‘IT: Welcome to Derry’ reveals Madeline Stowe is playing the younger version of ‘IT: Chapter Two’s freaky Mrs. Kersh
IT: Welcome to Derry Episode 5 is full of insane surprises that connect and upend the Stephen King universe. However, the one that might be blowing your mind the most is the reveal of who Madeline Stowe is playing in the HBO show.
It turns out that Lilly Bainbridge’s (Clara Stack) one adult friend in Derry, Nurse Ingrid from Juniper Hill Asylum, is actually the younger version of someone we’ve met before in It (2017) and IT: Chapter Two…
**Spoilers for IT: Welcome to Derry Episode 5, now streaming on HBO Max**
IT: Welcome to Derry Episode 5 reveals that Ingrid is actually the younger version of old Mrs. Kersh (Joan Gregson), the elderly woman that Pennywise uses to torture grown up Beverly Marsh (Jessica Chastain) in IT: Chapter Two.
In Stephen King’s novel, It, the original Loser’s Club kids return to Derry as adults to face a resurgent Pennywise (Bill Skarsgård). While in town, Bev goes to her childhood home and discovers that her abusive father has died and Mrs. Kersh has moved into the place. Mrs. Kersh kindly offers Bev tea and during their conversation, our heroine gets the sinister suspicion that something’s wrong. It’s one of King’s classic set pieces of rising horror and Andy Muschietti‘s IT: Chapter Two added to the terror by implying that Mrs. Kersh’s father, Bob Grey, was the original Pennywise the Clown.
“We’re humanizing that old lady that turns out to be the crone,” IT: Chapter Two executive producer and director Andy Muschietti told DECIDER. “When we did IT: Chapter Two, we didn’t know that years later we’d be telling the real story.”
“What happened in Derry in the ’60s? Well, there is a daughter of Bob Grey and she’s real. That doesn’t mean that the old lady in IT: Chapter Two is real,” he continued. “Because that woman died, actually, many years before.”
So the Mrs. Kersh that spooks Beverly in the film isn’t real; She’s a manifestation of Pennywise. The Mrs. Ingrid Kersh we meet in IT: Welcome to Derry is real. She is alive in the current timeline. She is Bob Grey’s daughter and she may know more about It than she’s letting on.
“It was a great opportunity to create a character that was a big participant in the story and tied us very much to the origin of Pennywise and the story of Bob Gray,” Andy Muschietti said.
Photo: HBO
“When we landed Madeleine, that [role] grew, that flourished, because she’s such an unbelievable actor. And I think she gave it an incredible dimension and and brain,” IT: Welcome to Derry executive producer Barbara Muschietti said. “We love that role. We would do a spin-off just on that role.”
Part of the additional dimension that IT: Welcome to Derry gives to Mrs. Kersh is explaining that she’s way more than a “crone” or even Pennywise’s daughter. Besides being a caring confidant for Lilly, she is also stuck in a loveless marriage to her cruel husband and she’s the white woman that Hank Grogan (Stephen Rider) has been having an affair with.
“I was excited [about Hank and Ingrid] because it was another layer that I didn’t know. Especially in the audition, I had no idea,” Rider told DECIDER. “Andy revealed it to me when we were having a conversation and I was like, ‘This is awesome.’ Because he has so much more to fight for —”
“And to hide!” IT: Welcome to Derry star Chris Chalk added.
“And to hide,” Rider agreed.
“Like, why is he not telling [his alibi for the movie theater murders]… if you wasn’t there?” Chalk said.
Photo: HBO
By the end of IT: Welcome to Derry, Hank has reunited with Mrs. Kersh after the bus meant to take him to Shawshank crashes. It’s clear from just one scene that the two star-crossed lovers share a deep love for one another.
“When I met Madeline, I mean, Madeline is a star, a G, and committed,” Rider said, before revealing that Stowe didn’t hesitate at all in building that intimacy between their characters. “She made it so much easier. Yeah, she’s phenomenal.”
This week’s Mrs. Kersh/Ingrid reveal is just the latest way in which IT: Welcome to Derry connects with the characters in It and IT: Chapter Two. One of the little boys who dies in Episode 1 is Teddy Uris (Mikkal Karim-Fidler) is actually the uncle of original Loser’s Club member Stanley Uris (Wyatt Olef as a child, Andy Bean as an adult). Will Hanlon (Blake Cameron James) is obviously Mike Hanlon’s (Chosen Jacobs as a child, Isaiah Mustafa as an adult) dad. We even see another bullying Bowers in town. Andy and Barbara Muschietti confirmed to DECIDER that there “at least two big twists where they’re definitely connected to the characters that we know” from the original still to come!
“I can’t spoil them, but you have to wait for them,” Andy Muschietti said.
“You know, the bloodlines are incredibly important in Derry because Pennywise shows up every 27 years,” Barbara Muschietti said. “Which is once a generation, basically.”
“Also, generational trauma is such a big theme in the book that it is almost impossible not to tell the story of ancestors, just to kind of comment on why people are the way they are,” Andy Muschietti said.
“Before it was called ‘generational trauma,’” Barbara Muschietti said, chuckling.
