Stephen Rider on ‘It: Welcome to Derry’, Denzel Washington, and dreaming big: “You can’t worry about what you don’t have”

Posted On December 4, 2025December 4, 2025

An episodic prequel, which serves as the spinoff to a two-part movie that was already an adaptation of a book that had been brought to the screen before, doesn’t sound as though it’ll win any points for originality, but HBO’s It: Welcome to Derry has managed to stand on its own two feet.

Admittedly, those who’ve checked out the series in the hopes of seeing Bill Skarsgård’s Pennywise taking centre stage may be left disappointed, because that’s not what, or who, Welcome to Derry is about. Well, it technically is, but there’s a lot more going on under the surface than a dancing clown.

Set in 1962, Jovan Adepo’s military major, Leroy Hanlon, and his wife, Taylour Paige’s Charlotte, move to the titular town, and quickly realise that nothing is as it seems. His superiors are definitely up to something, while Derry has also been plagued by the disappearance of a young boy, local children experiencing terrifying hallucinations, and shit is generally going sideways at each turn.

Stuck in the middle is Stephen Rider’s Hank Grogan, a local theatre projectionist and devoted family man. Unable to explain his whereabouts on the night young Matty Clements disappeared, although he has his reasons for that, he ends up being imprisoned for a crime he hasn’t committed, with the aforementioned Charlotte Hanlon his only real ally.

Andy Muschietti’s two It movies earned well over a billion dollars at the box office, and it appears as though the fervour over the franchise hasn’t subsided, after Welcome to Derry debuted as the third most-watched premiere in HBO history, behind only House of the Dragon and The Last of Us. Needless to say, Rider is thrilled that so many people have been checking it out.

“It’s overwhelming,” he admitted to Far Out. “We had a feeling that we have something special on our hands. But, I know that the audience is always the last character in everything that you do, and so it really comes down to whether or not people like it. And it’s so cool to have, you know, the artwork that you’re seeing, the comments, and how people are really into it.”

“They love the Hanlons and the kids, just everybody, even Hank,” he self-deprecatingly added. “Like, #FreeHank, or whatever. It’s surreal. For every actor, and I would imagine every creative, no matter what you do, it’s nice to be complimented for being a part of something that’s really cool and part of pop culture. Things like that hit in a different way, so to be a part of an HBO show that people really enjoy is a dream come true for me.”

In real life, Rider has a history with Pennywise. He auditioned to play the adult version of Mike Hanlon in It Chapter Two, going down to the wire before Isaiah Mustafa ultimately got the nod. With that in mind, did he feel a sense of unfinished business, fate, or even serendipity when he first heard that Welcome to Derry was in the works?

“I would say a combination of all three,” he pondered. “The good thing is, testing with Andy and working with him, one: He’s just a lovely person. He’s also like a kid, the way his mind thinks, his imagination, the way he gets excited about things, so I felt like I had a really great sense of him, and also the way in which he operates. And so when I got this audition, I felt like I had an authority, because I knew something that, probably, a lot of people auditioning didn’t know.”

His familiarity with Muschietti emboldened him during the audition, and since he already “had a lot of tools in my toolbox,” all he needed to set his mind to was “finding a way into Hank and making sure that my approach was very authentic and real.” Sure enough, he sent his tape in on a Friday, and by the following Tuesday, he was at the studio to read lines in person.

“Definitely unfinished business,” the actor smiled. “And I will say that, in retrospect, this character was definitely the character I was supposed to play. I didn’t think that at the time. I teared up a little bit! I’m just being honest, I might have lost a couple of pounds. I felt like I broke up with my girlfriend!”

Despite being left broken-hearted at not getting the nod for Chapter Two, it’s fair to say that things worked out in the end. After his initial audition for the 2019 sequel, Muschietti sent him an email outlining his hopes that they’d work together eventually. This being Hollywood, did Rider believe it, or did he think it was just one of those things that people say to let somebody down gently?

“It was very sweet, and I could tell it was very genuine,” he replied. “But in what, 2018/2019, I didn’t have the foresight to ever even know that one they’d go back into, right? There was nothing that I knew about where they would even go back into something like this. You don’t even know how you’re going to connect, but I hope to work with people again, or get an opportunity to, but when this came around, I was like, ‘I’m going to.’”

“I’m going, ‘This is mine’. I knew it was mine, as a matter of fact,” he confidently proclaimed. “Matter of fact, my wife, I’ve been writing in my journal, and she wrote down that, ‘Stephen’s going to book a job by such and such date’, and I literally booked this job by that date. So I think it was just one of those things where everything aligned, and he remembered me. And the first thing he said, he was like, ‘Stephen, I’m so sorry.’ Even six years later, but he was like, ‘I’m happy it worked out this time’. So, yeah, I think it was definitely destined.”

Anyone who’s seen the very first scene of Welcome to Derry‘s first episode can attest that it’s batshit crazy. As in, flying demon babies in the back of a car with blood and entrails everywhere, crazy. And yet, for the remainder of the premiere, the focus shifts onto the characters. As an actor, Rider has his own method of finding the balance between playing his role as straight as possible, even though it unfolds in a world where these insane things frequently happen.

“You know, my uncle always said, ‘Don’t mix my business with your business,’” he explained, hitting the nail on the head. “Of course, I know where the show is going, and at the same time, my job is to make sure that I do my part right. It’s like soccer or basketball, or any team sport. You’re only as good as you are if you do your job, and hopefully, as a whole, everybody else does their job. My goal was to enliven and to reveal Hank, and to reveal the relationship between Hank and his family.”

Never mind the demonic entities wreaking havoc in Derry, for Rider, it was all about looking inward: “Hanks is just a fictitious character, and Veronica, his daughter, is just a fictitious character. But what parts of Stephen can I bring in, and what parts of Stephen do I need to keep out to reveal this person? And how does Hank resonate off my instrument? I made sure I did my job thoroughly and asked a lot of questions, and most of my questions never got answered!”

He’s not joking, either, with Rider revealing that he’s “got more questions now about Hank and the world that he comes from than I did even then.” As a performer, he doesn’t think “the process of being curious ever ends if you’re searching for those types of things,” an incredibly philosophical way of looking at what’s ostensibly a big-budget horror series derived from the work of Stephen King.

Along the same lines, a projectionist and family man sounds relatively straightforward on paper, but without going into spoilers, everything that happens to him from his introductory scene onward most definitely is not. Using the time period as an example, Rider elaborated on how he found his way into Hank, which involved relating to cultural and familial experiences that he was familiar with.

Adding, “I mean, he’s a projectionist. It’s 1962. I think it’s very easy to be like, well, ‘He loves movies.’ Well, he might love movies, but in 1962, he didn’t have a choice to find and do what he loved to do, right? It’s just not the case. We come from a generation now, where we get to do what we love to do, but our parents and our grandparents did what they had to do. Our grandparents were, for the most part, baby boomers, or around that timeframe where people stayed at one job for the rest of their lives.”

“In this small town, clearly, the people that live in Derry, live in suburban Derry, live very differently than the people that live where Hank lives,” he continued. “And I know that, because I didn’t grow up where the majority of people that I went to high school with lived. I lived in the inner city. I lived in the hood, in a sense. And so, you have this world that Stephen King kind of talks about, but not really goes in depth with, but clearly, white people at this time and Black people at this time live very differently.”

It wasn’t just about playing a character; Rider “had to do the dramaturgy and really understand the time of 1962, and the 1960s, and 1950s, and what was really going on to start to look at Hank.” Whereas now, “most people have families in their 30s and 40s,” people back then were doing it much earlier: “So people back then had to grow the fuck up a little bit differently, because the times called for them to grow up.”

The actor believes that “Hank, honestly, is more courageous than I am.” Sometimes he even found himself “afraid to go there” when it came to exploring the character, because he “lives in very extreme circumstances, because we have eight or nine hours to explore Hank, as well as Leroy, and Dick Halloran, and the kids, and all these other characters, and he lives in extremes, in a way I don’t on a normal basis.”

In his words, if Stephen Rider can’t put himself in the position of someone who’s literally facing life and death, and he’s unwilling to “put my soul on the line and risk it,” then he’s doing Hank a disservice. “Then somebody else should take Hank, right?” he asked rhetorically. “Because then, I think you’re just playing at somebody who really is living a very specific type of life.”

In layman’s terms, Welcome to Derry is about an interdimensional being that enjoys taking on the form of a clown to murder people, but Hank’s arc is only tangentially connected to Pennywise. With that in mind, he had his own ideas for how to play a character rooted in a sense of real-world history, albeit one where disembodied corpses, terrifying visions, centuries-old mystic rituals, and more are a regular occurrence, and ensure that the meeting of those two worlds would never feel jarring.

“Ultimately, although it is based on this fantastical entity, it still feeds off the fear of humans,” he acknowledged. “So it’s a love story, in a sense. I think every story boils down to a love story. I genuinely do. Because in each movie, and in the book, the reality of how they defeat it is through love, through faith, through hope. And so why not play a character in Hank who literally lives his life for the love of his family? For me, what I loved about it, selfishly, is that I get to really just act. I get to act.”

“My character, in a lot of ways, in the relationship with his daughter, is like the heartbeat of this show,” he concluded. “And I get excited about that. I love it.” In fact, Rider’s commitment to the character ran so deep that he made some suggestions about the décor of the Grogan family home to make it feel more real and lived-in.

“Someone like Andy, or any of the directors, is focusing on the big picture, typically, right?” he surmised. “And I believe the role of an actor, an artist, is to bring in the things that they might not even think about.” As much as the Toronto-based production team “did a beautiful job,” there was one qualification that they were lacking: “They’re also not Black people from the States.”

“That’s not their world; that’s my world,” he offered. “In this society, I’m considered a Black man. I’m a man first, right? But in this society, people label you a colour first. Culturally speaking, I know what it is to grow up in a family that has relationships with certain things. I grew up in a house with my grandma. I grew up around my grandma’s fam, you know, cousins and all the people that she knew. So I have a lot of history on what goes into or the types of homes, and, you know, Martin Luther King and Jesus, the cross, and all those things that typically make people’s homes, or made my home more alive.”

It was an important touch, personally and professionally. “Otherwise, I feel like you walk on a sterile set and you’re dealing with a bunch of props that have no value,” he illustrated. “I mean, I have to bring value to them, but if I can bring in something that might help ground me into the reality of Hank, then I’m gonna suggest it. I mean, you can always tell me no, but I don’t care. I’m gonna suggest it until you tell me no a million times, and I’ll still keep on suggesting things. I can’t help myself!”

When pressed for how much he can reveal about where things end up heading for Hank in Welcome to Derry‘s final episodes, Rider could only offer a tantalising tease. “It gets real,” he grinned. “It’s wild. And I think people are going to be like, ‘What the fuck is going on? What is happening right now?’ Hank goes on a really cool ride, but everybody does. I think people are going to be very, very impressed.”

Leaving Derry behind and travelling right back to the beginning of Rider’s career, he made his feature film debut in 2007’s The Great Debaters, the directorial debut of a young up-and-comer by the name of Denzel Washington. Reflecting on the experience, he can’t speak highly enough of the Hollywood icon.

The actor had already auditioned for Washington’s debut, Antwone Fisher, “and didn’t get it,” but he wasn’t going to miss out a second time. “Man,” he sighed. “Denzel, he’s my GOAT, for a lot of reasons. I think that, not growing up with a father, I had few Black men who really stepped up and stood out in my life. And he gave me advice a while ago, and I remember auditioning for him, and he was like, ‘I guess the advice I gave you years ago has paid off.’”

He knew he wanted to act, though, and after he graduated, Rider found himself “working in the theatre, and this opportunity came up, and I auditioned for it.” Ending up in a room with Washington and the producers, he realised the two-time Oscar-winner “speaks a very specific shorthand that I understand; I just understand the way he communicates.” With that, he got the part, and his first role in a movie.

When he was shooting The Great Debaters, Washington’s infectious energy and enthusiasm made a huge impression on the first-time film actor. “We would just vibe,” Rider recalled. “Afterwards, he was like, ‘Great job’. He came to see me in a play, and he told me, years later, ‘You can make millions of dollars doing what you do’. He said, ‘You got to keep on doing theatre, and keep your head down, and continue to work on your craft, and be the best that you can be.’”

“This is what you’re supposed to be doing, and make sure it’s your plan A, and if it’s your plan A, and you don’t got no Plan B, you’ll succeed,’” the two-time Academy Award winner told him. “He’s always been in my corner ever since; that’s my ride or die. I love that man. Point blank. Period. He gave me an opportunity to have a career, and I don’t believe I would have a career if it wasn’t for him, not even a question. My GOAT. My GOAT, always.”

On the small screen, Rider got his start under very familiar circumstances. Can a screen actor really call themselves a screen actor if they haven’t done at least one episode of either CSI or NCIS? Apparently not. “If you don’t got an NCIS or a CSI or something like that under your belt, you haven’t even made it yet,” he confirmed.

He checked it off the list in a 2012 episode of NCIS: Los Angeles, and it was an important building block. “It’s one of those things, especially if you don’t skip steps, you have to get your little parts, and that’s how you build up to series regulars. That is definitely one. You know, it’s hard to say you’re a New York actor if you don’t have Law & Order somewhere on your resume.”

As it turns out, Rider was “actually really sick” when he made his TV bow. Fortunately, his character, Jack Williams, was in a hospital: “I was already feeling like shit, so I think I got hired because I was probably, of all the people they auditioned, I was really living that life! I’m so thankful for that role, though.”

He’d capture the biggest audience of his career when he was cast as Blake Tower, an assistant New York City district attorney, in the second season of Netflix’s Daredevil, also guest-starring on Luke Cage. Since the series has now emigrated to Disney+ with Charlie Cox, Vincent D’Onofrio, Jon Bernthal, and others reprising their roles, Rider has an open mind about being the next to switch streaming services.

“I don’t know if I would do it, but I probably would,” he reasoned. “I think we were all bummed. We didn’t get cancelled because Disney started Disney+. I think if that didn’t happen, we would have been on for at least five seasons. I really enjoyed it. That gave me my start, man. I love Daredevil. I really did, man, and Blake Tower was cool. If they brought me back, I would say yes, but I genuinely believe what’s cooking up in my life is going to be even bigger than that.”

Things can often be difficult for a working actor in the unpredictable world of film and television, especially now that there’s also streaming to contend with. That said, when it comes to navigating it all, and balancing it with his love of performing in the theatre, Rider doesn’t give it much of a second thought.

As far as Rider is concerned, all he needs to do is focus on himself: “I don’t care if it’s one job. Clearly, that’s my job. That’s how I look at it.” Nobody succeeds in acting without betting on themselves, and he’s not interested in what goes on outside of his periphery. “You can’t worry about what you don’t have,” he reasoned. “I’m focused on what I do have.”

Obviously, he’d “love for there to be a thousand more opportunities, because it gives actors, at large, and everybody, opportunities to work and make a living for their families, which I think is very important.” On the other hand, he remains focused on himself: “How I approach things I’m in the business of, there’s a lot of abundance and prosperity for me, and the more I have the mentality of what possibilities I can create, the more things I believe come to me. So I don’t care. It don’t matter to me. I’m going to work. I believe I’m about to work way more than I’ve ever worked in my life.”

After that, it should come as no surprise that Rider doesn’t have a dream role. Instead, he has a dream. “It would be me starring in a film, a prestige film, that ends up becoming an Academy Award winner, in which I win an Academy Award,” he declared. “With a lovely cast that hopefully becomes not just colleagues, but also potentially friends, and we have an incredible time doing it.”

There’s no reason why anyone shouldn’t aim for the top of their chosen profession, and Rider has his sights set on the pinnacle of the industry: “I don’t live in the past, and I’m not trying to replicate anybody else’s career. I think mine’s good enough.”

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