Bill Skarsgard Reveals a Disturbing Scene Cut From IT That Teases Pennywise The Clown's Backstory
We recently learned that the director's cut of Andy Muchietti's IT will include 15 minutes of extra footage, and the director even teased a couple scenes that will be included that you can read about here. Thanks to actor Bill Skarsgard, who played Pennywise the Clown in the film, there was another scene that was cut from the film. The actor says that the scene teases Pennywise's backstory and says that it's very disturbing.
This is what he had to say while he was a guest on Variety's “Playback” podcast, he briefly talked about the scene that was cut saying:
“There was a scene we shot that was a flashback from the 1600s, before Pennywise [was Pennywise]. The scene turned out really, really disturbing. And I’m not the clown. I look more like myself. It’s very disturbing, and sort of a backstory for what It is, or where Pennywise came from. That might be something worth exploring in the second one. The idea is the ‘It’ entity was dormant for thousands and thousands of years. The [flashback] scene hints on that."
I hope that we eventually get to see this scene! Maybe it will be included in the director's cut, maybe it will find its way into the sequel. It sounds absolutely fascinating and it'd be a shame if we never got to see what exactly this scene entails. What intrigues me most about the scene is that it's set in the 1600s.
Unfortunately, Skarsgard didn't offer any other details. According to Variety, there was an early draft of the script that featured Pennywise "playing a saloon piano in the 1800s to spur on violence, as well as a colonial-set sequence where It devours a child."
The actor went on to talk about playing with the elements from Stephen King's book and some of the cool things that he'd like to explore.
“The book is very abstract and metaphysical about what it means to exist and the idea of fantasy and imagination and all of these things. I think that could be cool to explore as well. It’s like, what is Pennywise? He only exists in the imagination of children. If you don’t believe him to be real then he might not be real. There’s an interesting aspect to explore there.”
There certainly is! I'm looking forward to seeing the history of Derry and Pennywise explored in IT: Chapter 2.