One of the most awe inspiring things that I find about Stephen King (and I’ll admit it’s a long list) is the way in which he has permanently changed how we look at certain aspects of our everyday world. Every disastrous prom is compared to Carrie, and every thought of a rabid dog has the name “Cujo” spring to mind. The existence of Misery colors every claim of being a “#1 fan,” and the mere mention of a prison break brings to mind “Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption.” And, of course, King receives a significant amount of blame for making multiple generations fear clowns thanks to IT.
It’s a special, and impactful legacy – and one that the cast of IT: Welcome To Derry is intimately aware of. When I spoke with the stars of the new Stephen King TV series last month during the show’s virtual press day, one question I asked everybody was about their personal relationships with the author, and it’s their answers that make up the core of this week’s special edition of The King Beat.
The IT: Welcome To Derry Cast Is Full Of Performers With Plenty Of Love For Stephen King’s Work
Going into the making of IT: Welcome To Derry, there was only one actor with previous experience in a Stephen King adaptation: Jovan Adepo, who played Larry Underwood in the 2020 limited series remake of The Stand. Nobody else, including Chris Chalk, Stephen Rider, Taylour Paige, James Remar, and Kimberly Guerrero, had been a part of a King-related project. That lack of past affiliation, however, belies a strong awareness of both King’s impact on our world and what it is about his storytelling that has made him such a powerful voice in the last half-century.
Speaking with Chalk and Rider as a pair, the former explained how his awe of Stephen King doesn’t just come from his work (and he has read multiple novels), but from being amazed by the man himself. From the beloved author being raised in poverty by a single mother in New England, to his practically miraculous recovery following his near-fatal accident in the summer of 1999, King’s personal story is as remarkable as any of his fiction, and the actor who plays Dick Hallorann on IT: Welcome To Derry said that he was brought to tears multiple times reading the stunning non-fiction book On Writing. Said Chalk,
I started reading Stephen King when I was young. I really loved The Shining and I really loved IT. But my favorite Stephen King book to tell the truth is On Writing. When he tells you what he did and who he was in order to create, I cried so many times reading that book, because I was like, 'How did you keep going bro?' We forget that everybody's a human, and humans go through hard shit, and like to see the hard stuff he did while I'm devouring his content, I said, 'That's a hero.' Like that book to me, that's my favorite.
It speaks to the great magic of Stephen King’s work: his passionate understanding of the human experience. He develops wild and intense circumstances, but the reason why they are so compelling is because of how well-drawn and real the characters are. Not only does their vividity create stakes, but the stories unfold specifically because of who they are: story takes precedence over plot
As for Stephen Rider, who portrays the wrongly accused Hank Grogan on the IT prequel series, he explained that his awareness of Stephen King principally comes from adaptations – and simply the sheer volume of them inspires awe. The fact that the list of iconic titles seems endless is staggering by itself (recalling the terrifying power of Pet Sematary mid-conversation), and recognizing the scale drops one’s jaw:
I watched the films and that's how I got into Stephen King. And then, like you just said, it's like he's the Jay-Z of books. He just has hit after hit after hit. So as you watch him, you're like, 'And another one?! And another one?! It's the same person?!' It's not normal. Just to be someone where everybody wants to utilize your source material.
This has been a year that has proven that more than most, with IT: Welcome To Derry being the fifth of six King adaptations released in 2025 (following The Monkey, The Life Of Chuck, MGM+’s The Institute, and The Long Walk, and preceding the arrival of The Running Man).
Stephen King’s ubiquity and impact on pop culture are inarguable – but when I spoke with James Remar (who plays General Francis Shaw on IT: Welcome To Derry), he expressed that only acknowledging his pop culture impact is minimalizing. Critics have spent decades belittling King’s work because of its popularity, but Remar doesn’t hesitate listing his name among the most talented American authors of all time:
Well, I don't consider Stephen King pop culture. I consider Stephen King a great American writer as much as John Steinbeck, as much as Ernest Hemingway, [Mark] Twain. Stephen King has touched millions of people. And not just with terror or with horror, but with insight and with understanding of the human condition, beginning with childhood and going all the way into late adulthood. And he's put his own life on paper and his own examination of his psyche on paper for us to read.
As captured in the video above, he noted that the power of King really came into focus when he saw Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of The Shining and then read the source material. While King has famously criticized the movie for what it leaves out from the book, Remar was left amazed. In his words: “That Kubrick did such a great job with it, and yet left out 30 percent of the book just shows you how much depth there is to it.”
The eponymous owner of the thrift shop Second Hand Rose on IT: Welcome To Derry, Kimberly Guerrero added to Remar’s comments by highlighting the universal power of Stephen King’s books. To be perfectly frank, diversity and racial representation cannot be described as one of the author’s strongest assets, but the understanding of the human condition that her co-star mentioned means that his stories can transcend. As such, even though she grew up as a Native American girl in rural Oklahoma, she still saw herself and her own experiences in the adventure that boys of Castle Rock, Maine go on in Rob Reiner’s Stand By Me:
The one that really sticks with me is Stand By Me. It's so just... meaningful. Because I was a kid growing up in Oklahoma, in rural Oklahoma, and I just saw myself in those kids riding bikes and going up to the train tracks, and we were always looking for mysteries like that. So to get to see that on cinema, I think there's something, especially because there wasn't a lot of representation of indigenous people back then. So I was grabbing onto anybody that looked like me or seemed like me. And it was a reflection. It's sort of like, 'Well, if it's there, then I exist.'
Jovan Adepo is actually an interesting part of the representation conversation. In The Stand, the Larry Underwood character is a white man, but it was felt in the development of the limited series that he could be portrayed as being Black, and Adepo was cast in the role. The actor expressed an admiration for the way in which King is able to write about the world and modernity, and he expressed humbleness in now getting the opportunity to also be a key part of the IT canon:
It was really cool to get to play Larry Underwood years ago. Especially because in the book, I mean, I don't necessarily look like Larry at all, him being a white rock star and Stephen being completely okay with me playing the part anyway. But then coming back in and getting to play half of the couple that really served as the inception of the Hanlons presence in the town of Derry, just getting to share that moment and experience with Taylour [Paige ]was really an honor.
Sitting beside Adepo – playing the Charlotte Hanlon to his Leroy Hanlon on IT: Welcome To Derry – Taylour Paige added to her co-stars sentiments with pure appreciation for Stephen King’s creativity. After all, it takes a powerful mind to render something that is meant to be perceived as silly as being a total nightmare. She said,
Stephen King's name is just synonymous with wild, incredible, genius mind, wild imagination, inner child intact, but also, he's given us so much and he's employed so many people because, and he has entertained so many people. I was wondering recently just what came first, were we already afraid of clowns, or did Stephen King highlight it? He really defined the clown fear thing.
More clown-centric terror is soon on the way. The first two episodes of IT: Welcome To Derry have aired and are now available to stream with a HBO Max subscription, and the next chapter is set to premiere this coming Sunday, November 9 at 10pm ET/PT. And as for The King Beat, I’ll be back here on CinemaBlend next Thursday with a fresh new column covering the latest happenings in the world of Stephen King.
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