The Secret to ‘It: Welcome to Derry’s’ Nastiest Nightmares

Skip to main content By David Canfield Plus Icon David Canfield Senior Entertainment Writer View All June 14, 2026 11:15am Share on Facebook Share on X Google Preferred Share to Flipboard Show additional share options Share on LinkedIn Share on Pinterest Share on Reddit Share on Tumblr Share on Whats App Send an Email Print the Article Post a Comment Bill Skarsgard stars as Pennywise, the titular antagonist of It: Welcome to Derry. Courtesy of HBO Share on Facebook Share on X Google Preferred Share to Flipboard Show additional share options Share on LinkedIn Share on Pinterest Share on Reddit Share on Tumblr Share on Whats App Send an Email Print the Article Post a Comment Watching the second episode of It: Welcome to Derry, you’d be forgiven for assuming that the Mother Thing, one of the HBO show’s many terrifying surreal creations, came mostly out of postproduction. The parent of young Ronnie (Amanda Christine), who died during childbirth, emerges in a hallucinatory sequence while Ronnie is hiding under her blankets — she finds herself stuck in a strange sort of womb, with her mother taking on the form of the bed.

It’s slimy and creepy and wholly fantastical. And yet much of this was actually filmed on set: The bed was constructed to fit two actresses, with one playing the upper body, and several minute details of the scene were captured closely in-camera. “We built out and slimed up a very disgusting-looking intestine that she got to reach onto,” reveals VFX supervisor Daryl Sawchuk.

“That stuff that we photographed was real — the drapery, the lighting, everything in the room was a solid foundation. We went in and withered the mom away and made her more of a corpse, with a dried-out mummified effect, but we had such a great foundation to work on.” They added some extra goo, too.

Related Stories TV Inside 'Pluribus' Ice Hotel Illusion TV 'Awards Chatter' Pod: Seth MacFarlane on His 'Ted' TV Series, When to Expect a 'Family Guy' Movie and Why "The Emmys Are So F***ed Up" This was the way of Welcome to Derry. Building off of his two It films, series co-developer Andy Muschietti shared a broad philosophy with the VFX team when it came to developing the look of this prequel. “We’re both big believers in shooting as much practically as possible, trying to get really good photography — he loves old-school practical prosthetics and makeup effects and slime and goo, and stuff that’s very visceral,” says Sawchuk.

“There’s sometimes a convenience factor when you can shoot something against a bluescreen and deal with it down the road, but that doesn’t always give the best results. Holistically, there was a great partnership in terms of the creative ideation and how we wanted to approach the show.” Ronnie (Amanda Christine) is covered in slime when her dead mother visits her in a hallucinatory sequence.

Brooke Palmer/HBO Bringing the action back about 25 years from the 2017 It film, the ’60s-set Welcome to Derry opens on a new family’s arrival in town, the disappearance of a young boy and the birth of a flying mutant baby, whose killing spree kicks things off in bloody fashion. The prosthetics team actually puppeteered the birthing sequence, establishing the unusually on-set method of depicting even the most outlandish sequences. “You start to see these first assemblies and it’s shocking and it’s visceral, and you’re like, ‘Well, surely there are going to be notes from the studio where this is not going to go to air like on camera’ — but of course it does, and it makes for such a shocking entry into the series,” Sawchuk says.

“I thought we’d have to replace the baby with a CG one for the birthing scene. But we ended up using it all practical.” Again, they added some goo at the end for kicks.

Sawchuk credits the production’s ability to employ that “old-school horror film work” style — which is not typical for modern genre TV — with the show’s network. “Even the initial episode of Game of Thrones, where their main character is killed and you’re like, ‘Oh my God’ — it’s such a shocking way to start the series,” he says. “I think on any other platform or with any other studio, there probably would’ve been a lot of notes and maybe a more conservative approach.”

VFX supervisor Daryl Sawchuk was keen on showing the frightening “anatomical” features of Pennywise in the series. Courtesy of HBO Yet there was also the matter of having the standard of two highly regarded, hugely successful films to meet or exceed. “We put a lot of pressure on ourselves to make sure that we kept up with the photography and the production design and the amazing prosthetic work,” Sawchuk says.

He worked closely with Muschietti, who directed half of the eight- episode first season and brought in “very demented and radical ideas” on how to push the designs further. They wound up having an unusual amount of time to devise out-of-the-box strategies, with strikes and other delays ultimately leading to two and a half years’ worth of VFX development on th