Seeing Tim Curry in a sewer on set was apparently as scary as it sounds

By /Nov. 19, 2022 09:00 AM EST

Tim Curry was originally supposed to play the Joker in 'Batman: The Animated Series,' which would have introduced his evil clown ways to a whole new audience of after-school kids on weekdays circa 1992 By then, many primetime viewers were already familiar with the live-action sight of Curry's face made up as a white clown, thanks to his unforgettable turn as Pennywise the Clown in the two-part adaptation of the mini. -TV series "It" by Stephen King in 1990.

Ten minutes into the first part of "It", a boy in a yellow raincoat named Georgie Denbrough (Tony Dakota) chases his paper sailboat down the street as it floats down the gutter and goes down a storm drain. There he is met by the lewd face of Pennywise, who greets him with the words "Hiya, Georgie", before speaking softly to him and finally baring his fangs and dragging the boy into the sewers.

This is a scene that was apparently as scary to film for Dakota, the child actor, as it was for the audience to watch. Speaking at Fan Expo Canada in 2017 - the year of the feature film adaptation of "It", in which Bill Skarsgård took over the role of Pennywise - Curry revealed there was a moment during filming of that scene where his young co-star "stopped and said, 'Tim...You're scaring me.'"

“I said, 'I'm so sorry,' Curry told the convention audience, 'but that's what I'm supposed to do.' He prefaced it all by saying, 'I lots of sympathy for child actors," but when the moderator joked that the kid who played Georgie may have been "in therapy for years" afterward, Curry quipped, "I hope so. !"

Above you can see the full scene where Georgie meets Pennywise in "It". Just imagine you're an eight or nine-year-old kid on a TV production set and you're exchanging dialogue with that creepy clown face, most likely doing repeat takes of the same scene. No wonder the kid is a little scared. To paraphrase Pennywise: You would float too.

Understanding the power of this scene, perhaps, the 2017 film version of "It" skips straight to the rainy day when the new Georgie (Jackson Robert Scott) meets his fate at the hands of Pennywise. It's only about five minutes before he sets off on his sailboat adventure along the suburban street gutter. Skarsgård's version of Pennywise is shrouded in more shadow, but then he walks off and throws all sense of restraint out the window and bites Georgie's arm right off.

As for the original Georgie, Tony Dakota's filmography darkens after 1993, but in 2019 he reprized his role as the adult version of the character in the short film "Georgie." In 2021, he also appeared as himself in the documentary "Pennywise: The Story of It".