In over three decades, horror fans have been graced with two excellent portrayals of the terrifying Pennywise the Dancing Clown from Stephen King's novel "IT." Both Tim Curry and Bill Skarsgård have had a chance to bring the evil clown to life, and it's difficult to imagine anyone else behind the makeup. But there were many other actors who came close to playing Pennywise. If you're a diehard fan of Stephen King's "IT," perhaps you've wondered what an alternate take on this character would look like. Well get ready, because these are the actors who almost played Pennywise!
Category
🎥
Short filmTranscript
00:00Pennywise the Dancing Clown terrorized our screens in 1990 and returned almost three
00:05decades later.
00:07For as many forms as he would take, there were just as many actors of varying ages and
00:11genders considered for the role.
00:14Stay tuned to find out who.
00:16Malcolm McDowell embodies evil.
00:19Seriously.
00:20The venerable British character actor has been a go-to bad guy for decades.
00:24He played the maniacal head of Water and Power Corporation in 1995's Tank Girl, spearheaded
00:29a school rebellion in If, was a malicious principal in Easy A, and was Rob Zombie's
00:35personal choice to play Dr. Loomis in 2007's Halloween Reboot.
00:39However, none of those parts is McDowell's most iconic contribution to cinema.
00:44That would be Alex, the charming and dangerous delinquent protagonist of Stanley Kubrick's
00:49A Clockwork Orange.
00:51It's no wonder McDowell was on the shortlist for the 1990s TV spin on Pennywise.
00:56According to The Hollywood Reporter, director Tommy Lee Wallace considered McDowell, but
01:00awarded the role to Tim Curry instead.
01:02He made this choice because the Rocky Horror Picture Show star inverted the lovable clown
01:06trope while giving the character an accent reminiscent of a, quote, old-time Catskills
01:11comic.
01:12Hiya, Georgie.
01:13Aren't you gonna say hello?
01:20Though McDowell has given transformative performances, old-time Catskills comic doesn't sound like
01:25anything in his wheelhouse.
01:27McDowell projects gravitas, as opposed to disarming charm.
01:31It's easy to imagine his Pennywise terrifying audiences, but harder to imagine children
01:36trusting him.
01:37Wallace made the right call.
01:42Ben Mendelsohn is an actor who can go for a rival character's throat by simply whispering.
01:47He mesmerized as a violent patriarch in Animal Kingdom, and did underrated work as Orson
01:52Krennic in Rogue One.
01:54Fans are so used to seeing Mendelsohn play villains that some movies use that to their
01:58advantage in unique ways.
02:00In Captain Marvel, Mendelsohn's Talos appears to be evil, but that's merely a misdirection.
02:05The character proves deeply sympathetic, and that's before he reveals his true form and
02:10slurps a milkshake down in meme-worthy fashion.
02:12You know, you really should be kinder to your neighbors.
02:15You never know when you're gonna need to borrow some sugar.
02:21Mendelsohn was considered for the role of Pennywise in director Cary Fukunaga's It duology,
02:26though Fukunaga would later lead the project.
02:28This take on the character would have been much different from Tommy Lee Wallace and
02:32Tim Curry's interpretation.
02:34Fukunaga told Variety,
02:35"...the main difference was making Pennywise more than just the clown.
02:39After 30 years of villains that could read the emotional minds of characters and scare
02:43them, trying to find sadistic and intelligent ways he scares children, and also that children
02:47had real lives prior to being scared."
02:50Ultimately, Mendelsohn passed because the pay was too low.
02:53But even so, he wouldn't have been the right fit for Andy Muschietti's more traditional
02:57take on It.
02:58Still, the actor eventually landed a Stephen King adaptation, joining HBO's The Outsider
03:03in 2020.
03:05Of all the actors on this list, Will Poulter is the only one who was actually cast as Pennywise.
03:11Really.
03:12Poulter was Cary Fukunaga's choice for Pennywise in his canned It reimagining, and it isn't
03:17hard to imagine why.
03:20By 2015, the young British actor had racked up a bevy of standout, off-kilter roles.
03:25He broke through with 2007's Son of Rambo, playing a badly-behaved youth who dreams of
03:30recreating First Blood.
03:32That led to a scene-stealing turn as the TLC-spouting Kenny Rossmore in We're the Millers, and more
03:37notably the antagonistic role of Gally in The Maze Runner.
03:41Taken in tandem, Kenny and Gally point to why Poulter's Pennywise could have worked.
03:45The actor is funny, but not glib, frightening, but not difficult to empathize with.
03:50You could easily imagine him both befriending a child and putting them into peril.
03:54That's Pennywise 101.
04:03Hello, Ricky.
04:05So Poulter got the job, and it remained in his court even as Fukunaga's involvement with
04:09the project faltered.
04:11In a 2017 interview with Deadline, It director Andy Muschietti revealed he approached Poulter
04:16about staying on as Pennywise, but the actor's enthusiasm for the role had waned.
04:21Muschietti admitted,
04:22"[Will basically expressed a feeling that he had slowly disengaged from playing that
04:26character, that was so dark and terrifying.]
04:28It was a personal decision I respected, but I was eager and willing to find my own Pennywise,
04:33and that's what we did."
04:34Tasty, tasty, beautiful fear.
04:40Pennywise is an ageless malevolence, a shape-shifting creature that takes the form of a clown to
04:46exploit children's naivety.
04:48Any actor cast in the role will be older than the character's Pennywise preys on.
04:53That said, Cary Fukunaga and Andy Muschietti's casting process for the It films reveals how
04:57open they were in terms of Pennywise's age.
05:00Originally, Fukunaga had considered both Ben Mendelsohn and the legendary Mark Rylance,
05:05who would have been in his mid-50s during the audition process.
05:09Rylance could have made for a fascinating Pennywise.
05:12He is the ultimate chameleon, an actor who's at home playing both a tech mogul and big
05:17friendly giants.
05:18His childlike sensibilities and theatrical background could have yielded a strange but
05:23menacing Pennywise the Clown.
05:25In the end, Muschietti went with a younger actor to embody Stephen King's legendary evil.
05:31Pennywise stands in contrast to the adults who make the Losers Club's lives so difficult.
05:36You can see why he'd offer Georgie Hope, however briefly.
05:39Like False Hope, Pennywise is one of childhood's many terrors.
05:44Hugo Weaving doesn't need to play another iconic character.
05:47The iconic actor gave us one of cinema's great villains in Agent Smith from The Matrix.
05:52Amazingly, Weaving followed that up with Elrond in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy.
05:58Weaving is more than an actor.
06:00He's an institution.
06:01When he takes on a role, that role gains instant cinematic gravitas.
06:05With that said, it makes sense that Weaving was considered for the iconic role of Pennywise.
06:10A little too much sense.
06:12Pennywise is an astonishing character.
06:15His tactics pivot as frequently as his form, and that keeps both the Losers Club and the
06:19audience on their toes.
06:21With Weaving, you know what you're getting.
06:23His voice is unmistakable.
06:25His presence is undeniable.
06:26At this point, it's difficult for him to take roles that aren't all-time game-changers.
06:32Weaving would have been a reliably great Pennywise, but one whose vibe was easy to anticipate.
06:37After all, everyone knows Hugo Weaving and what he's capable of.
06:42Pennywise is an amorphous evil.
06:44His malevolence takes many forms throughout Stephen King's best-selling novel and the
06:482017 movie.
06:50Yes, It is best known as a clown, but It also terrorizes Mike by becoming his dead parents.
06:56It takes the form of a mummy, a decapitated boy, and even that of his most infamous victim,
07:01Georgie.
07:02You could argue that the actor who plays Pennywise should feel equally capable of being anyone
07:06or anything.
07:08Enter Tilda Swinton.
07:10As reported by Joe Blow and later confirmed by NME, the chameleon-like acting titan of
07:15The Chronicles of Narnia and Michael Clayton fame was considered for Pennywise.
07:20Producer Barbara Muschietti claimed that scheduling issues kept her from auditioning.
07:24She had a slot to shoot the movie, and she wasn't available, so she didn't even audition.
07:29But of course, we all thought about it.
07:32Pennywise is a character who lives large in his victims' minds, haunting them into adulthood.
07:37It's a testament to Swinton's creative power as a performer that she popped into the producers'
07:41heads and lingered there.