Chris Chalk brings Dick Hallorann back to screens in IT: Welcome to Derry, but this version of the character is different. Instead of the wise, comforting cook from the Overlook Hotel, Chalk plays a younger man still learning to control his powers while living in a world of real-world horrors. His performance shows a person shaped by fear and trauma, not yet the hero fans remember.
Who Is Dick Hallorann? A Character’s Long History
For many, Dick Hallorann is the friendly cook with psychic abilities from Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 film The Shining, played by Scatman Crothers. The character originates from Stephen King’s 1977 novel and has appeared in other adaptations, including the Doctor Sleep film.
In King’s 1986 novel It, Hallorann is mentioned briefly as the founder of The Black Spot, a social club for Black soldiers in Derry that was burned down. IT: Welcome to Derry, the HBO prequel series set in 1962, expands this footnote into a full story. Chalk is now the fourth actor to portray Hallorann on screen, following Scatman Crothers, Melvin Van Peebles, and Carl Lumbly.
A Character Defined by Flaws and Fear, Not Magic
Chris Chalk’s key mission was to avoid a Hollywood stereotype. In past adaptations, Hallorann has been criticized as an example of the “Magical Negro” trope—a Black character whose sole purpose is to use special abilities to help white protagonists. Chalk and the show’s creators were determined to do something different.
“The trouble with a Magical Negro is that they’re the only motherfuckin’ Black person in the movie,” Chalk stated. “To already have this huge selection of Black humans in the narrative, not just as props, but as essential to the narrative… I do happen to be a magical Black man, but in a world full of Black people, it doesn’t come off as gross.”
This Hallorann is not a noble guide. He is a complex, often unlikable person. Chalk has described him as “not a nice person” and “not nice yet”. He is arrogant, grumpy, and willing to invade other people’s minds to get information, driven by his own fear. His psychic power, or “shine,” is not a gift he has mastered but a frightening ability he struggles to control.
Building a Character from Trauma and Research
To prepare, Chalk read Stephen King’s It and revisited The Shining and Doctor Sleep. However, he intentionally did not mimic previous performances. He respected Scatman Crothers’ portrayal as a “north star” but focused on creating his own version from the source material.
“The previous depictions of Dick Hallorann informed me for about 45 minutes, and then I had to cut it off because then I had to do my job,” Chalk explained. “Everything in this version is new information that is leading up to a future point.”
Chalk connected personally with the character’s trauma, using his own life experiences to inform Hallorann’s weary, guarded nature. A major part of Hallorann’s story in the series is The Black Spot fire, a horrific act of racial violence. Chalk described filming the intense sequence as a collaborative and physically demanding process involving real fire and complex staging.
A Young Man Trapped, Not a Hero
The core of Chalk’s interpretation is a man feeling trapped. This applies both physically, as he is stuck in Derry on a military assignment, and mentally, as he battles his own demons.
“What I think Dick fears the most is being trapped, whether that be in his mind or in a physical space,” Chalk said. “And the beauty of this show is he gets both of those.”
A key plot device is a psychic “lockbox” Hallorann uses to trap his worst memories and traumas, a technique touched on in Doctor Sleep. In Welcome to Derry, Pennywise forces this box open, unleashing Hallorann’s personal horrors alongside the clown’s terror. This leaves the character vulnerable and broken, a stark contrast to the in-control figure he becomes decades later.
The series also shows him constantly “code-switching”—changing his behavior and speech depending on who he’s with—as a necessary survival skill for a Black man in 1960s America.
How Hallorann Fits into the War on Pennywise
In the series, Hallorann is a U.S. Air Force airman stationed at the Derry base. The military is secretly digging under the town, searching for a powerful weapon to use in the Cold War. Unbeknownst to them, that “weapon” is the ancient evil entity known as Pennywise.
The army uses Hallorann’s psychic abilities to try to locate it. In a major scene from Episode 3, he uses a slingshot as a focus object in a helicopter, going into a trance to psychically scan Derry. This leads to a terrifying vision of Pennywise and a tower of floating victims, causing a physical struggle in the helicopter. This event forges a crucial alliance with Major Leroy Hanlon, played by Jovan Adepo, whose lack of fear makes him a unique asset against the fear-feeding Pennywise.
IT: Welcome to Derry is now streaming on HBO Max. New episodes are released weekly.
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