‘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.