Tilda Swinton Was Considered For the Role of Pennywise The Clown in IT

I actually like what I'm seeing from Bill Skarsgard as Pennywise the Clown in the new film adaptation of Stephen King's It. There were a lot of actors looked at for the role. Director Andrés Muschietti and his producing partner and sister Barbara Muschietti were looking at hundreds of actors to take it on. During an interview with Nerdist, Barbara said:

“We auditioned literally hundreds of potential Bob Grays or Pennywises. And it was an amazing process. We got to audition people that don’t audition anymore and a huge gamut of talent; women, younger age, older age, we really went through the spectrum of actors.”

One of those actors that they actually considered cast at one point was Tilda Swinton, who recently played The Ancient One is Doctor Strange. Her name was jokingly brought up in the interview and to everyone's surprise, she said:

“She wasn’t available. “No, no I swear to God. We had a slot to shoot the movie and she wasn’t available, so she didn’t even audition. But of course, we all thought about her.”

When talking about casting Pennywise, Andrés said he was "hoping for someone who would surprise me in any way,” and Skarsgård ended up being that surprise. Barbara said:

“Bill came in and blew our socks off. Because he was doing his very own interpretation of Pennywise, very erudite…very very familiar with the novel and with Pennywise in the novel, which for us was a huge help, because we went in the casting process with the book in mind.”

That's great to hear. We got to hear his version of Pennywise speak for the first time in the latest trailer that was released and it was perfectly creepy in all the right ways. As a fan of the book, I love the direction they are taking Pennywise in this film. I'm excited to see more! 

Swinton would have been an interesting choice for the character and probably would have done something great with it. But, I'm happy Skarsgard was ultimately cast.