Bill Skarsgård thought studio executives were “kind of mean” for releasing an image of him in costume as Pennywise before he had started filming It.

To drum up excitement about the two-part Stephen King film adaptation, Warner Bros. officials released a first-look image of the Swedish actor in costume as the villainous clown before cameras had started rolling on the movie.

This meant that Skarsgård was acutely aware of all the criticism about his new-look appearance before he had filmed anything.

“They did a thing that I felt was kind of mean,” he told Esquire magazine. “I was so incredibly nervous to start this job, and then the Internet is having so many hateful opinions on the weird, strange look of the thing.”

The John Wick: Chapter 4 star admitted he couldn’t sleep because he kept thinking about the insults, however, the backlash eventually forced him to make a decision about his approach to acting.

“You can only make this performance to please yourself,” he stated. “It unlocked something in me. And it gave me the confidence that I can take on any challenge… At least, that’s how I feel when I accept these things.”

Pennywise was first portrayed by Tim Curry in a 1990 miniseries. Skarsgård took up the mantle for 2017’s It and the sequel, It Chapter Two, in 2019.

When he accepted the role, he didn’t realise how much pressure he was under to live up to Curry’s performance.

“When you are twenty-six, you don’t feel young at all, but now, looking back at it, I was a kid,” the 33-year-old said. “It was fairly early on in my career to take on something that had so many eyeballs and expectations on it.”

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