WARNING: The article contains potential spoilers for It and its upcoming sequel.


Pennywise the Dancing Clown is terrifying enough by himself (It-self?), thanks in no small part to actor Bill Skarsgård's fiendish portrayal in It. While he manages to have a fair amount of screen time traumatizing the Losers' Club, the actor reveals one scene in particular was cut from the final edit, in part because of its especially gruesome nature.

RELATED: It Director’s Cut Includes 15 Minutes of New Footage

"There's a scene that we shot that was a flashback scene from the 1600s. Where Pennywise was before 'Pennywise,'" Skarsgård explained during Variety's Playback podcast. "And we shot it for additional shooting and the scene turned out really, really disturbing. And It's me ... I'm not the clown, I look more like myself."

After reading an earlier script draft by Cary Fukunaga, some fans have speculated the scene in question involves a mother allowing It to devour her daughter in exchange for safety. Skarsgård refused to give away too much, in case the scene ends up being used in the upcoming sequel, but he did say the sequence better contextualized Pennyswise and gave, "sort of a backstory for what It is or where Pennywise came from. ... The idea is that It, the entity, was dormant or resting for thousands of thousands of years and it [the scene] hints on [the founding of Derry]."

RELATED: It: Chapter 2’s Story & Time Jump, Explained

In theaters now, director Andy Muschietti's It also stars Jaeden Lieberher, Jeremy Ray Taylor, Sophia Lillis, Finn Wolfhard, Wyatt Oleff, Jack Dylan Grazer and Chosen Jacobs.

(via Buzzfeed)