Playing Henry Bowers is no mean feat. To embody the legendarily cruel bully, an actor must give himself over entirely to darkness, spewing bigotry, greed, and maniac glee with total conviction. Many have had their own encounters with Henry Bowers types, and those memories don't tend to fade. If you're going to bring that bully to the big screen, you need to make the audience believe in your bone-deep evil. Nicholas Hamilton, in contrast, is a good guy who loves to show off his dogs. How did he tap into the kind of rage that makes a kid stab their own father through the neck?
It turns out that he did some solid research. He read the original Stephen King novel, to start (which is, if you don't recall, over 1,000 pages). Then he revisited the original Henry Bowers, as played by Jarred Blancard in the original 1990 miniseries. "I'm terrified of clowns," he admitted to Variety, but went on to say that he had a great time playing the lunatic, saying, "The opportunity to help share my psychotic side has been really fun." Turns out that research won't make you into a nerd, necessarily — sometimes, it can make you into the most terrifying kid on the block.
