Welcome to Derry’ Stars Kimberly Guerrero and James Remar on Episode 3’s Big Reveals

The third episode of It: Welcome to Derry arrived packed with flashback sequences as terrifying as they are illuminating. In Derry, circa 1908, a young boy visits a traveling circus that boasts a ghoulish sideshow and at least one creepy clown. On the way home, he meets a young girl and they become summer sweethearts—though at one point, they have a very alarming encounter in Derry’s deepest, darkest forest.

Welcome to Derry fans will know, of course, that 1908 is one of Pennywise’s “cycle” years—1935 is another one we hear about in the HBO series, which takes place in 1962. And the show makes it very clear who these kids grow up to be: General Francis Shaw, who’s returned to Maine intent on unearthing the entity he met there for military purposes, and Rose, who now runs the Secondhand Rose shop in downtown Derry and has become a leader among the local Indigenous community.

io9 got a chance to talk to James Remar and Kimberly Guerrero, who play Shaw and Rose, about their roles in the show and the memories (both fond and frightening) that their Welcome to Derry characters share.

Cheryl Eddy, io9: It’s perfect that Rose owns an antique store because she’s so deeply connected to history. Why do you think it’s important to have a character like Rose as part of this story?

Kimberly Guerrero: You need that sense of centeredness, that groundedness of what has come before. There was a civilization there before Derry—what was that civilization, and what was their interaction with the creature? Rose embodies that information that’s been handed out from generation to generation to generation. And so the fact that she’s in a secondhand store, not only with the embodied knowledge of her own people but also with the history of the people of Derry, and some of those people that have passed away too—it’s a very grounding [place for her to be], and [she’s] kind of the true north on the compass.

io9: We learn that Derry’s Native American population has knowledge of the monster’s origins and its powers. This is an angle we’ve never delved into before. What can you say about the way Welcome to Derry approaches the subject?

Guerrero: Finally, we finally get to unpack all of this mysterious Indian lore that’s kind of undergirded a lot of the horror that we’ve got in the last few decades. What’s so exciting about it is that when you actually do unpack it, there are powerful and mysterious elements at work. Our people understand those powerful, mysterious elements and our interrelation with the things that we can’t see but that we know are there. And so we’ve made some pacts. We kind of understand how to mitigate these things.

I’m not talking about in the story; I’m talking about it in real life. Each reservation has their bad woods and has their place you don’t go and has the protocol for how to deal with certain things. That’s always rooted very much into being an Indigenous person on our land and understanding where we come from.

So all of that is fed into this story, and it’s all connected through a Penobscot elder named John Bear Mitchell, who’s our direct source, and we’re able to make sure everything is very authentic and historically accurate.

io9: General Shaw, or Francis, as Rose calls him, has his heart in the right place, and he has a personal connection to the mission in Derry. He’s also not close-minded to the supernatural. But do you think he’s maybe a little blinded to the limitations of what he’s trying to achieve?

James Remar: Blinded, certainly. I couldn’t have put it better myself. But the funny thing about personality flaws or character defects is that generally, you are going to be blind to them. You’re not going to know that you are this or that you’re not that unless someone else tells you and you accept it.

I do believe that his heart is in the right place, [but] his heart has been buffeted by a lifetime of war and childhood trauma. And the only solace, the only kind and gentle times that he’s experienced, was when he was frolicking with Rose after she saved his life from the demon It in the woods with a slingshot. After that, it’s just been all about the military and moving forward in courage and not going backwards; not going to the past. Yet somehow the past has a way of asserting itself and it drew him back in. I think he was subconsciously blinded to what was actually happening and how he was being drawn back in. There’s something that happens at the very, very last scene that I can’t reveal that kind of lets you know that you haven’t been forgotten. Derry remembers you.

io9: General Shaw mentions that at one point, he took an experimental drug that helped him remember his childhood in Derry. Are we talking LSD, MKULTRA kind of stuff? How deep did you dig into his military backstory?

Remar: He’s got a chest full of medals. You don’t get to be a lieutenant general in the United States Air Force by sitting around. I mean, he is a combat officer, he is a World War II and a Korean War veteran, and he is at the top of his class. He’s among the best, which is why he is the tip of the spear of the Strategic Air Command, which we needed at the end of this second World War because 24 hours a day, seven days a week, we had B-52s circling the globe, getting ready to drop the bomb if the Russians attacked. We were living under a constant state of threat.

With espionage and the [Cold War], there was this whole thing about brainwashing. Brainwashing was all the rage, particularly with the Korean War and how soldiers there were brainwashed into becoming communists and becoming spies and turning on their own people. Mind control was huge back then and LSD was something that came [into use]. I feel that [General Shaw] could not order soldiers under him to do something that he wouldn’t do himself—some of these brainwashing experiments and learn about LSD and truth serum. And that’s where [he would say], “I’ll go first.” That’s the kind of guy I think he was.

io9: These two have a shared history and there’s still chemistry between them despite their differences. How did you work together to get their reunion just right?

Remar: We both have to be these pillars of strength. And when you have an attraction to someone like that, the pillars have to lean a little bit. I feel like I messed up a little [in the scene where Francis and Rose reunite], because we shot the scene twice. The first time I was a little too taken with her: “Oh gosh, I love you from when I was nine years old.” I had to be a little bit rougher, so the finished product has me a little more contained and not as tender.

Guerrero: I think it’s really incredible that—and the audience won’t necessarily know this; it will be there in the subtext if you’re watching really closely—but Francis is [Rose’s] first love. Rose never married; Rose never had children. It’s not that she didn’t want to. It was just that her responsibility couldn’t allow for a loss like she experienced when Francis was taken from her. She missed him and she understands [how Derry clouds memories]; she understands that once he goes, he won’t remember her. It’s not just the loss of him; it’s that he won’t remember. He won’t be able to write because he won’t remember me and he won’t remember what we had. So that is, you know, a part of my heart that I’ve guarded and protected all these years. And when James and I talked about it, it was similar for him as well: he doesn’t think [Francis]  married or had children.

Remar: In my office is nothing but military pictures and trophies. There are no pictures of my family on the desk. No wife, no kids.

Guerrero: I think we married our duty.

io9: But Francis kept the slingshot.

Remar: Great toy, that’s a great weapon. That’s David and Goliath; she saved my life with that thing.

New episodes of It: Welcome to Derry arrive Sundays on HBO.

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