Misbehaving? Bill Skarsgård’s parenting move is letting Pennywise out
Bill Skarsgård shared a parenting trick tied to his iconic horror role — and the creep factor is pure Pennywise.
On Josh Horowitz’s Happy Sad Confused podcast, Bill Skarsgård said his kids sometimes get a surprise visit from his most infamous alter ego. Asked if his children have heard the Pennywise voice, he admitted he’ll occasionally bring it out at home — and he doesn’t stop with just the clown.
"Yeah, if they misbehave…He can slip in there, slip out and then Nosferatu can pop in. There's a whole colorful bunch of schizophrenic daddy," he shared.
Skarsgård’s Pennywise, from Andy Muschietti’s It films, became a modern horror landmark thanks to his unsettling physicality — those contorted facial expressions, odd movements and that chameleonic voice. The approach helped turn the two-film adaptation into a box office juggernaut, with the first movie alone grossing more than $700 million worldwide.
And now the house also has a vampire lurking around bedtime: he recently played Count Orlok in Robert Eggers’ 2024 Nosferatu, making his “dad voices” a little more nightmarish than most.
Another comic-book itch
During the same interview, Skarsgård addressed the summer chatter tying him to Marvel ’s next X-Men movie — speculation that heated up in July when reporter Jeff Sneider said Skarsgård and Tom Pelphrey were in the mix. That talk cooled once Marvel cast Christopher Abbott as Charles Xavier in August.
Skarsgård did say there’s a different comics icon he’d love to tackle: John Constantine. He revealed he had imagined reuniting with “It” director Andy Muschietti on a take blending hard-edged horror with a superhero sheen, a combo he finds especially appealing.
The timing lines up with current plans at DC Studios: the company is developing a new Constantine movie, with Francis Galluppi (The Last Stop in Yuma County) set to write the screenplay.