events and behaviors.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Leroy is determined to shield his family from unpleasantness when he moves them from Louisiana to Derry, where his new assignment is. Unfortunately, racism rears its head immediately when he arrives at the base and is confronted by a bigoted white soldier. He deliberately internalizes all of this.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Says Paige, \u201cLeroy is trying to take care of his family, but it has put a lot of strain on us, moving a lot. It\u2019s put a strain on him being able to connect emotionally to his son, because there\u2019s a lot of rigidity in his character. Jovan actually comes from a military family.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Not only does Adepo hail from a military background, but he has also portrayed soldierly characters in films like <em>Fences<\/em> and <em>Overlord<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThere\u2019s this element of military men being structured, which is something that I can relate to because my father was in the military, and that\u2019s definitely how he kept his household,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019ve played that type of character quite a few times. For this character, it was important for him to put that part of his life in a safe package so it doesn\u2019t seep all the way into his more domesticated life.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThere\u2019s so much pressure on men to perform, to provide,\u201d Paige notes. \u201cAnd then you\u2019re talking 1962, right? He\u2019s African American. He&#8217;s representing our country. Everything is survival. Your marriage gets put in the hierarchy of needs, and the hierarchy of what you have to present when you go in there every day. Charlotte feels the brunt of that. Charlotte has this intuition that something\u2019s off.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As for Chalk, stepping into the shoes of previous actors who portrayed Dick Hallorann was a big deal. Those who embodied the elder version of the psychic character who came to Danny Torrance\u2019s aid include Scatman Crothers (<em>The Shining<\/em>), Melvin Van Peebles (<em>The Shining<\/em> TV miniseries), and Carl Lumbly in the more recent<em> Shining<\/em> sequel, <em>Doctor Sleep<\/em>. Chalk\u2019s younger iteration may surprise fans with his swagger, along with how deftly he uses his shine to navigate a hostile world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThey\u2019ll be surprised about quite a bit, because there\u2019s an age gap between the <em>Doctor Sleep <\/em>and <em>The Shining<\/em> version versus this version,\u201d Chalk explains of embodying Hallorann. \u201cThat\u2019s the freedom of being able to play him so much younger, at an early stage of his shining, while still honoring Scatman and the legacy that Stephen King established. I tend to play people at younger stages of their life, like<em> Gotham<\/em>\u2026 and playing Lucius Fox, and having Morgan Freeman. I study a little bit, then do my own thing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>An early episode features Hallorann and two other enlisted men getting kicked out of a local dive, which foreshadows an important Pennywise-centric event from the original book involving a Black-owned bar in Derry known as the Black Spot. Muschietti tried unsuccessfully to incorporate this scene in both <em>It <\/em>movies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThat scene is basically the cause and effect of the Black Spot,\u201d Andy reveals. \u201cIt\u2019s the seed for why these colored airmen have to find a place of their own. Dick is working for the military in a very specific secret mission, and he asks them something in return for his fellows.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cFor Black officers who are serving their country, to be displaced by townies is part of the additional terror,\u201d says Chalk. \u201cEverybody\u2019s being terrorized, then the real monster comes. It does lead us to find a place to go that can be just ours, where we can feel safe, which, on a certain level, is what everybody in Derry has an awareness of. That this entity is looking for them. I do think we did a good job of acknowledging the reality. Without that reality, how can we believe in the clown?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-return-of-the-clown\"><strong>Return of the Clown<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Speaking of the clown, actor\/executive producer <a href=\"https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/movies\/it-chapter-two-pennywise-backstory-explained\/\">Bill Skarsg\u00e5rd\u2019s Pennywise<\/a> (returning from the films) does not appear in his iconic jovial form early on, although the entity certainly makes his presence known in other horrifying ways.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s not every day that Bill shows up on set,\u201d explains Andy of the new show. \u201cIt\u2019s always something very special when Bill appears as Pennywise. You can feel it because he walks on stage, and there\u2019s this atmosphere that is super special. He is imposing. He is Pennywise.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This evokes my own memories of being creeped out on set in 2016, watching Skarsg\u00e5rd decked out as Pennywise, even when he was simply chatting and laughing with the Muschiettis and drinking a cup of coffee between takes. Does the cast or crew still get weirded out by the character, or is he too much of an icon now?&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI think people do\u2026 I still do,\u201d Barbara admits. \u201cEspecially when he\u2019s standing up. I\u2019m tall, but when he\u2019s standing up, he freaks me out. It\u2019s so funny because we\u2019re generally having a very normal conversation about kids or pizza, and he\u2019s absolutely terrifying. I have to remind him, \u2018You are freaking me out, buddy.\u2019 We tried especially in the first movie to keep the kids away from Bill so that their impressions would be on camera, but it didn\u2019t work. They loved hanging out with him.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>While Pennywise will make a full comeback in future episodes, fans can look forward to many other Stephen King references peppered throughout <em>Welcome to Derry<\/em>, including familiar-looking cans of Calumet Baking Powder from Stanley Kubrick\u2019s<em> The Shining<\/em>.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cYou\u2019ll see some callbacks,\u201d confirms Chalk, whose character stocked that Native American-fronted baking powder in the 1980 film. \u201cThe Jamie Travis-directed episode really was focused on honoring some visuals with Hallorann from <em>The Shining<\/em> that we know deep in our souls.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Explains Andy, \u201cIt\u2019s all over the series. For fans of <em>The Shining<\/em>, the bigger easter egg happens in the last episode. It\u2019s beyond our desire to create easter eggs. When you\u2019re telling a story about Derry in the \u201860s, it\u2019s almost inevitable to connect events and places and people with other stuff from Stephen King. \u2018So and so is sent to prison. What is the closest prison to Derry? It\u2019s Shawshank.\u2019 Dodging that would be weird, and it becomes an easter egg\u2026 that is always stimulating for the audience.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>While there may be references to <em>The Shining<\/em>, it\u2019s how Chalk\u2019s Hallorann is using said shine to move his way up the ladder that acts as an intriguing development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cDick Hallorann has the longest long game that there is,\u201d says Chalk. \u201cHe is a lot of steps ahead of most people. Then there are moments when he&#8217;s like, \u2018Oh no, whoops.\u2019 His confidence in his long game might be his Achilles heel.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Adepo and Chalk were friends and colleagues before they were cast together for <em>It: Welcome to Derry<\/em>, having appeared together in<em> When They See Us<\/em>, Ava DuVernay\u2019s Netflix series on the Central Park Five.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWe have a very complex arc of a relationship,\u201d Adepo says of Leroy and Dick. \u201cThere may or may not be a bit of friction. My character is someone who leads by the book, \u2018A plus B equals C,\u2019 and Hallorann can be like, \u2018Well, what if we skip the first two, go straight to C and D?\u2019 I&#8217;m like, \u2018No, that\u2019s not fucking right.\u2019 It makes for a dynamic of friction and fluidity with Chalk.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>While Andy Muschietti is a visual whiz of Spielbergian proportions, as proven in the<em> It<\/em> films, he also has a sensitivity for performance that his actors appreciate. For one tense scene between Leroy and Dick, Andy convinced his crew to give Adepo and Chalk eight hours of virtual silence so they could really dig into the conflict between the characters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI cried so much afterwards,\u201d Chalk says. \u201cNot because of the weight of the scene, but because Jovan and I both felt so held. \u2018We\u2019re not just props, we&#8217;re real people.\u2019 Andy, to make that adjustment in such an important scene at the last minute, he\u2019ll be in the annals of heroism for me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cAndy loves directing, he loves actors, he loves story, he loves Stephen King,\u201d concludes Paige. \u201cIf it were up to him, we\u2019d probably shoot 24 hours a day.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>It: Welcome to Derry is scheduled to premiere on HBO on Oct. 26, 2025.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cThe pressure that Barbara and Andy, and now HBO, have signed up for is immense,\u201d admits actor Chris Chalk ahead of the premiere of his new series, It: Welcome to Derry. \u201cThey made over a billion dollars, so now you have to make something good.\u201d \u201cThey\u201d refers to brother-sister filmmaking duo Andy and Barbara Muschietti, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":35,"featured_media":980144,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"dog_exclude_from_homepage":false,"dog_do_not_display_featured_image":false,"dog_external_link":"","dog_product_price":0,"dog_product_button_label":"Buy Now","apple_news_api_created_at":"","apple_news_api_id":"","apple_news_api_modified_at":"","apple_news_api_revision":"","apple_news_api_share_url":"","apple_news_cover_media_provider":"image","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_cover_video_id":0,"apple_news_cover_video_url":"","apple_news_cover_embedwebvideo_url":"","apple_news_is_hidden":"","apple_news_is_paid":"","apple_news_is_preview":"","apple_news_is_sponsored":"","apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":[],"apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[792,756,770],"article_type":[776],"topic":[883,1621,2232,4793,1603],"sponsored":[],"feeds":[],"coauthors":[69465],"class_list":{"0":"post-980017","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"category-movies","9":"category-tv","10":"article_type-features","11":"topic-hbo","12":"topic-horror","13":"topic-it","14":"topic-magazine","15":"topic-stephen-king","16":"entry"},"apple_news_notices":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v26.0 (Yoast SEO v26.0) - 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