Every Actor Who Almost Played Pennywise in 'It'

Publish date: 2024-07-10

It's normal for directors to consider a long list of candidates for any role, but 2017's It cast a wide net of possibilities. Director Andy Muschietti, and Cary Fukunaga before him, looked at a diverse bunch in search of Pennywise, Stephen King's terrifying clown beast to end all terrifying clown beasts. Only one performer can be victorious, and Bill Skarsgård emerged on top after years of consideration that included prestige Oscar winners and some of this generation's most prolific character actors. This was a project riding on the success of its villain as much as its band of outcast heroes. It had to find their Pennywise, or they were out to sea in the Derry sewers.

A New Pennywise in 'It' Presented New Challenges

Although Tommy Lee Wallace's 1990 miniseries is stylistically dated by today's standards and hampered by a network TV budget, the venerable Tim Curry's exquisitely vile performance as Pennywise cast a long and nigh-indomitable shadow. This writer can testify to having nightmares after just a glimpse of the cackling, balloon-dispensing clown. Any actor donning white makeup and floppy shoes for a modern Pennywise needed to be recognizable enough to ring true but as far from a carbon copy as possible. It's a balancing act familiar to remakes and reimaginings: infuse Stephen King's abhorrent monster with unique ideas but not lose the forest for the trees.

It was published in 1986 and petrified existing King fans and casual readers alike. We young ones thought Tim Curry was bad? Oh, the horrors awaiting us once we were older and met the real, uncensored thing. The 2017 film's R-rating would allow the freedom to be as graphic as King's words, so it was a tall order to live up to two different but complimentary images of King's most culturally recognizable creation.

And whether you're an ABC miniseries or a film produced by New Line Cinema, adapting It was a doozy. The novel runs shy of 1,000 pages and spans decades of generational trauma across seven main characters and even more ancillary ones. King is the GOAT of horror storytelling and an ancient, dimension-hopping, flesh-eating creature haunting a small town every twenty-seven years is peak horror. And classically so; King taps into universal fears, like the monster hiding in a child's closet or the fairy tale troll under a bridge who swallows people whole. Pennywise is the hand that seizes your foot if it's dangling outside the bed covers, an uncategorizable phantasm made flesh but adapted with unrelenting gore.

Cara Fukunaga Considered Three Very Different Actors for Pennywise

True Detective Season One director Cary Fukunaga was the first creative signed to the project. He spent years honing his script, which split the massive tome across two movies and received high praise from King. Andy Muschietti would assume the directorial mantle after Fukunaga stepped down, but Fukunaga had his eye on several fascinating possibilities for Pennywise. (Jenny Slate almost auditioned but passed on trying, deciding she "prefer[s] rom-coms.")

Reportedly, Fukunaga wanted to cast Ben Mendelsohn, a reputable actor in every circumstance but one who shined as a complicated baddie in Animal Kingdom, the Netflix series Bloodline (for which he won an Emmy Award), and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. Combined with his indie credentials (Killing Them Softly, The Place Beyond the Pines, and Mississippi Grind), Mendelsohn proved himself as exemplary a character actor as any in recent memory.

An anonymous source claims Mendelsohn turned down Pennywise because studio executives were concerned about It's budget and lowered the actor's salary. That isn't confirmed, and anonymous sources usually aren't too reliable. Whatever situation led to a Mendelsohn-less Pennywise, paying attention to anyone else is impossible when Mendelsohn's spinning an aura of hypnotic inquietude. His acting choices cant toward the unexpected and are all the more searingly engaging for it.

While in the director's chair, Fukunaga also eyed British thespian Sir Mark Rylance. Rylance is a Shakespearian-trained actor with a list of credentials ten miles long: he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in Bridge of Spies as well as two Tony Awards. There's little Rylance can't do with his connoisseur's instincts, whether it's the title role of the Big Friendly Giant in Steven Spielberg's The BFG or Satan in Terrence Malick's upcoming The Way of the Wind. He's a master of minimalist humanity, especially in Bridge of Spies where his role dances the dance of Cold War enmity. Imagining Rylance as Pennywise is enough to induce a shiver. Fukunaga's thoughts on Rylance's audition aren’t known in detail, but multiple outlets confirmed that Rylance made the final three.

Cary Fukunaga Chose a Younger Actor for His Pennywise

So who rounded out Cary Fukunaga's trio? The director was in final negotiations with the young Will Poulter, who's now earning that Disney paycheck as Adam Warlock in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. Variety reported that "Fukunaga could not say no after being blown away by Poulter’s audition for the part." Poulter had already made a name for himself through stand-out performances in the comedy caper We're the Millers and the brutal survival epic The Revenant. The latter saw Poulter easily hold his ground against veteran actors Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hardy.

But despite pouring years of passion into the project, Fukunaga's version of It fell through the cracks. Fukunaga explained that his creative vision for the film was consistently different from the studio's, so he stepped away rather than create something he didn't wholeheartedly believe in. Poulter departed alongside Fukunaga as the project switched hands and underwent a creative reassessment.

Andy Muschietti and his sister, producer Barbara Muschietti, reached out to Poulter once the brother and sister team replaced Fukunaga. Poulter refused their offer after "slowly disengag[ing]" from such a violent character in the years since auditioning. The idea of a younger actor prevailed in Muschietti's version, and it's intriguing to look at Poulter's work and imagine that alternate reality. Hopefully, Poulter keeps receiving opportunities to flex his range.

TV Stars and Oscar-Winners Could Have Been 'It's Killer Clown

Speaking of acting range: Kirk Acevedo submitted a Pennywise audition tape and actively wanted the role. "It was one of my proudest moments," he shared. "I was so close! As a Latino, I wanted to do it for our people." Between Oz, Band of Brothers, Fringe, 12 Monkeys, Arrow, and many guest spots on primetime procedurals, Acevedo boasts a long career as a stellar television actor with a grounding, engaging presence. He won an American Latino Media Arts Award for his role in Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line. "Seeing that tape of my doing Pennywise opened people’s minds about what I can do," Acevedo said, having seen increased exposure and success thanks to his audition.

The one and only Tilda Swinton came within a hair's breadth of Pennywise. Barbara Muschietti revealed they didn't consider gender when casting the dancing clown and looked at "a huge gamut of talent; women, younger age, older age." Swinton had scheduling conflicts that kept her from even auditioning, but this would have been a casting coup from heaven. Swinton is one of the greatest actresses to exist, period. She defined a generation of ice-cold villainy in The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, mastered passionate vampire predation in Only Lovers Left Alive, and seduced as the graceful leader of a witch coven in Suspiria. Additionally, she defied gender norms with Orlando and Constantine. Although King refers to Pennywise as "him," the alien creature goes by "It" as much as anything. Gender needn't be considered, especially for a shapeshifter made up of floating orange orbs.

Another iconic actor with an ironclad history of villainy was none other than Hugo Weaving. He may be immortalized (pun unintended) as Elrond in Peter Jackson'sThe Lord of the Rings trilogy, but for those of a certain age, he pulled double duty in the late 1990s and early 2000s by also inhabiting The Matrix's Agent Smith (and his assortment of clones). Weaving would be bloodcurdling, no doubt — just the way he removes his sunglasses in The Matrix's interrogation scene oozes barely contained disgust and hateful vengeance.

Bill Skarsgård Deserved To Be King of the Clowns

The first It was a surprisingly viral success, making record-breaking bucks at the box office: $701.8M, to be exact. As is wont to befall popular things, Bill Skarsgård's Pennywise became a red-hot meme. But memes are often born out of something too impossibly good to believe. Skarsgård's vocal runs are almost musical in their fluidity yet so wrong, something off-key and out of tune that shouldn't exist. The sharp cut of his cheekbones underneath the makeup and his searing bright eyes play just as much in his favor. Children might find other adults scary, but younger adults aren't necessarily a threat at first glance. They might be trustworthy sibling figures, and as much as society's developed a fear of clowns, they're supposed to be entertainers of children specifically. An ancient villain presenting itself in the body of something young is uniquely hideous.