Randall Flagg Skarsgard did not ask Pennywise Skarsgard for Stephen King villain advice

Two brothers, two iconic Stephen King villains. But not just two brothers ... two Skarsgards! One of them, Bill Skarsgard, just returned in It Chapter Two as the nefarious Pennywise, while the other, Alexander Skarsgard, is set to play the villainous Randall Flagg in a new television adaptation of The Stand. So did Mr. Flagg seek any advice from Mr. Pennywise? Did one Skarsgard seek out the help of another Skarsgard?

According to a new interview with Alexander Skarsgard by Collider, the answer is no. Cancel the Skars-moot.

The man who will be Flagg had plenty of praise for King's villains, saying, "The juiciest roles are often the villains, ‘cause there’s a psychological darkness and a complexity there that [you] sometimes won’t find in the protagonist, and Flagg is a very iconic villain."

That said, Flagg is an entirely different creation from Pennywise. As Skarsgard says, "No, I didn’t ask Bill for advice on how to play a Stephen King villain, and ultimately I think Flagg and Pennywise are quite different. He had a great time on those movies, but tonally they’re quite different."

Where Alexander is finding further inspiration for the role of Flagg, however, is in Stephen King's original novel — whether the parts he's drawing from make it into the adapted scripts or not.

"I’m definitely using the book ... because even though we have the luxury of nine hours and it’s a good amount of time with these characters, there’s definitely stuff that’s not in the script that I love in the book," he says. "If there’s stuff that I find, whether it’s a little beat or a little moment or a line, to just add to the character, I can always do that."

Alexander later adds, "... there are all of these idiosyncratic beats and little moments that are great for the character, that I tried to sprinkle into the script as well. We’ve just started, so it’s early days, but it’s been awesome so far." 

Though the journey of Pennywise is just about over, the long walk of the book-deepened Mr. Flagg has only just begun, with The Stand expected to rise sometime in 2020. The tale of the brothers Skarsgard, on the other hand ... that is a song that never ends.