Who Played The Best Pennywise? Here's What /Film Readers Had To Say
Stephen King first published his massive horror epic "It" in September of 1986, and it encapsulated just about every habit and preoccupation the author has. Running 1,138 pages, "It" told the story of seven childhood friends living in Derry, Maine in 1957, a dank, unpleasant time and place. Each one of the children is either traumatized or abused. Their friendship binds them together in solidarity, and they take to calling themselves the Losers Club. Oh yes, and Derry is being stalked by a subterranean shapeshifting monster that lives in the sewers and eats children, occasionally emerging from its lair in the form of a terrifying clown named Pennywise. The Losers Club bands together to defeat the monster and, in so doing, symbolically defeat their abuse and trauma.
Fast-forward to 1984, and the Losers have all become unhappy, disaffected adults. They have all moved away from Derry, but remain haunted by their childhood abuse. Pennywise, it seems, was not defeated, and re-emerges to continue its child-eating spree. The adult Losers must re-band to defeat the clown once again. King was clearly writing a story about how the perceived beatific idylls of 1950s small-town America were, in fact, replete with death, pain, and domestic misery. The adults of the 1980s, he seemed to argue, are all damaged.
In 1990, ABC adapted "It" into a notable TV miniseries. Tim Curry played Pennywise. In 1998, the Indian network Zee TV adapted "It" into the 52-episode series "Woh." The clown was played by an actor named Lilliput. In 2017 and 2019, Warner Bros. adapted "It" into two lengthy feature films, and updated the timeline to be set in 1989 and 2019. Pennywise was played by Bill Skarsgård.
So who wore the clown white best? We asked /Film's readers on Facebook, and they debated fiercely.
Pennywise vs. Woh vs. Pennywise
"Woh" has not been made widely available in North America, sadly. One can find videos online, but the Hindi-language series is not subtitled. The scenes with Lilliput are, however, terrifying in any language, as he plays the part with a more human, greasy, brutal, grounded quality. "Woh" worked with a smaller budget than its American counterparts, forcing the Pennywise character more obviously into the real world. When Woh appears in the corner of an office in episode 3, he looks like he would happily beat you to death with a hammer. To make the character extra creepy, his clown makeup shifted throughout the series. Sometimes he was a "happy" clown, and sometimes a "sad" clown. Sadly, because of the show's obscurity, neither "Woh" nor Lilliput were mentioned in the Facebook discussion. If you speak Hindi, however, I encourage you to seek it out. It's available on the Indian streaming service Movies & TV.
The debate, then, was between Tim Curry and Bill Skarsgård as to who could better play a shapeshifting clown.
Curry was the winner, hands down, receiving nearly triple the votes of Skarsgård. This, however, included enthused readers who happily voted for both. Many of the comments were about how Curry provided the template for many viewers, and that Skarsgård was merely riffing on Curry's performance. It's notable that Curry, while outfitted with a prosthetic nose and occasionally sporting carnivorous monster teeth, still behaved like a human being might; one could picture Curry's Pennywise in an actual circus, laughing and entertaining children. His monstrous qualities lurked underneath, making the character that much more terrifying.
A reason clowns are scary
Skarsgård, meanwhile, never looked like an actual clown that one might see in a real-life circus. Skarsgård's Pennywise was a monster through and through, sporting an outsize head, creepy eyes that don't point in the same direction, and a penchant for drooling. Curry's Pennywise might actually lure children closer with the promise of balloons and popcorn. Skarsgård's Pennywise seemed specially designed to jump out of the shadows with its fangs bared. Why bother taking the shape of a clown if you still look like a cannibalistic alien?
As Rob Zombie once pointed out in an interview, clowns are scary not because they are monsters, but because they are greasy, dirty, and kind of pathetic. Real-life clown performers were, in Zombie's experience, burnt-out alcoholics who were barely keeping their lives together. And they were allowed to perform for children. Some children may recall meeting clowns, and being scared by their sweat, their cigarette odor, or their tipsy demeanor. A clown with human qualities, then, will be scarier than something that looks like it was sculpted in a movie studio.
One joker in the /Film poll insisted that Krusty the Clown from "The Simpsons" was more terrifying than both Pennywises. It may be the Zombie qualities that would lead a reader to make that choice.
Bill Skarsgård is great at playing a monster, and he growls and giggles and mugs with aplomb, but he reads more like an animal fulfilling its programming than a beast that takes pleasure in witnessing the suffering of children. At the end of the day, because he read as more human, Curry is the scarier Pennywise. When he tortured a victim, he seemed to really enjoy himself.