so clark is filming right now and what if tiger was tagging along secretly with him. she hangs out in his hotel or goes on her own little adventures. he needs a lot of loving after some of these shoots as clark is an intense guy. she’s more than happy to help him and even makes sure to get a hotel room with the biggest bathtub possible.
oh man, I love this so much. My little empath heart really marvels at actors sometimes, who can flawlessly portray these really dark, devastating, disturbed characters that are usually--hopefully--really far off from their baseline without actually starting to carry those horrible traits with them. I mean shit, I have a bad day at work and that stays with me for days and I can’t shake it. But to spend 14 hours a day fully enveloped in the psyche of someone so disturbed and to just be able to shake that off at the end of the day like it never even happened? Man that shit is a mental game I wish I had.
In an interview a little while ago, Bill mentioned that either right before he was done or immediately after he wrapped on IT, he had nightmares for a little while. And that really stuck with me, I don’t know why but it did (almost made up for his “I’ve had pets growing up but I don’t know I never got attached to any of them.” Bitch w h a t)
In any case, Bill being a little caught up in the head of the character he’s portraying and needing tiger to kind of help break him out of it is one of my favourite concepts. I run my mouth to hell and back about how much Bill supports her, how grounded he keeps her, how safe and loved he makes her feel--but she is every bit his anchor, too. She’s the only one who can get through to him when no one else can. She’s the only one who can pull him out if he’s in too deep. And she does--every single time, she does. She supports him. She comforts him if he’s just a little disturbed and a little down by it all. But she also fights him, she also lets him know when he’s going too far, when he’s sinking too deep, and she doesn’t back down no matter how angry he gets. Bill isn’t always good on being called on his bullshit, sometimes it makes him incredibly defensive, shuts him down, makes him isolate himself further or get into even worse habits. His past is never far from him and while it’s not a daily battle to escape it anymore, it always rears its ugly head and the fight gets harder when his head gets messed up.
Tiger doesn’t let him get away with it. She’s not scared of him, no matter how angry he gets.
And he loves her for it. He relies on her for it, depends on her. She is his salve, his anchor, his fucking reality check when he needs one.
I don’t know much about Clark Olofsson, but I like Papa Skars’ take on it that we should all be weary of romanticizing that level of evil--so clearly the dude had some shit going on. And it’s not everything that gets to Bill--over the years, his career has help him build a thick skin. Sometimes playing off the wall characters like Pennywise is the easier option, because those characters aren’t real. Nothing about them is real, everything is so exaggerated.
But playing a human being who is so tortured, who purposely inflicts so much pain on other people--that’s the kind of stuff that messes with his head. Whether or not the character is a real person that exists or not, playing someone deeply disturbed yet somehow relatable, somebody on the edges of sanity that we can all somehow still see ourselves in--that’s the kind of suff that fucks him up. That’s what gets him in too deep, until his own personality and his own demons come way too close to the surface.
Maybe he notices that he’s a little too down, a little too out of it, and he calls her. But I actually much prefer the concept that tiger notices. She notices on his phone calls, on his face times. She notices in the edge that his voice has taken on his uncharacteristic lack of patience. She notices that every time he calls her, he’s smoking--and Bill chain-smokes when something is wrong. She’s noticing a set in his jaw, a hardness in his eyes a nonchalance and coldness in his attitude that is just not gonna fly. So she books a ticket, and she heads out to him.
Maybe it’s a fight--maybe he resists, tells her she shouldn’t have, that he’s busy. Hell maybe he even gets a little mean and tells her that she’s just stressing him out more now--but tiger doesn’t budge. She doesn’t back down for a second. And it doesn’t take long before he kind of cracks--tiger, to her credit, also has a gentleness about her that will always get to Bill. it will knock down whatever fucked up wall that he didn’t even realize he put up--because just being in her presence balances him. It makes him realize how deep he actually got himself.
And I low key love what you mentioned here--Bill is always her caretaker, but when her Big Dude needs it? Tiger is the alpha. She’s the one who steps up and takes over. She gets him out of the hotel room where he’s been staying for two months, and into an apartment where he can feel a bit more at home. She stocks his fridge. She cooks for him. She drags him out to a restaurant, or even one of those seedy bars they’re both such fans of. She draws him a bubble bath, and manhandles him into it when he claims he’s too busy and then she plunks between his legs, makes him hold her. I kind of love that concept--that she makes him hold her. Because she knows her Big Dude, and he’s in there somewhere, and a little part of him, his protective side, will always flare up when she folds into his arms.
So that’s what she does, to bring him back. Every single chance she gets, she crowds his space, squeezes him, wraps his arms around her. Maybe she worries enough that she just sets up camp with him for the entire shoot--because hell she’s working remotely anyway, may as well be with him.
Ugh, sweet nani, I have a very special place in my heart for caretaker tiger.



















