Welcome to Derry star Taylour Paige on the show’s real world themes: ‘people watching can connect to it in a stronger way’
Welcome to Derry is my latest HBO Max obsession. I have always been a huge fan of Stephen King, and his enormous book HE is full of lore, so I was thrilled when a TV adaptation of it came to one of the best streaming services.
Horror fans love Pennywise, the main antagonist, but the beauty of Stephen King’s world is that there is also horror in human nature. Welcome to Derry It’s now four episodes in and I’m already captivated by the normal, everyday characters who live there.
So far, Welcome to Derry viewers spent a lot of time with characters like Charlotte and her family, instead of just focusing on Pennywise and his torment in the city. Even after a few episodes, I feel like I have a deeper understanding of the people of Derry, beyond what the book was able to show.
Speaking about her characterization, Paige said she drew inspiration from many of her own experiences to bring that true humanity to the series.
She said: “I’m a woman and I feel like being a woman is almost always being on the edge. I feel like we feel like the veil could be lifted. I’ve been hysterical or felt like I know something and my outside world is sort of telling me not to trust myself. I’ve been gaslighted, made to feel like my thoughts are stupid, or that I should suppress them to keep the peace, and it’s really infuriating.”
We’ve seen Charlotte struggle to deal with many aspects of Derry, which has led me and many fans to worry about what might happen to her. It was a complex role for Paige to play, and she noted that she made sure Charlotte acted very differently depending on who she was with.
“I had a lot of bubbling underneath. The way I walked, the articulation of it, the way I talked to people of color versus the way I would talk to white people, like, I took all that, everything I know, Taylour of the world and the way I survived and I applied that to a woman from 1962 coming undone.”
Welcome to Derry continues to air weekly on Sundays at 9 p.m. ET, and I eagerly tune in to see what terrible things will happen. But beyond that, I’ve definitely come to care about the characters and worry about what Pennywise might do to them.
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