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Stephen King’s ‘It’: Nicholas Hamilton On Unleashing His ‘Psychotic Side’ As Henry Bowers

By Dustin Kemp
Published on: 18:20 PST, Aug 28, 2016

Earlier this month, actor Nicholas Hamilton talked to Variety about his experience playing the psychopathic bully Henry Bowers in the upcoming movie adaptation of Stephen King’s 1986 horror epic It. Award-winning actor Hamilton revealed that playing the horrifically over-the-top Stephen King villain took him to places he never thought he would get to go as an actor, and it is understandable why when one looks at the maniac Stephen King penned over two decades ago.

“There’s stuff that I have to do that is really creepy and the opportunity to help share my psychotic side has been really fun,” Hamilton said.

And although Hamilton is fairly young, his costars in It, the group of children who lead the cast and who Stephen King christened “The Losers Club,” are even younger and were a new age group for Nicholas to work with.

Being such a monster to children so young was a bit uncomfortable at times, Hamilton admitted.

“I recently did a scene where I was working with Jeremy Ray Taylor,” he recalled, referring to the child actor playing young Ben Hanscom in the Stephen King remake.

“I had to terrorize the hell out of him and get right in his face.”

Of course, this is a Stephen King adaptation, and Hamilton must have known going in that it was not going to be a walk in the park.

What made it even worse was how polite and accommodating the children were, Hamilton continued.

“If they were any more tolerant, then you would sort of want to hurt them,” Nicholas laughed. “[Taylor] is so tolerant that he lets me do whatever I want. So if he says, ‘Hey, let’s do this a bit less rough’ or ‘Do this another way,’ then you feel obliged to do it because he’s been so tolerant all the time.”

Sexual innuendos aside, one can see why Hamilton might be hesitant to unleash his admittedly scripted madness on the members of the friend group Stephen King’s book dubbed “The Losers Club.” Just look at the child actors, profiled by Hitfix. They’re adorable! And they are as young as 14.

For those not familiar with Stephen King’s masterful 1,138-page horror classic, it is important to stress that, although Henry Bowers is the story’s school bully, he is far more of a threat than, say, Nelson Muntz on The Simpsons. As a school-aged child, Henry Bowers regularly stages attempts, often successful ones, to harm the members of Stephen King’s “Losers Club” by throwing rocks at them, slicing them with a switchblade, or worse. Also at a young age, he kills his own father and begins taking care of himself.

In the typical fashion of a secondary villain in a Stephen King novel, Henry receives help from the book’s big bad when he finds himself at his lowest point. In the case of It, the big bad that lends a hand to Henry Bowers in fighting against the protagonists is Pennywise, the shape-shifting clown monster who will be portrayed by Bill Skarsgard in the upcoming film in what The Inquisitr previously reported will be a much grittier and scarier take on the baddie closer to Stephen King’s vision than previous interpretations of the character. This is abundantly clear in Slash Film‘s recently released stills of Bill Skarsgard in Pennywise makeup.

Nicholas Hamilton is taken aback not only in regards to the amount of cruelty he has to show towards children for the very Stephen King-esque role, but also due to the fact that he has coulrophobia – a fear of clowns.

“I’m terrified of clowns,” he notes.

Despite all that, though, Hamilton says he is delighted to work on a production with the huge following of a major motion picture Stephen King adaptation.

“I have never had such a big following on a movie before. It’s definitely a big bonus to have that before the movie comes out.”

Hopefully the Australian actor Nicholas Hamilton can rise above his reservations about his role and deliver the great performance befitting of Stephen King’s iconic tale. Moviegoers and Stephen King will find out if he is up to the task when the first part of It, which will be split into two movies, is released on September 8, 2017.

[Photo by ThinkStock]

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