What Happened to the Actor Who Played Georgie in the Original ‘It’? Decades Later, He Wore Pennywise’s Costume

Tony Dakota’s appearance as Georgie in the original television adaptation of Stephen King’s It lasted only a short time, but the character remained central to the story. Georgie, Bill Denbrough’s younger brother, dies within the opening minutes after Pennywise lures him toward a storm drain where his paper boat has fallen.

Bill’s desire to defeat the clown is tied to his belief that he bears responsibility for his brother’s death. That connection helped make Georgie one of the production’s most remembered figures, even though viewers knew little about the child actor who played him.

Dakota left acting in 1991, a year after appearing in It. He returned to the screen 36 years later in a short film of about seven minutes, directed by Ryan Grulich and also titled Georgie.

The film presents Georgie as an adult, as if he had survived, standing before the mother who lost him. She appears to draw him in a realistic pencil portrait. The image is unsettling because Georgie is missing the arm that Pennywise cut off in King’s story, and he wears the clown’s costume. When his mother senses that the figure may be the young son she lost years earlier, she becomes disturbed.