Tim Curry Deliberately Scared His Young It Co-Stars Off-Camera For A Good Reason

27 years before Bill Skarsgård played Pennywise the Dancing Clown in the movie adaptation of "It," Tim Curry donned the clown makeup for the 1990 ABC miniseries. Although several behind-the-scenes clips of Skarsgård being nice and comforting to the kid actors have gone viral over the years, Curry reportedly took a harsher approach. According to Emily Perkins, who played young Beverly Marsh, Curry was standoffish to the child actors on set. As she explained in a 2015 oral history of the miniseries:

"Tim would sit in his chair chain-smoking in his make-up. Whenever the kid actors got too close, he would grin at us with his horribly pointed teeth. He really tried to intimidate us, because he wanted the fear to be real in our performances. He didn't make any effort to be nice, at least not to me!"

Nobody seemed too bothered by Curry's approach, however, as they agreed it led to one of the best clown horror performances of all time. Curry's performance was praised not just by fans but by everyone involved in the production. As Annette O'Toole (who played adult Beverly) put it, "It would be really hard to top Tim in the role of Pennywise." The director Tommy Lee Wallace praised him even further, saying:

"The movie, really, is only as good as its villain, and Tim carved out a place for himself as one of the great movie villains of all time. We had what I think of as an ideal relationship between a director and an actor: I cast the right guy in the part, and then tried not to get in his way while he did his magic. I only needed to steer a little here and there, which is an ideal situation for a director."

Prior to "It," Tim Curry was well-known for his campy, comedic performances. He had to work to make sure people would stop seeing him as the funny man so it wouldn't distract them from fully engaging with his new character. It makes some sense for Curry to fully embrace his character's menacing demeanor on and off screen, to make sure his kid co-stars were genuinely unnerved by him rather than seeing him as a regular coworker. 

Adding that extra dose of authentic fear to the kids' reactions to him on camera helped because, unlike the 2017 adaptation, the "It" miniseries was hampered by network TV restrictions. Tim Curry's Pennywise was allowed to be scary, but he wasn't allowed to fully let his freak flag fly like Skarsgård could with his movie's R-rating. 

But despite Curry's restrictions, I'd say his Pennywise was the scarier of the two. It's not just because the kids seemed more genuinely scared of him, but because his line delivery and character design could pass for a real clown that clueless parents would hire for their kids' birthday party. The dissonance between Curry's mostly-believable demeanor as a regular clown and our knowledge that he's a child-eating alien is a big part of what make him so unsettling. 

Skarsgård's version, meanwhile, is so blatantly evil-looking that it undoes some of that uncanny valley feeling Curry provokes. Curry's portrayal understood that Pennywise is supposed to have a bit of an allure to him; he has to both fill his victims with fear in their final moments and appear harmless enough to lure them in to begin with. Curry nailed both aspects, and that's what puts his Pennywise on top.