Pennywise Actor Bill Skarsgård to Play Shawshank Prisoner in 'Castle Rock'

Pennywise the Dancing Clown takes many forms to scare kids in Stephen King’s town of Derry, Maine. The actor behind the latest iteration of Pennywise, Bill Skarsgård, also seems to have many forms in the greater King universe.

Skarsgård, previously best known for his role as an off-kilter vampire in Netflix’s Hemlock Grove, reached a whole new level of fame for his terrifying portrayal of Pennywise the Dancing Clown in It (2017). The 27-year-old Swedish actor will take on another King character in Hulu’s upcoming Castle Rock. And though he’s still without a name, at least we know what he might be up to in the creepy little town.

The first teaser for Castle Rock with actual footage from the series featured a few shots of Skarsgård both staring in horror while decked out in a gray sweatsuit and sitting quietly behind bars — it turns out those bars were in a prison. Shawshank State Prison from King’s novella “Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption,” to be exact.

Flickering Myth reported Monday that Skarsgård would be portraying “a prisoner at Shawshank, who is directly connected with André Holland’s Henry Deaver, a death-row attorney.”

Skarsgård is the only one in the teaser with any dialogue, saying at the very end of it all: “You have no idea what’s happening here, do you?” And considering that one particular shot of Skarsgård features him walking along a road in that same gray sweatsuit you see him in while he’s in prison, it seems he might find his way out of Shawshank at one point.

An escaped prisoner on the loose, demon cars, serial killers, and psychotic dogs will certainly make Castle Rock one hell of a ride.

Castle Rock Season 1 premieres on Hulu in 2018.

If you liked this article, check out this video on why an important monster from Stephen King’s book was left out of the movie It.