He explains to Conan how in his childhood, he used the demonic smile to frighten his little brother after learning his older brother Gustav was also able to point his lip.
While playing Pennywise in IT and IT Chapter Two, Bill Skarsgard wears a set of prosthetic teeth, for times when the dancing clown really needs to show off his razor-sharp chompers. The problem is, these teeth caused Skarsgard to drool, and not just a little. The teeth caused full-on torrents of slobber from the actor.
"The Losers Club" becomes aware of Pennywise's presence after it kills Bill's little brother, Georgie. King stated in a 2013 interview that he came up with the idea for Pennywise after asking himself what children feared "more than anything else in the world", and feeling that the answer was clowns.
It's primary goal is to feed on humans, generally preferring children over adults since they were easier to scare and manipulate. According to the creature, frightened flesh tastes better and uses fear to "salt the meat".
Bill Skarsgård's Demonic “IT" Smile | CONAN on TBS
Who is Pennywise scared of?
Stephen King's IT introduced readers to a one-of-a-kind creature that can take any form, the most common one being Pennywise the Dancing Clown, and as menacing as it is, this creature has one big enemy it's truly scared of: Maturin, the turtle.
They reach the conclusion that Pennywise has all of the adults under some sort of spell that prohibits them from seeing him. The adults of Derry are shown to be villainous in their own right as well. The adults of Derry are shown to be true villains of the story in the same way as Pennywise.
Being such a powerful being, Pennywise clearly sensed that the yellow coloring was unsettling to Georgie, so he changed his eyes to blue on the fly as a way to make Georgie associate him with family and safety. This made Georgie all the easier to lure in to his bloody demise.
Throughout Stephen King's It, Pennywise is referred to as a male, but author Stephen King pulled a fast one on readers in the It book ending by revealing the creature's true form was a pregnant spider, implying that it is, in fact, biologically female.
The prosthetics made him drool excessively but they leave a lot of that in the movie as director Andy Muschietti felt it nicely fit into the ravenous nature of Pennywise. The drooling around children was worked into the story. 12.
In both the book and the films, It is an ancient alien creature, older than civilization, and in King's novel, older than our universe. It feasts on the flesh of humans simply because our fears are easy to manifest and they make us taste better.
Pennywise pretty much made Derry the perfect place for a creature like itself to live, and with the whole town under its control and with a lot of children (and adults) to feed from, IT didn't really have reasons to leave Derry.
And if his victim believes him to be powerless, he will become powerless. And so the group figures out that their best bet is, essentially, to bully the bully: They mock Pennywise, telling him he isn't scary. Humiliated, Pennywise begins to shrink, transforming into an almost Benjamin Button–like, melted clown-baby.
In It (2017), Pennywise changes the colour of his eyes from yellow to blue, which are the same colour as Bill's, to lure Georgie. "There were yellow eyes in there: the sort of eyes he had always imagined but never actually seen down in the basement.
A common interpretation of this phrase is that it refers to where the souls of IT's victims go after they die, as they wouldn't go to heaven nor hell, staying instead in the “deadlights”, which would be a sort of limbo, thus “floating” in that middle point for eternity.
Though there are some IT characters just as scary as Pennywise, the film's main villain proves to be its deadliest, with a kill count that actually reaches into the tens of thousands. Reddit user u/angelholme estimates that Pennywise actually took the lives of between 12,117 and 18,011 people.
One of Pennywise's most recognizable features though is his ridiculously large head. My theory is that he's got such a big head because when he first came up with his Pennywise shape, he was basing his appearance on the humans that he had spent most of his time with: infants.
The novel explains that IT landed on Earth during an asteroid impact and established itself under the land Derry would be later built on, and initially preyed on indigenous tribes. From that point of view, IT/Pennywise would be billions of years old, but his clown shape wouldn't be that old.
Did you notice something off about Pennywise's eyes in IT? Other than just being really creepy, they actually change color going from yellow to blue. But why does he do that? He changes them to blue in order to lure Georgie.
IT arrived on Earth through an event similar to an asteroid impact, landing in what would later become Derry, Maine. Once there, IT adopted its usual pattern of hibernation that lasted between 27 and 30 years, awakening to kill and eat and then going back to sleep.
Pennywise targets children instead of adults because they are easier to scare and manipulate. Their fears are often simpler, more direct, and easier for Pennywise to exploit.
In the novel, It claims that its true name is Robert "Bob" Gray, but decided to be named “It”. Throughout the book, It is generally referred to as male, usually appearing as Pennywise. The Losers come to believe It may be female after seeing it in the form of a monstrous giant spider that lays eggs.
