Steven Prusakowski
It’s time to face your fears as It: Welcome to Derry calls viewers back to the cursed town of Derry, Maine. The series is not a follow-up to the films, instead the prequel is set in 1962 and explores the origins of Pennywise the Clown. It is an original story based on the novel by Stephen King’s It that delivers visceral horror while confronting the era’s racism. Viewers can expect a chilling ride filled with sinister scares, haunting visuals, and of course, a menacing razor-blade-toothed killer clown, but much more as it digs into the horrors of the era.
At this year’s New York Comic Con, Awards Radar joined roundtable interviews to discuss the creepy series that tells the story of Derry well before the films, with the cast and crew, including executive producer and director Andy Muschietti, executive producer Barbara Muschietti, co-showrunners Jason Fuchs and Brad Caleb Kane, and stars Chris Chalk, Kimberly Guerrero, Stephen Rider, Taylour Paige, James Remar, and Jovan Adepo. They shared insights into the series, which doesn’t take its time to punch the gas with horror, launching with a seemingly kind act to help a young hitchhiker that quickly turns into a terrifying hell-ride back into Derry that will haunt your dreams.
Set in the 1960s, blends the terrors of Pennywise with the horrors of the 1960s. Co-showrunner Brad Caleb Kane, a lifelong King fan, discussed grounding the horror in 1962’s turmoil, “We were given real carte blanche to delve into the themes we wanted to delve into, specifically. Derry is a microcosm of America. You can’t tell the story of America, you can’t tell the story of Derry, without what was really going on in 1962, and it felt like exploitation of fears, exploitation of hatred. That’s the theme of the book, that’s the theme of America, and it’s relevant now also.”
Kane reminisced about his personal connection to Stephen King, something many of his fans share, a too early start and a ravenous relationship after. “My gateway drug to Stephen King was watching a TV movie, Salem’s Lot, far too young. A kid floating to a window, saying, come out here. It scared the shit out of me. I went, who is this? I dived in, read everything, and became a constant reader.” He called Welcome to Derry a milestone, “This is a dream come true to play in his universe, to expand it, to add a chapter. As a kid traumatized by Salem’s Lot, following Stephen King ever since, getting to contribute to his world is incredible for that little kid in me.”
Fans will be happy to know there is no shortage of Derry lore as the series dives into Pennywise’s backstory while delivering the franchise’s trademark unyielding terror. Co-showrunner Jason Fuchs teased the show’s scares: “The series is bookended with terror. There’s the opening sequence of the entire show, episode one, that I think is sort of so terrifying, it thrusts you right into the action. It is just viscerally so terrifying. It’s shocking. Then there’s something in the finale that we can’t talk about that I think will really resonate with audiences. The scale of the horror in our finale episode is pretty remarkable.”
The show doesn’t hold back on nightmares, and executive producer Barbara Muschietti anticipated pushback from HBO: “While we were shooting it, I was like, ‘I’m glad we’re shooting it, but there’s no way we’re going to be able to air this. They’re going to make us cut it. We showed them the episode and they’re like, ‘great episode, we love it.’ They’ve been incredibly supportive and they understand the DNA of the show.”
When working with a beloved classic novel you want the fans to connect with its just as important for the creator to believe in the project. Thankfully. the production had the full blessing of Stephen King himself, as Fuchs noted: “We had a tremendous amount of freedom and flexibility, not just with the network, but also with Stephen King. He was involved from a very early part of it. He read every draft, approved every piece of casting.”
Though not written by King, the series expands on his 1987 novel, using it as the basis for the mythology. Writer/Executive Producer Andy Muschietti, who also directed the It films, explained how the show expands King’s lore. “So it all started around the time that we were finishing IT Chapter 2. I started having these weird conversations with Bill Skarsgard speculating and fantasizing about a new story, how did IT become a clown?” He elaborated, “In our journey with It the story, this is the one where it’s more invented in terms of story and characters. We’re obviously using everything that is in the book as an inspiration and particularly the fact that all these enigmatic events in the book are actually an incomplete puzzle. For us in this particular adventure we wanted to create a story that is interweaved, that fills the gaps of logic, but there’s also a hidden story in this series that doesn’t resolve in the book.”
The series introduces new characters alongside an iconic one from King’s universe that fans will surely remember fondly. Chris Chalk plays a young Dick Hallorann, the same character from The Shining, “My character is Dick Halloran. Dick is in Derry because Dick f*cked up. And that’s the truth. And you’ll see the show. His biggest fear is himself and losing control – it’s losing control but from a completely different power dynamic.” Chalk highlighted the era’s dual horrors: “I think that’s the fun thing about it being placed in that time period… I mean, the world’s scary now, but that world was scary and then you’re throwing on this supernatural layer which kind of makes what we’re normally afraid of racism and misogyny. It’s like, do we really care about that when there’s an alien devouring our children?”
Kimberly Guerrero’s Rose, an Indigenous knowledge-keeper, deepens Derry’s curse: “My community in this story knows everything that happened before Derry was Derry. The first Losers Club was a group of Indigenous kids. There’s a direct descendant of those kids and so you’re going to get to be a part of our family as we get to tell this story and go dive deep, deep into the origins of what terrifies us most about it.” She described the series’ tone: “It’s like Capra directing a horror film. It’s like, It’s a Wonderful Life if it had a malevolent being that wants to eat everybody.” (I recommended renaming it, It’s a Wonderful Lunch.)
Stephen Rider’s Hank Brogan, a theater projectionist, finds heroism in the ordinary: “I play Hank Brogan, who runs the theater in Derry, and he’s a projectionist… As a projectionist, you see everybody in the town all the time. There’s something about playing an ordinary person because… through the ordinary, we see extraordinary things.”
Taylour Paige’s Charlotte Hanlon navigates 1962’s constraints: “That’s just what you do in 1962; you smile, you cook, but you have thoughts that you suppress. You have beliefs, you have opinions. 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?… I think what scares her is, she has the sense that something is just not right.”
Jovan Adepo’s Leroy Hanlon, a Black Air Force major, embodies resilience: “To have a young black man, as a major in the Air Force, with the racial tension being apparent, meant that he had to be an exceptional soldier. I mean, incredibly intelligent, driven, he’s able to ignore what, he is absolutely going to face, being a black man in the military with his white colleagues, and so I wanted to be able to play a representation of that.”
Veteran actor James Remar, as General Shaw, shared a heartfelt reflection on joining the project: “I was in the parking lot of Pavilion’s grocery store, and I was thinking to myself, well, it doesn’t really matter if I don’t work anymore… I swear, I got into the car and I got a phone call from my agent, and they said, Andy and Barbara Muschietti want to meet you for this undisclosed project… I walked down the hallway and I sit in this little chair in the hallway of their office, and there’s Pennywise standing on this stand, and I said, holy shit, I have arrived.” His story of being drawn back to Derry’s horror, like his character, underscores the show’s magnetic pull, blending personal and supernatural stakes that King fans will devour.
After watching the first 4 episodes I can promise this is a chilling, blood-soaked addition to King’s universe – it weaves in 1962’s social nightmares with Pennywise’s terror. Face your fear tonight as IT: Welcome to Derry premieres at 9:00 p.m. ET on HBO and HBO Max. New episodes will be released weekly on Sundays, with the finale airing on December 14.
(This article uses quotes from both the NYCC roundtables and panel. They have been edited for clarity and brevity.)
PHOTOS FROM THE NEW YORK COMIC CON
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