Stephen King, Pennywise, and Society's Fear of Clowns

 

By: Matthew McConkey, X: mcconkey78   

IT was Stephen King's most successful commercial novel to date. The book was #1 on The New York Times best-seller list for 14 weeks in 1986, 10 of those weeks consecutive. The novel was one of the most complex, horror-inducing works King has ever written. Nothing the author has written since has come close to the scale of what King created. There is a profound complexity of interwoven characters and events that crisscross each other in a way that would even make Charles Dickinson proud. IT has become the gold standard for literary modern horror today.  

King's novel spawned a TV miniseries on ABC in 1990, and in 2017 and 2019, IT came to the big screen in two installments: IT Chapter 1 and IT Chapter 2. Those two studio films, when they hit theaters, combined to gross $1.175 billion worldwide, according to Box Office Mojo, proving that the market and the hunger for IT and its titular villain, Pennywise, were fertile ground for moviegoers' fear of clowns. In 2025, HBO hit paydirt by expanding on the Pennywise lore with the series Welcome to Derry, which achieved critical and fan success. 

What makes IT so enduring in the novel and films is Pennywise the Dancing Clown. Stephen King's choice of villain tapped into people's fear of clowns. Why did King decide to use Pennywise's main shape as a clown? King believed that "clowns scare children more than anything else in the world (1).”

Most of the time, what scares us as children tends to scare us as adults if we don't overcome those fears. In 2016, Vox.com published a poll on how many people in the United States are afraid of clowns. With the help of Morning Consult, a company that uses research and data to give businesses much-needed direction for their future growth based on current trends, pollsters found that 42% of Americans were at some capacity, afraid of clowns (2).

Tim Curry, who was the first to portray King’s villanious clown, spoke briefly about playing Pennywise and clowns in general with Steve Newton on the set of IT in 1990: "What's fun about him [Pennywise] is, at least traditionally, you know, a clown is traditionally a very cozy, comforting, kind of cherry image and Pennywise is none of these things (3)."

Bill Skarsgard, who played Pennywise in 2017 and 2019, and in 2025’s Welcome to Derry, said of clowns in The New York Times in 2017:

 "These are grown men who put on makeup and try to entertain children. If you ask anybody what they think of clowns, it's as much or more with something crazy and scary as it is something joyful (4)."

There was a rumor that circulated for years that Stephen King's portrayal of Pennywise was based on the notorious serial killer John Wayne Gacy, a man who dressed as a clown and entertained children at parties. King pointed out that clowns, overall, scared children, and his Pennywise influences were famous clowns he thought were terrifying, such as Bozo, Ronald McDonald, and Clarabella from the Howdy Doody Show (5).

Linda Rodriguez McRobbie, a writer who had written an article for Smithsonian Magazine titled "The History and Psychology of Clowns Being Scary" in August of 2013, was interviewed by NPR's Audie Cornish about her thought-provoking piece on clowns and why we fear them. Speaking in part about clowns from the era when Stephen King was a kid and beyond: 

"At this point, clowns are now solely children's entertainment. And that, I think, to some degree makes them even more suspicious. So you have this period where children are being entertained by clowns. Clowns are very popular, they're on television...yet at the same time, this sort of banality covers up the sort of hard edges that clowns had had before, that we could live with and we could understand, and now they've become this blanketly innocuous thing, and that makes us really suspicious (6)."

Speaking on John Wayne Gacy ramping up society's fear of clowns, Linda Rodriguez McRobbie said in the same interview: 

"He was convicted of 33 counts of murder...and he was also a clown, and he would entertain at children's parties, at hospitals and places like that. And he once told the investigating officers, you know, 'A clown can get away with anything'. That, I think, really crystallized exactly what was the sort of lurking fear that people had, that you know, someone that works with children in particular, who is this symbol of hilarity, symbol of fun and silliness and innocence, and underneath it can be something truly terrifying...it was almost open season on clowns after that (7)."

Throughout history, there have been famous and infamous clowns, both in real life and in fiction. From the cheery, kid-friendly clown Ronald McDonald to the serial killer John Wayne Gacy, society's fascination with those in grease paint and powder has also been tied to a fear of what lies beneath their colorful guises. 

Stephen King took society's fear of clowns, along with his own fears, and created what can be called his most popular literary character. Pennywise has become one of the most recognizable clowns in media today. With a novel, three movies, a network series, and costumes for Halloween, Pennywise the Dancing Clown has cemented itself as one of the most popular clowns of all time. 

Citations

1.Pennywise The Monster Clown's Origin In IT Explained (screenrant.com)

2. Americans are more afraid of clowns than climate change, terrorism, and death (vox.com)

3. Tim Curry talks Pennywise on the set of Stephen King's IT: an Ear of Newt audio exclusive earofnewt.com

4. Bill Skarsgard Talks About "IT" and Giving His Family a Scare (nytimes.com)

5. IT: 10 Things You Didn't Know About Stephen King's Original Masterpiece (screenrant.com)

6-7.  Fear Of Clowns: Yes, It's Real (npr.com)