View story at telegram.com
Photo: T&G Staff/Don Landgren Jr.
By Craig S. Semon
WORCESTER — On Tuesday, Pennywise the Dancing Clown made his way to downtown Worcester when the heart of the commonwealth was momentarily transformed into Stephen King’ fictitious and creepy town of “Castle Rock.”
Bill Skarsgård, best known as the evil, sewer-dwelling child predator in the Hollywood blockbuster “It,” addressed four corporate suits around a boardroom table set up in the lobby of the Mercantile Building, 100 Front St., for a scene being filmed for the original Hulu series “Castle Rock,” due out next year.
Minus the white greasepaint and menacing sharp teeth, the tall and lanky Swedish actor let the cat out of the bag, so to speak, when he removed a feline from his leather tote and the tabby, enticed by a laser pointer, proceeded to walk across the table.
And that appeared to be the only major scene filmed inside the downtown office tower.
For the filming, crews arrived at 7 a.m. and left by 11:15 p.m. The main lobby was closed and the use of the first-floor elevators shut down for 16 hours.
Skarsgård – who is listed on the Internet Movie Database (IMDb) as playing a “Shawshank Prisoner” in the streaming series – arrived around 5 p.m.
Set in the Stephen King multiverse, Castle Rock, from Bad Robot Productions and Warner Bros. Television, is named after the fictional town in King’s native Maine that first appeared in King’s 1979 novel “The Dead Zone” and is referenced in “Cujo,” “The Stand,” “It,” “Creepshow,” and “The Shawshank Redemption.” The town reappeared in his 2013 novel “Doctor Sleep” and 2014′s “Revival.”
This is not the first time “Castle Rock” has filmed in the area. In August, crews shot scenes at Vernon Hill School on Providence Street and at an old Victorian house in Lancaster. In addition, a heavy amount of filming has been reportedly done in Orange, which appears to be doubling for downtown Castle Rock.
Early reports had Terry O’Quinn (John Locke from “Lost”) being a part of the filming at the Mercantile Center, but he didn’t appear in the boardroom scene, nor was he spotted on the premises.
Also in the cast is Sissy Spacek, whose major breakthrough came in Brian De Palma’s 1976 horror film “Carrie,” based on King’s first novel, for which she earned her first of six Oscar nominations.
Spacek won the Academy Award for Best Actress in 1980′s “Coal Miner’s Daughter.”