Bill Skarsgard's Scary Clown Costume Did Not Go Over Well With The Child Actors On Set

The '90s are back in full-force. With Fuller House on Netflix and a Sister, Sister reboot in the works, anyone looking back would think that the whole decade was just about wholesome family fun. Maybe it's because we've all repressed the memories of classic '90s horror movies, but a remake of Stephen King's It (1990) is here to scare everyone all over again.

Actor Bill Skarsgard, who's playing scary clown Pennywise, explained in an interview with his brother, Alexander, that the clown costume was so scary that the child actors on set were almost too creeped out to work.

"At one point, they set up this entire scene, and these kids come in, and none of them have seen me yet. Their parents have brought them in, these little extras, right?" Skarsgard told Interview. "And then I come out as Pennywise, and these kids — young, normal kids — I saw the reaction that they had. Some of them were really intrigued, but some couldn't look at me, and some were shaking."

Skarsgard went on to explain that it might have been more than the heavy makeup and clown costume that scared the kiddos. Being that he comes from a family of actors, he's probably honed his craft pretty well. Skarsgard says that as soon as director Andy Muschietti got things rolling, the transformation really started. It was when he got into character that the kids got totally terrified.

"This one kid started crying. He started to cry and the director yelled, ‘Action!' And when they say ‘action,' I am completely in character," Skarsgard explained. "So some of these kids got terrified and started to cry in the middle of the take, and then I realized, ‘Holy shit. What am I doing? What is this? This is horrible.'"

This means that the new It is set to be plenty scary — not that it takes much to make a murderous clown even more frightening. If it's anything like the OG It, anyone brave enough to check out the movie should prepare to have nightmares for about a decade after. 2017's It arrives in theaters on September 8.