‘The Shining’ Star Steven Weber Reveals Why Stephen King’s Explanation for a Scene Left Him Laughing
As Wings was winding down, Steven Weber landed the iconic role of Jack Torrance in The Shining, which premiered on April 27, 1997, with Rebecca De Mornay as Wendy and Courtland Mead as Danny. Stephen King wrote the television adaptation and also appeared as band director Gage Creed (a reference to Pet Sematary). King had been unhappy with Stanley Kubrick‘s 1980 adaptation, and felt Jack Nicholson‘s Jack seemed unstable from the start, and that the film had lost the emotional story of the Torrance family.
Weber was reading The Shining while filming the 1997 miniseries, and he had a question for King. During a panel discussion at Flashback Weekend in Chicago this past summer, the actor recalled going downstairs to ask the author about a passage that had caught his attention.
Weber asked King about a strange passage
Everett Collection
Weber said King was at the Stanley Hotel throughout the shoot. He described the writer as “vulnerable enough to write about his own experience.” As he read the novel, a passage about sleepwalking and vines moving under a rug made him want to know more.
“I was reading that and I was thinking that’s beautiful and strange and kind of malevolent. What does it mean?” Weber recalled. Weber remembered King explaining that he had been drinking wine while writing. As for the vines, King said he had been looking at the pattern on a rug, according to the actor, “Thanks. Greatest writer of the latter half of the 20th century. How deep.” Weber joked, “But the joke was he was writing. He was writing as it was happening. And the beauty is that we ascribe our own experience to what we’re reading. That’s the brilliance of his writing in a way.”
When the moderator asked about viewers who had only seen Stanley Kubrick‘s version, Weber said the people who talk to him about the miniseries have usually read the book or are devoted King fans, “And so they have more knowledge about it than I did.”
He still has letters from King
Thos Robinson/Getty Images
Weber said at the panel that he had not spoken to King in a long time. He shared, “The funny thing about being in this industry is you get very close to people for a short period of time, and you just disperse. But you always have a memory about connection.”
He does still have letters King wrote to him. Weber said his King memorabilia is kept in a closet beside a signed William Shatner doll. “That’s for the estate sale. Nobody’s getting that until I really need money,” he added.
Steven Weber is currently on Chicago Med and is joining the cast of Nobody Wants This as a guest star in season three, which premieres October 22.
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