HBOIt: Welcome to Derry just featured a shocking callback to Stephen King’s source material, and the show’s creators have been talking about how the author has influenced their work.
It: Welcome to Derry Episode 7 featured an unsettling flashback revolving around Bob Gray, and an equally unpleasant sequence involving Mrs. Kersh.
But centerpiece was the Black Spot fire, a racially motivated act of terror that was mentioned in passing during Stephen King’s ‘It’ novel, and fully fleshed out in the series.
But the team behind Welcome to Derry weren’t flying blind, with King on-hand to answer questions, and his work serving as a guiding light.
It: Welcome to Derry creators tried to be as “bold” as Stephen King
HBODuring an interview with ScreenRant, It: Welcome to Derry co-creator Jason Fuchs says that he and collaborators Jason Fuchs, Barbara Mushcietti, and Andy Muschietti approached Stephen King’s work with caution, especially when it came to filling in blanks like Bob Gray’s back story.
“I think some of the most satisfying things – not just in It, but in a lot of my favorite novels and genre work – are the mysteries that you don’t have answers to,” said Fuchs. “I’ve sat with the mysteries a bit since I read this book at 11. As a fan and as a constant reader, I love not knowing some of these answers, and yet I also crave the answers.
“And so you go, ‘Well, gosh, if we’re going to try to provide the context of who Bob Gray was, why It chose the form of Pennywise, they better be really satisfying answers. Or else, why bother doing them?'”
HBOFuchs continued: “You want to be as bold as Stephen King is in his storytelling; that feels like the right general approach. At the same time, when you’re making these bold swings, you are concerned. ‘Is this too bold to swing? Does this take us too far from canon? Would Stephen King have done this? Would he approve of it?’
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“The blessing of having Stephen King as a partner and a collaborator in a show like this is that we don’t have to have those fears go unanswered. We can have the safety net that is Stephen King to go to and say, ‘Here’s what we’re thinking. What if this is the story? What if this is the reason?’
“So as much as we approached it with excitement and trepidation, we also knew that we had an ace up our sleeves in Stephen King there to tell us if we were we were generally scratching in a direction that felt right to him.”
For more It action, here’s when you can watch Episode 8, plus the Stephen King movie Welcome to Derry fans should watch right now.