How IT: WELCOME TO DERRY Connects to The Shining: Showrunners Explain Dick Hallorann’s Role
The upcoming It: Welcome to Derry series is diving deep into the terrifying mythology of Stephen King’s universe, and the showrunners are making sure every eerie detail feels authentic.
One of their more interesting moves was bringing back Dick Hallorann, the psychic cook from The Shining, into Pennywise’s chilling origin story. According to the creators, the choice was rooted in staying true to King’s world, and the author himself gave his full blessing.
“It was all about staying authentic to the book. We wanted to use as much of the canon as felt appropriate. We sort of put on our Mike Hanlon hat and approached this the way the character did. We became amateur Derry historians,” said Jason Fuchs during a roundtable at NYCC.
“And so, just as Mike is sitting in the attic of the library, we're sort of sitting in the writer's room going, ‘OK, what pieces of these interludes in the book that suggest elements of Derry history shrouded in mystery can we start to dig into?’”
Fuchs explained that connecting It and The Shining came naturally. “And obviously, there's references in the original book and some of the interludes to Dick Hallorann being present at The Black Spot.
“And so it just felt incredibly organic to go, ‘OK, that's someone who would belong in Derry at this moment. But where is his story at that point? Where is he in his journey as a character?’”
In It: Welcome to Derry, Chris Chalk steps into the role of a younger Hallorann, crossing paths with Jovan Adepo’s Leroy Hanlon, Mike Hanlon’s grandfather, during their time in the Air Force. One of the scenes shown at NYCC featured a tense encounter between Dick and Leroy aboard an aircraft, interrupted by Pennywise.
As a fan of King’s interconnected worlds, this makes perfect sense. In It, Hallorann opened The Black Spot, a bar for Black soldiers that was destroyed by a hate group. Using his “shine,” he helped rescue survivors, including Will Hanlon, Mike’s father (played by Chosen Jacobs in It).
“He's very different than the Dick Hallorann we know from The Shining, or certainly from Doctor Sleep,” Fuchs continued. “So it was all about finding those little nuggets buried in the text and letting story and character dictate it.
“So, for instance, if a character's going to get carted off to prison—I guess you'd see that in the trailer—it was suddenly a question, well, ‘What's the nearest prison? Shawshank.’ It made sense.”
Fuchs stressed that the Easter eggs aren’t just fan service, they grow naturally out of the story. “So we were never shoehorning things in. It was all from a place of what is the most effective, dramatic choice. And then often the answers to those questions suggested other elements of Stephen King lore and canon.
“But there are a lot of Easter eggs in this show. There are definitely, for Stephen King mega fan like myself, like Brad, this thing is chock full of Easter eggs, of references to a broader Stephen King universe. So I'm excited for fans to try to discover those.”
Brad Kane added that television allows them to explore characters on a deeper level. “Yeah, everything he said. The fun thing about working in TV as opposed to film is you can delve much more deeply into character.
“And the fun thing about taking a character like Dick Hallorann from The Shining [or] the Dick Hallorann that we're familiar with from Shining from Doctor Sleep—he's much more of a mentor character. He exists much more in service of Danny Torrance's journey through the Overlook.”
This time, Hallorann isn’t the wise caretaker we know. “In our show, Dick Hallorann is in service of nothing but himself. He's a much more selfish guy,” Kane explained. “I guess he's in service to General Shaw and the overarching plan of the show, but he's looking to just do that: get out from under people's thumbs and live his life.
“He is a good time guy. He doesn't love kids like he does in The Shining. He's not interested. But we were able to take him from that character that we don't know, this younger character who is nothing like [his character in] The Shining, to a character that you recognize much more by the end. We gave him a full arc.”
Stephen King was watching over all the decisions. “I feel like we made him an even more three-dimensional, rounded character under the watchful eye of Uncle Stevie himself. He had to approve every outline, every script, make sure we're not telling tales out of school here. All with Stephen King's approval.
“But we were able to really build out his character in a way that I don't think we've seen before. And that was exciting to hear.”
Developed by Andy Muschietti, Barbara Muschietti, and Fuchs, It: Welcome to Derry explores the town’s sinister origins across multiple eras. The first season takes place in 1962, with the second and third seasons planned to jump back even further back to 1935 and 1908, digging deeper into Derry’s long, cursed history.
Via: GamesRadar+