It: Welcome to Derry isn’t the first time the terrifying monster that haunts the small fictional town from Stephen King’s best seller has graced the small screen. But during a New York Comic Con panel on Saturday, the cast and creative team behind the upcoming HBO prequel series revealed how the show will take the horror classic to new places with expanded lore and more terror.
As part of Saturday’s panel, which featured clips from the upcoming series, It: Welcome to Derry’s director and executive producer Andy Muschietti, executive producer Barbara Muschietti and co-showrunner and executive producers Jason Fuchs and Brad Caleb Kane were joined on stage by cast members Jovan Adepo, Taylour Paige, Chris Chalk, James Remar, Stephen Rider and Kimberly Guerrero.
Set in 1962 — 27 years before the events of It Chapter One — Derry is once again being subjected to Pennywise’s reign of terror. According to Barbara, they took the show’s concept to King — “who got the idea and supported us” — and studio Warner Bros. around early 2020.
“It’s a previous cycle, which is for us very special because 1962 is closer to 1958 in a way,” Andy said, noting how the movies shifted the narrative’s timeline from the ’50s to the ’80s. “So what we couldn’t do in the movie in terms of era … we’re doing now. I feel that this first season is closer in spirit, and also in textures and feel, to what the book was, even though it’s not the same characters. Some of them, there’s ancestors and there’s bloodlines and a lot of things that you will discover might be a couple of significant connections.”
The series will essentially explore the origins of Pennywise, using the book’s five interludes as a blueprint. It’s “a hidden story, a story that is not told forward but a story that is told backward and has a final conclusion — the events in which It becomes Pennywise,” Andy told the NYCC crowd. “Of course, there’s more to it. There’s a reason and a secret why we’re telling the story backward. I can’t tell you now. I guess you have to see the show.”
Read below for more on what the cast and creative team revealed about the upcoming series during Saturday’s NYCC panel.
Andy Muschietti Says Prequel Came From Two Places: Mike Hanlon’s Interludes and Bill Skarsgard
For It director Muschietti, the idea for a series set before the books was initially spun off when he and the films’ star, Bill Skarsgard, were “high on the experience of” filming It Chapter Two.
“It all started around the time we were finishing,” he told the NYCC crowd. “I started having these weird conversations with Bill Skarsgard because we were high on the experience of doing It Two. We started, somehow, speculating and fantasizing about a new story, a new movie, which was basically the origin story of Pennywise. How did ‘It’ become the clown? What role did the infamous and cryptic Bob Gray play in the story? Those were the conversations.”
The two parted ways as new projects emerged in their schedules, but then the It director picked it back up.
And after going back into the book, he realized how much of Pennywise’s origin story was only the beginning. “I sort of focus on the interludes. This has a function in the book, obviously. It told me about a puzzle that was intentionally unfinished in the book. Stephen King creates all these enigmas and big question marks to create tension, but for me, it was like, what if this is a blueprint for a different story? The interludes for all of you who don’t know are Mike Hanlon, the loser who stays in town, played, by the way, by Isaiah Mustafa in [It Chapter Two] and Chosen Jacobs in Chapter One.”
He continued: “He wrote all this. The interviews are documented. That is a product of his investigation, which is a very fragmented document where he compiles all the experiences of people in the past and where he tries to basically figure out what It is, but it’s inconclusive. We are left with more questions than answers.”
The Show Will Address What Motivates Pennywise’s Appearance
Fans know Pennywise has been terrorizing the children and families of this small Maine town for decades. But the answer to what brought “a being of pure light who could journey anywhere” and would make it “decide to come back to Derry time and again as its hunting grounds” was a major question the series’ co-showrunner Fuchs, and the team, wanted to answer.
“We all had some of the same questions that have rattled around in our heads as readers and viewers for many decades, certainly since before we were able to join the franchise,” he said. “Surely, there are more densely populated, more interesting places it could go. What brings it back? Why has it chosen to return to the form of Pennywise? It can take any manifestation it wants. What is it about this clown, Bob Gray, that makes it want to continue to take this form? It’s the process of unraveling those mysteries.”
Added Kane, the show’s time period helped the series delve into the mind of the monster, “an interdimensional creature, who uses fear and hatred to divide. You’re talking about 1962 in America. Well, that’s a very rich and specific area to mine, and that was really interesting to me: the social implications of that, marrying that with the horror of it and the themes of Mr. King’s book.”
‘It: Welcome to Derry’ Will Feature a Cast That “Will Break Your Heart”
Speaking to the performances, co-showrunner Kane told the crowd that “all of these actors will break your heart. You will fall in love with these characters and all of these actors, the way they’ve inhabited them. You will root for them. You will fear for them.”
Part of that cast includes characters from backgrounds that have historically gone unrepresented in leading roles in the It universe. “This is storytelling with a capital ‘s’ — the Stephen King universe — and it is a family, but it’s a family that we’ve been left out of,” said Guerrero, who plays Rose. “The Native story has been there, but we have never ever been able to join you all at the table, and it was like we have stories too. And so it was such a deep blessing, and an entire life’s work; I’ve spent my entire life working to bring our stories to the world and to help just give space for our voices.”
Added Paige about her character Charlotte, “In 1962, you smile, you cook, but you have thoughts that you suppress,” she told the crowd. “Charlotte was marching back in Shreveport, Louisiana. Charlotte was involved and has dreams, and she’s a whole person, like everyone here. And I think in 1962 about my grandmother, who was born in the late ‘30s. What dreams died with people because of the year in which they were born or where they were born or what skin color they were born with? So Charlotte very much loves being a wife and mother, but also has other interests and values helping people and contributing to society. I think what scares her is she has the sense, the real sense, that something is just not right and ignoring that and something turning into something insane is very frightening.”
