27 years before Stephen King’s epic horror novel “It” became a two-part movie series, it was adapted into a two-part miniseries on ABC. Easily one of the best Stephen King TV adaptations ever, it stars Tim Curry as the titular It, aka Pennywise the Dancing Clown. Pennywise is toned down somewhat from the book to fit ABC’s broadcast standards, but not by as much as you might think: He’s still horrifying here.
Curry was already a Stephen King fan when he joined the project, and he read “It” after landing the role. “I thought it was wonderfully scary, because clowns are scary. It’s the exaggeration,” he told The Guardian in 2017. “Pennywise always understood what each character was scared of, and provided it. And I could see what fun it would be to be that scary. They came up with such a great makeup.”
Curry did have one major problem with the miniseries: its ending. “I was very disappointed by the ending, when I turned into a rather unconvincing spider,” he said. In King’s novel, Pennywise is just one of many forms It takes. The miniseries still has It shapeshift from time to time, but puts far more emphasis on the clown persona before the ending. Later projects in the “It” franchise, including the HBO Max prequel series, would continue to emphasize that side of the character.
Tim Curry had mixed feelings about playing Pennywise
Despite his reservations about the miniseries’ ending, Tim Curry was well aware of Pennywise’s cultural staying power. “Some people are obsessed with Pennywise,” he told The Guardian. “I went out to dinner last night, and I’m currently in a wheelchair because I had a stroke five years ago. And a guy saw me and stood up and said, ‘I’ve seen the original Pennywise!'”
Curry also revealed in his 2025 memoir “Vagabond” that he’d “loathed” clowns before taking on the role. “The thought of embodying this killer clown made me feel simultaneously uncomfortable and like I would be pushing myself to take it on,” Curry wrote. “With much uncertainty, the type of which confirmed I was still attempting to embrace my contradictions, I replied: ‘Yes, I’m interested.'”
Curry died on August 25, 2026, at 80 years old. Outside of “It,” he was best known for playing Dr. Frank-N-Furter in “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” and for films including “Clue,” “Annie,” and “Home Alone 2: Lost in New York.” Michael McKean, Curry’s friend and “Clue” co-star, paid tribute to him in a social media post, writing, “My last conversation with Tim Curry was about life and love and laughter. The grim physical state he found himself in has now ended, a blessing. Our blessing was that we had Tim Curry in our lives.”
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