Losers Club Actors on Casting, Pennywise Fears

SPOILER ALERT: This story contains spoilers from Season 1, Episode 5 of “It: Welcome to Derry,” now streaming on HBO Max.

Pennywise the Clown feeds on fear, and children are his favorite appetizer.

When the first episode of HBO’s “It: Welcome to Derry” introduced a group of young protagonists, audiences could reasonably have expected them to become the series’ main characters, the show’s answer to the Losers Club of early adolescent heroes from Stephen King’s novel and the “It” films.

However, episode 1’s shocking conclusion left more than half of the children meeting a gruesome fate, leaving a clear message that no one is safe in the eponymous city.

Therefore, when new children were introduced in episodes 2, 3, and 4, you might be understandably skeptical about their permanence on the show, especially since they enter the story through different paths. However, in episode 5, they finally team up to enter the sewers beneath Derry, where they come face to face with Pennywise (Bill Skarsgård).

The children are Will Hanlon (Blake Cameron James), Lilly Bainbridge (Clara Stack), Veronica “Ronnie” Grogan (Amanda Christine), Rich Santos (Arian S. Cartaya) and Marge Truman (Matilda Lawler). Variety caught up with the young cast to talk about how they landed their roles on the show and how they mustered the courage to steal some of the series’ scariest scenes.

How did you all learn that you would be playing the characters in ‘Welcome to Derry’?

Clara Stapel: I didn’t find out until months after the audition, so it definitely came as a shock to me. My mom found out about it first through my agent, so then my family sat me on the couch in my living room and told me. I was honestly super shocked and super excited. Going to Toronto to film was such an incredible experience. I was honestly honored to explore the Stephen King “It” universe.

Matilda Lawler: When I found out I booked Marge I was so happy. I’m obsessed with Marge. She actually spoke to me when I auditioned, and it was many months later when I found out I would be playing her. I think I did a dance recital this weekend. Right before I was about to do this dance show, I found out I could play Marge, and my heart grew three sizes. I definitely danced better than usual because I was so excited.

Amanda Christine: When I got an audition, I only submitted one take. I didn’t even know what the show was because it was very secret and they called it something like ‘Fairview’ when I got the audition. It was very intense. It was the scene from episode 2, near the end, when my father is taken to Shawshank. So it was a very intense scene for me to submit. It was a lot of fun to film. And when I got the scripts, I was like, “Oh my God, I’m Ronnie Grogan.” Then I learned about the ‘It’ universe and watched the movies with my castmates and kind of just dove in and took notes with Andy [Muschietti] and Barbara [Muschietti] and meeting with our acting coach, Mr. Ben [Perkins].

Arian S. Cartaya: If I remember correctly, I was at my grandmother’s when my mother opened the email and got the news. I just started bouncing off the walls with excitement.

Blake CameronJames: I think I was down in my basement. Actually, I don’t know where I was. I can’t remember. Somewhere in my house.

Have any of you seen the “It” movies or read Stephen King’s book?

Blake CameronJames: Not at all. I hadn’t read the book. I hadn’t seen any of the movies because I was so scared of Pennywise. He’s always been my biggest fear, like my number 1 biggest fear. So I never even surrendered to that.

Arian S. Cartaya: I watched the first “It” movie when we arrived in Canada. We’ve all seen it in the cinema. So yeah, that was a really nice experience. But I still haven’t read the book.

Amanda Christine: I watched the movie a few months before I knew I had booked the role of Ronnie. When I watched it, I was actually in acting class. It was during Halloween in October and our assignment was to watch Halloween movies. So I watched “It,” and it was scary. I thought, “Oh my God. I’ve never seen a scarier clown in my life!” Since then I started reading the book. It’s huge, but I’m halfway through it, and I’m still trying to dive deep into it and take notes on the “It” universe. Because it’s so big, and there’s so much going on – and so much that we dive into in this prequel series with the myths, the nuclear stuff, the tension of racial trauma and the bullying of the kids and all of us coming together as friends to fight it.

Matilda Lawler: I’m in the same boat as Amanda. I’m trying to work my way through the book. It’s really different from anything else. I’m such a fan of Stephen King as an author, I think he’s so powerful. Some of my favorite horror films are ‘The Shining’ and ‘Carrie’. I just love his work. So I was a big fan and tried to watch the movie for my sister’s birthday because that was her birthday wish. And I was so scared that I forced us to turn it off. I literally couldn’t handle it and had a meltdown. And then my sister tried to torment me by showing me pictures of Pennywise, like she just showed me a picture of Pennywise because she knew I was so scared. That’s what siblings do. But anyway, when I got the audition, I rewatched the movie and was able to get through it without having a meltdown. I was in love with it. I was terrified, but I also love the strange humor that Andy uses. I was obsessed.

Clara Stapel: I’m actually a big fan of horror movies. I’ve been that way since I was little. I watched the first “It” movie when I was about nine, so I was already somewhat familiar with the “It” universe. I hadn’t read the book before the audition, but I think Stephen King is so talented, and I’m a big fan of his work. It was honestly such an honor to step into the universe with this prequel series.

Did you ever find working on the show scary, or has working on it made horror films less scary?

Matilda Lawler: I would say it’s scary on set, even though sometimes it feels a little ridiculous because you don’t really have anything to react to. Half the time you’re just reacting to air or a piece of tape, or Andy is shouting strange noises into the microphone. It’s a bizarre experience, but our acting coach, Mr. Ben, did a great job of helping us create a sense of fear even when it wasn’t in front of our eyes. We created a kind of safe space to become vulnerable and get in touch with our own personal fears and the fears of our characters. Sometimes he played music, sometimes he showed us images that were scary to us, or sometimes we touched on personal experiences. It was really helpful to have those acting tools to help us in those moments.

Amanda pile: I think some scenes were definitely very scary. There were a lot of intense scenes, but I think having Andy and Barbara on set, as well as our acting coach, Mr. Ben, made everything more comfortable. They made the set feel like a welcoming place and they made it feel like a family, which I’m so grateful for because I think that made filming all the more fun and easier to get through. Filming was great fun. There were definitely some intense, gruesome scenes, but I also think it’s really cool to see the contrast between when we’re filming it and when it’s on screen, with all the CGI and all the effects added.

Amanda Christine: It’s definitely different in real life than seeing it on screen with the CGI and the VFX and everything added to it. It’s so amazing to see how it all came together and how terrifying it is. Personally, we had to connect to some deep things. Music is a big part of my life, so I would use that to get into character, but to have the tools to build on our characters and arcs and everything we need is just amazing to me. So it was a lot of fun. Andy and Barbara made that environment very welcoming to us, as did Mr. Ben, and it was just a wonderful experience.

Blake CameronJames: To be honest, I became a little more interested in horror after this, but I still never watch anything that’s too scary. It’s a very fine line, but I feel like this show helped me a little bit because you become a little desensitized to it after dealing with Pennywise and dead bodies and a lot of blood. You see it in a different light once you’ve been on set. So you think, “Oh, that’s a prosthetic. Oh, that’s fake.”

Arian S. Cartaya: I feel like this experience has helped me overcome my fears a bit, but I’m still horrified by other scary movies or shows, so I’m not going to watch the others. They’re too scary.

These interviews have been edited and condensed.