Inside the mind of Dick Hallorann: Chris Chalk unravels pivotal “It: Welcome to Derry” episode
- - Inside the mind of Dick Hallorann: Chris Chalk unravels pivotal “It: Welcome to Derry” episode
Nick RomanoNovember 16, 2025 at 9:00 PM
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HBO Max
Dick Hallorann (Chris Chalk) in the 'It: Welcome to Derry' episode 4 interrogation sceneKey Points -
Chris Chalk delves inside Dick Hallorann's 'pivotal moment' in It: Welcome to Derry episode 4.
The actor shares why he originally offered to lose 15 pounds for the role.
Plus, Chalk reveals the several discussions that went into one seconds-long shot.
Warning: This article contains spoilers from It: Welcome to Derry episode 4, "The Great Swirling Apparatus of Our Planet's Function."
Chris Chalk remembers the one time on the set of It: Welcome to Derry when everyone seemed to have something to say about his work.
It was for a seconds-long shot in episode 4, “The Great Swirling Apparatus of Our Planet's Function.” Dick Hallorann, Chalk’s character who’s notably featured in Stephen King’s The Shining, interrogates Taniel (Joshua Odjick), the nephew of Kimberly Guerrero’s Rose, to unearth secrets of the shape-shifting It entity for the U.S. government.
As he excavates Taniel’s mind, a process that’s painful to various degrees for the both of them, Dick transitions from two fingers pressed against the side of his temple to his full open palm gripping the front of his face, with his pointer pressed against his “third-eye.”
“They wanted a certain visual and everyone had it different in their head,” Chalk, 47, tells Entertainment Weekly over the course of two interviews, conducted weeks apart. “I did something and they hated it. They were like, ‘Nah, we’re gonna reshoot that.’ So I was like, ‘You just tell me what to do, bro! That hurt my feelings. I don't want to do nothin’ else!’”
Brooke Palmer/HBO
Chris Chalk as Dick Hallorann in the Black Spot of 'It: Welcome to Derry'
Chalk’s booming laugh is contagious as he recalls that moment and the several creative meetings that followed with series co-creators Andy and Barbara Muschietti and showrunners Jason Fuchs and Brad Caleb Kane, all over just this one shot. “There are fights I want to win. This? Man, you can put my hand wherever you want. I do not care,” the actor continues. “Andy got the final say. I saw the edit and I was like, ‘Let the man cook!’ He can see what he's trying to do.”
This psychic interrogation reveals a side to Mr. Hallorann not previously seen. King initiates remember him as the warm, if at times stern cook in the kitchen of the haunted Overlook Hotel from The Shining, King’s 1977 novel. Scatman Crothers famously played the role in Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 adaptation.
In one Zoom interview, Chalk carries his laptop over to another room in his house to show off his two-volume TASCHEN Books compendium on the making of that cinema classic, filled with rare photographs, annotated script pages, and more.
“I did spend a lot of time with that material,” Chalk says. He also looked to Carl Lumbly as an older Dick Hallorann in Mike Flanagan’s Doctor Sleep, an adaptation of King’s The Shining sequel; Melvin Van Peebles’ interpretation in the 1977 three-part Shining miniseries for ABC; and, of course, King’s original novels, including It, which only references Dick’s presence briefly around the Black Spot.
“And you know what else I did? Weirdly, I was like, ‘What do fans think of him?’” the Asheville, N.C.-born star of Perry Mason, Gotham, and Feud shares. “So I did a couple days of seeing people's interpretation and seeing if I wanted to play with that. I don't know if I ever did. Who knows? I throw all these things into this bag and then I go, ‘Let's see what sticks.’”
Brooke Palmer/HBO
Dick Hallorann (Chris Chalk) on 'It: Welcome to Derry'
In Kane’s mind, “The most useful tool in crafting this character and one of the greatest special effects that we have in a show that's full of special effects, is Chris Chalk’s performance. His grounded-ness, his sense of reality is really what makes our Dick Hallorann unique.”
The Dick of It: Welcome to Derry is not the fully formed man from King lore. He’s almost callous as he tears through Taniel’s mind to dig up the story of how his Native tribe caged It inside the bounds of Derry, using several “pillars” forged from pieces of the black primordial star that brought the creature to Earth. When he learns this information, he flashes a sinister smile to the vision of a young Taniel, reminiscent of the child-devouring Pennywise.
“There's a lot about this thing going on with sweet Dick,” Chalk remarks. “He, as a Black man, is knowingly assaulting another person of color just to escape. So that tells us that Dick is very afraid of something. It's not that he has a moral code where he is like, ‘I'm not gonna mess with Indigenous people,’ but anything that he can do to not involve himself in any of this is great. And though he may have looked into people's heads before, I don't think it was to this degree. He had no idea that Taniel had roadblocks in his head for this very thing.”
He recalls the various versions of the script around this episode, which evolved before and after the 2023 Hollywood strikes. “There was really a moment where it was written that Dick could barely stand afterwards, he was emaciated,” he continues. “I offered to lose, like, 15 pounds to show physically. Girl, I said I wanted to do it, but then when it came to it, I was like, ‘Oh, that's hard! 15 pounds? That’s a big number. Can we do this with makeup?!’”
Brooke Palmer/HBO
Dick Hallorann (Chris Chalk) on 'It: Welcome to Derry'
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Episode 4 became the episode Chalk discussed the most with the show's creative minds. "It is that pivotal moment. Once he touches that slingshot, it's over for Dick, and then how do we break him down? How do we destroy him?" he says, referring to the encounter with It in Dick's mindscape from touching General Shaw's (James Remar) slingshot from the cigar box in the third episode.
"The Great Swirling Apparatus of Our Planet's Function" exacts a larger toll. Chalk likens the scene with Taniel as “razor blades against the skin the whole time.”
“It costs energy,” he continues. “We were talking about: How much does he sweat? How much does he shake? How much does he go unconscious? We pitched both boys being unconscious when they come back, but then when Dick recovers, he's like, ‘Save this boy.’ I guess I'm describing there's so much information about Dick, how he cares for this kid, how he didn't want to do it, but how he's willing to do it anyway just to get out of this crazy town and to get out from underneath General Shaw. It costs everything…Well, he thinks it costs everything, but then the show keeps going.”
It: Welcome to Derry releases new episodes every Sunday at 9 p.m. ET/PT, on HBO and HBO Max.
on Entertainment Weekly
Source: “AOL Entertainment”
