Every 27 years, something bad happens in the town of Derry, Maine. Children go missing, as fear and evil run rampant. Beneath the heart of this sleepy town lies a horrifying secret that threatens to divide its residents and cause chaos. However, is it just the supernatural terrors that plague this place? Or is there something deeper, sadder, and more real that is behind it all? We got to the bottom of these questions with the cast and creators of IT: Welcome to Derry!
Recently, we were given the opportunity to sit down with the creators and stars of the upcoming HBO horror series, IT: Welcome to Derry; a prequel series to the 2017 and 2019 Andy Muschietti horror blockbusters IT and IT: Chapter 2. Having seen the first five episodes of the series, I can vouch for the fact that it is just as terrifying as its big screen predecessors, as it expands upon the mythology behind Pennywise and the town of Derry. The series even takes aspects from Stephen King’s other works, crossing over characters and concepts from famed stories like The Shining and Doctor Sleep. It’s an absolutely thrilling installment to the franchise, and we were incredibly excited to speak with Muschietti, who acts as the developer, executive producer, and director on multiple episodes, as well as co-executive producer Barbara Muschietti, showrunners Jason Fuchs and Brad Caleb Kane, and stars Jovan Adepo (Leroy Hanlon), Taylour Paige (Charlotte Hanlon), Chris Chalk (Dick Hallorann), Stephen Rider (Hank Grogan), Kimberly Guerrero (“Rose”) and James Remar (“General Shaw”).
The IT films have always been about more than just scares. At their core, Stephen King created a story that tackles heavier themes such as the loss of innocence, trauma caused by racism and abuse, and the power of love and friendship in the face of overwhelming darkness and evil. In the same way, Welcome to Derry expands upon those themes, but explores them in an 1961 setting. This actually allows the story to hold up a mirror to the world today, and showcase that not much has changed in our world in regards to division and discrimination; especially when seen through the eyes of the Hanlon family, whose future descendant, Mike, would become a member of The Losers Club. And the hope in telling stories like this is, of course, for us to maybe someday learn from these fictional examples and become better.
We dove into these sorts of ideas further with the show’s creatives and stars. Here’s everything they had to say in response to the questions we asked them during a special press junket:
Andy & Barbara Muschietti
NOC: Hey guys! Thank you so much for doing this! Excited to talk to you! What I love about everything you both have done with IT, and now with Welcome to Derry, you’ve explored the IT-side of Stephen King’s universe, but never The Shining-side of the universe. Until now! So I have to ask, when you were putting together those elements, did you consult Stephen directly or discuss with Mike Flannagan about what he did in Doctor Sleep? How did everything come together with The Shining aspects of the series?
Barbara Muschietti: So I’ll say something. The initiator of all of this is Stephen, because he put Dick Hallorann in IT. He’s in the book. He’s in The Black Spot. And I’ll let Andy continue.
Andy Muschietti: Dick Hallorann is in the book, and he’s part of the retelling of the events of The Black Spot, in the interlude, in a very partial way. It’s actually the rememberance of Mike Hanlon’s dad. Memories of The Black Spot. But that was incredibly exciting, because it’s a character we all love…we said [Dick Hallorann] cannot be a secondary role. He cannot be a secondary player. Someone like Dick Hallorann who has “the shine.” So we put Dick as one of the main players of the story. Which carries another angle. He has a supernatural power, so it’s not just “It,” who comes from another dimension with his shape shifting power. So it’s basically someone with a power that’s superhuman…he has “The Shining” so he has all these abilities. And we just thought it would be fun to pair them together…Now The Black Spot in our story is a bit of a climax in the event of the longer story, in which we tell the story of Dick Hallorann in Derry. Why was he there, why was he called into that. And that’s a very exciting part of the show.
Barbara Muschietti: And then we cast Chris Chalk, who brought another dimension to Dick and who’s absolutely perfect. Spooky and spooked. He’s just amazing!
NOC: I’m loving it guys! This is awesome. For me, the movies are wonderful. And I have to know, when you’re the creative watching the movies, are you thinking “there are things I could have done better?” And now with Welcome to Derry, revisiting this world, do you see it as an opportunity to be able to do those things you weren’t able to in the movies?
Andy Muschietti: I don’t think so. IT Chapter One was the one with the most limited budget. And even though I’m very happy with it, there was a sequence we couldn’t execute because it was too expensive. It was a VFX transformation at the end of the movie, that I couldn’t carry on. But I did it in the show. So, yes. The answer to that is “yes.” In that particular space I could do something that I couldn’t do in the show.
Barbara Muschietti: Let me put it in a different perspective. When Andy fixates on an idea, it will get made at some point.
Andy Muschietti: Even if it takes 10 years.
Barbara Muschietti: Even if it takes 10 years, and even if it crosses over to another property. But that idea will survive.
NOC: I’m glad they do! Thank you so much!
Jason Fuchs and Brad Caleb Kane
NOC: Hey guys! Thank you so much for doing this. Really quickly, in a lot of ways we get a lot more about Pennywise, and the origins of The Ritual of Chud, moreso than what we did in IT: Chapter Two. When you guys were approaching the creation of the series, did you really start with what was left unanswered or unexplored from IT: Chapter Two, then take it from there? What was the approach to the story in Welcome to Derry?
Fuchs: We really started from two basic angles. We started from, as Stephen King megafans, the mysteries and unexplored aspects of the book, suggested, obviously, by Mike Hanlon’s interludes that we wanted answers to, but always speculated about as fans. So we had a lot of questions and a lot of mysteries we wanted to explore. And then we had a lot of the themes of the book and the films that felt really powerful and meaningful to us that we wanted to bring to life in the long-form experience that TV gives the opportunity to do. So it was coming at it from purely the fan-oriented [perspective] – what are the answers to why “It” a being of light chooses to remain in Derry as his hunting grounds exclusively? Why if he can take all these different shapes, has found his preferred shape in this clown, Pennywise. And at the same time this is a story about the weaponization of fear, fear as a tool to divide people, fear as a tool to desensitize people to horrors and the way characters react to that. So it was those sort of complimentary original things that made us so excited to build this and were our guiding lights as we crafted the story.
Kane: And the relevance of those themes to the real world. That really interested us too.
NOC: I love it! We have to talk about Dick Hallorann, guys! Because that was one of the biggest surprises of the show. I’m a big King fan, I’m a big Shining/Doctor Sleep fan. And you take this character, who is mentioned in IT, but on a minor level, and you expand on him so much. How did you come up with the story of how to integrate Dick into the Derry series, and was any of it inspired by previous iterations of the characters?
Kane: The exciting thing about bringing Dick into the story – not only is he in the book and in the interstitial and in Derry around this time on the Air Force base – but the Dick Hallorann you meet in The Shining in the movie and the book exists in many ways in service to Danny Torrance and his journey through The Overlook. In our show, Dick Hallorann exists in service to nobody but Dick Hallorann. We wanted to create a story where Dick had his own agency, had his own backstory, his own trials and tribulations. You learn about his past, his military record, the things he suffered as a child. And what’s so interesting about putting him in the story is taking someone with these incredible abilities he has, both a gift and a curse, and putting him in the path of this creature that goes inside the heads of the denizens of Derry. Well that’s an interesting place to get with Dick. Because if you go inside someone’s head who has their own psychic abilities, maybe they’ll just go inside yours. And wouldn’t that be interesting to see someone with the abilities of Dick Hallorann go inside the “head” of the “It” entity? And we play with that in the first five episodes. We play with that even more later in much more interesting ways. So all of the possibilities of putting Dick Hallorann with all his abilities and the love Stephen King fans bring to him, into this story, with this entity in Derry was something we just couldn’t resist.
Fuchs: It’s also Dick Hallorann in the early stage of his development. Not just in terms of the man he is, but his control over his abilities. He doesn’t have the same control over them as he does in later stories like The Shining or Doctor Sleep. And even in terms of his personality, when we meet Dick Hallorann in The Shining, as Brad says, he’s in service to Danny Torrance. But he’s also great with Danny Torrence. He’s good with kids. But guess what? Dick Hallorann wasn’t always great with kids. This is a Dick Hallorann who really doesn’t like kids all that much. And being thrown into an adventure where we’re going to see how this moment in his life impacted all that. That felt very fun, very ripe for invention in an adventure, and we were very excited to tell that aspect of his journey.
Kane: And I think in many ways you do get to see the birth of the Dick Hallorann you come to see in The Shining through the arc of this story.
NOC: I’m loving the crossover guys. Thanks again so much!
Jovan Adepo and Taylour Paige
NOC: Hey guys! It’s an honor to speak with you both! I had a question for Jovan. I’ve been a fan of your work from Watchmen, Babylon, and Fences. All of these speak intelligently to themes about race in our world today, in the past and the present. Welcome to Derry continues that tradition. What really is it about these sorts of projects that draws you to them?
Adepo: I think it’s a really creative way to expand on the story itself. If you add the true elements of our country’s history, and what people have gone through, I think people watching it can connect to it in a strong way. And perhaps find themselves caring for the characters a bit more. And I think if you can show the characters really going through something that either you’ve gone through or you know someone in your family has experienced in their lifetime, and they’ve attached themselves to that person having that experience on screen, then I think once you add the sensational element of it (the clowns, the monsters, etc) that makes for a much more interesting story where the stakes are much higher. And it was seamless in how they included that in the series without it being overbearing or heavy-handed. It was just really well intertwined with the story of Derry and on top of Derry where race played a part. Especially in [The Hanlon’s] welcoming into the town.
Stephen Rider and Chris Chalk
NOC: Hey guys! Thank you for doing this! Loving the show. I have to ask – one of the things I loved about this is that the show speaks a lot about racism, and the use of racism to create scapegoats for problems in our society. And we are living right now in a time where that’s pretty much everything we’re seeing happening on the news. When you read the script did you feel a sense of relevance and timeliness with everything your characters are going through in Derry with what’s going on here in the United States right now?
Chalk: I think anything dealing with your deepest fears – especially regarding racism in America – I automatically think of police racism, and the history of slavery as it was turned into the judicial system.
Rider: In terms of how our society now, and society back then, the parallels between what went on in the 60s and today – I would say, honestly it’s not even just what’s going on now. The reality is it doesn’t even matter who’s in office or not in office. Black folks and People of Color deal with the same things regardless of that fact becuase it’s systemic. And so the good thing is we can draw off of our experiences that we’ve gone through individually and collectively, and see how those experiences translate into the characters that we portray in relation to 1962.
Chalk: And there is a guaranteed sense of richness because these are not foreign experiences to any of us. I’ve had guns put to my head. I’ve had the KKK come across my yard. I’ve had a shotgun put in my mouth. Growing up was rough [in North Carolina].
NOC: Thank you for those terrific, and honest answers.
Chalk: Absolutely. It was a good question.
NOC: One of the things I love about this series is the connective tissue that we see between Stephen King’s stories are coming to life for the first time. We’ve never really seen, on screen, the connections between IT and The Shining. Considering how robust this universe is, if you both had the opportunity to continue your characters beyond Welcome to Derry, what would those shows be for you?
Chalk: Easy. I got this! Next show, and I’m going to need you to co-pitch this with me: HBO’s Dick. It’s about Dick Hallorann as a detective working through his hard emotions. It’s a dick, being a dick, named “Dick”. You know what I mean? Like c’mon! And you can call it Hallorann if it doesn’t test well with the audience. But like, imagine…HBO, they can name something Dick. And it’s like “what’s this about?” It’s about an a**hole, with psychic powers, named “Dick,” who is doing some detective work before he heads on off to the hotel. So I’m going to entrust you to get that produced!
Rider: And also like an anthology. Like something where you do connect everything. I don’t know how that would look, but having all the pieces coming into play. Like you leave on a bus, and it goes from town to town. Can you imagine the worlds that would go to? Man!
NOC: We’ll definitely try and campaign for both!
Kimberly Guerrero and James Remar
NOC: Hey guys! Loving the show so far. One of the things I love, is that we explore the Indiginous roots of Derry; something we didn’t get to do in the movies. Kimberly for you – especially since your character is at the center of those stories – how was that for you and how did you connect with all that?
Guerrero: It was such a gift…There is a global audience and a love for this place and this creature, and The Losers Club, and everything the story represents. So to get to go into that world, and into the story that Stephen King himself didn’t quite know how to crack; he knew it was there, and that it was the causation, and a relationship between the creature and the First Peoples that encountered “It”. But to get to be a part of bringing that to life, and to weave in our (Indiginous) thread into the fabric of the story was a huge gift. And I cannot wait for everyone to see it.
NOC: I truly loved it to, thank you! IT at the end of the day is all about fear. And it’s interesting because, in life, there are ways we can control fear and ways we can’t control fear. And your characters approach that control in very different ways. Can you speak to the ways in which your characters approach controlling fear and how did that resonate with you as actors?
Remar: [Shaw controls fear] by attacking it. I would say that “It” represents fear, and the kids represent love. And love will always overcome fear. Fear is hard to control, but you can face it. And in the facing of fear you demonstrate courage, and take heart. So I would say my character…he’s suited himself up in the armor of the military. And has fortunately for him, to control his fear, had a series of enemies that were clear cut. He was a “WWI, WWII, Korean War” guy. And when the enemy is right there in front of you, nobody was arguing about who the bad guy was. And so he felt empowered. And that gave him control over his anxieties and his fears. Then he’s drawn back to Derry for some reason. And ends up in one of the scariest places on Earth, which is right next to Russia in the heart of The Cold War. So he may not be in as much control as he thought.
Guerrero: To “control the fear” is an interesting way to put it for Rose. Her driving engine is protection. Rose is a warrior. I would ask anyone in this room, who do you love the most in this world. And what would you be willing to fight to protect that loved one from being harmed. It’s so powerful that the energy and life force that will well up from that love is so profound. That’s what allows Rose to face those fears. She knows what she’s up against, but her love is more powerful than the fear it instills.
NOC: Beautiful! Thank you both!
We have more coverage for IT: Welcome to Derry coming out this week, including our visit to the red carpet premiere of the show! Be sure to catch the series premiere on HBO, this Sunday, October 26th!
