Welcome to Derry' Changes Revealed by Series' Stars [Exclusive] Actorsvaultpro

Stephen King has always been excellent at using his stories to bring awareness to relevant real-world problems. In exclusive interviews with MovieWeb, the creative team and cast behind IT: Welcome to Derry shared how enthusiastically they embraced this legacy, taking one of King’s most fascinating worlds deeper into the past, while wearing its meaning on its sleeve. Going deeper into the lore and the past of King’s novel required new inventions and changes. We already know that King loved the first episode, but how did the seminal horror author feel about changes and expansion? Co-creator and Executive producer Andy Muschietti shared:

“He was like, ‘Great, let’s do it.’ He was as curious about where this was going as [we were]. I told him, ‘I have this strange desire to tell the story backwards, so we would go from 1962 being the first season, to 1935 and then to 1908. There’s a very specific reason why we’re telling the story backwards. I can’t tell you yet. Without knowing why, [King] immediately said, ‘That’s a good idea.’ From then on, he was very open to exploration. Even though the book is massive and full of stories and characters, it’s very fragmented and partially told. Obviously, every time that there was something that [King] didn’t feel was right, he would say it.”

Co-creator and executive producer Barbara Muschietti chimed in on the importance of Derry as a relevant metaphor for today: “Derry is synonymous [with] any town and synonymous [with] the country. Derry is a metaphor for what is happening. Pennywise can be a metaphor for waves of fascism around the world.” Andy Muschietti sees no subtlety in the series’ messaging:

“It’s quite literal in this season, the weaponization of fear. [As you keep watching], you’ll see the ulterior motives of General Shaw. The metaphor becomes quite literal. It’s also quite fascinating to read the book under different governments, because what Stephen King wrote is quite amazing.”

Can ‘IT: Welcome to Derry’ Provide a Sense of Hope Amid the Horror?

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The cast of IT: Welcome to Derry shared their thoughts on the series’ meaning and outlook. Chris Chalk (Dick Hallorann) sees relevance to his personal experience in the nature of King’s horror epic: “I think anything dealing with your deepest fears, especially as a person of color in America, I immediately think about police racism, the history of slavery as it was turned into the judicial system, though this show isn’t exploring all of that.”

Stephen Rider (Hank Grogan) feels that the relevance to today is more universal than many might realize, saying, “People of Color deal with the same things, regardless of [who is in power]. Because it’s systemic, the good thing is that we can draw on our experiences that we’ve gone through, individually and collectively, and then see how those experiences translate into the characters that we portray.” Chalk added:

“There’s a guaranteed sense of richness, because these are not foreign experiences to any of us. I’ve had guns put to my head. I’ve had the KKK come across my yard. I’ve had a shotgun put in my mouth.”

IT: Welcome to Derry, certainly doesn’t avoid exploring the darkness, and no one involved wishes to avoid it. But despite this darkness, some of the cast members are holding out hope for the future. James Remar (General Shaw) said:

“As long as you’ve got a heartbeat, there’s always potential for healing. That’s why I get out of bed in the morning. We still drag around that primitive, animalistic kind of fear, where we think someone else is going to take something [from us], so we’ve got to kill him first. Unfortunately, social change takes place inch by inch. It rarely happens overnight, inch by inch. There have been positive changes. I mean, I’m sitting here with an indigenous woman as my peer, as my equal, as my collaborator. So there has been healing. Because 100 years ago, this was unheard of.”

Kimberly Guerrero (Rose), who was seated next to Remar at the time, added enthusiastically:

“Our people believe that story is medicine, and that medicine can be good medicine, or it can be bad medicine. It can do harm or it can heal. All of us, to a person, have put so much of ourselves, of our own personal history of our own emotions, of our own hope for what the world could be and how we could come together to face the evils that are confronting us, not as left or right or center or this or that, but as human beings. I don’t think that this story could come at a better time. I would go a step further and say social change occurs heart by heart, and a story can get into a heart the way that few other things can.”

IT: Welcome to Derry is clearly just the tip of the iceberg on the issues and historical moments the Muschiettis wish to explore. Armed with King’s blessing and this amazing cast, audiences can look forward to how all these ideas manifest in this season and beyond. IT: Welcome to Derry is streaming on October 26, 2025.