Bill Skarsgård felt 'done' with Pennywise after shooting Nosferatu role

Bill Skarsgård felt like he was "over" playing the killer clown Pennywise after portraying a vampire in Nosferatu.

The Swedish actor experienced his Hollywood breakthrough in 2017 when he played Pennywise the Dancing Clown in the two-part film adaptation of Stephen King's famed novel It.

In an interview on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, Skarsgård admitted he felt "quite defined" by the clown for a long time and felt he should move on from monster characters after playing Count Orlok in Nosferatu.

"I felt like I was done with it, in a way. It was also because I was shooting this, I was doing Orlok, and to me it just felt like, 'OK, this is the nail in the coffin on my monster roles.' Pun intended," he told host Josh Horowitz. "So I did feel like I was kind of over it and wanted to do different things. And of course, the Pennywise thing as well, I've been quite defined by it."

However, the John Wick: Chapter Four star agreed to revisit Pennywise for the upcoming prequel series, It: Welcome to Derry, after talking with Andy Muschietti, who directed the It films and developed and produced the series.

"I love them, they're very close friends, family even. I'm the godfather of his son. So I love them," he said of Muschietti and his wife Barbara, a producer. "So I was like, 'All right, let's bring him back.'"

Skarsgård noted that he "enjoyed" filming the show "more than (he) thought (he) would" and had fun exploring Pennywise's origin story.

"I think there's some cool stuff in there that we haven't seen that I'm excited for the people to watch and enjoy, hopefully," he added, before teasing that the horror will be "pretty hardcore".

It: Welcome to Derry consists of nine episodes, four of which were directed by Muschietti. It will premiere on HBO later this year.