The TV show Stephen King refused to star in: “I don’t know what his problem was”
When he’s not busy writing novels, short stories, and novellas or watching them be adapted for the screen at an alarming rate, Stephen King has been known to dabble in acting. He’s never going to win an Academy Award, but he has been quietly mastering the art of the cameo appearance.
The author made his screen debut in zombie maestro George A Romero’s two-wheeled action flick Knightriders as a man eating a hoagie, which was a fairly inauspicious way to introduce himself to cinema. Since then, he’s become a regular presence in film and television projects based on his work.
The horror icon has popped up in everything from Pet Sematary and It Chapter Two to the small screen versions of The Stand and The Shining, not to mention his guest spots in an eclectic array of titles, including Frasier, Sons of Anarchy, Romero’s Diary of the Dead and the Farrelly brothers’ Fever Pitch.
However, he drew the line at one of the most iconic shows of the modern era, which is especially strange when he’d already been in it. King played himself in ‘Insane Clown Poppy’, the 13th episode of The Simpons‘ 12th season, sharing the spotlight with Krusty the Klown at the Springfield Festival of Books.
22 years later, the recurring Treehouse of Horror specials dedicated an entire episode to one of King’s most popular works, with Krusty – or Krusto, in this case – standing in for Pennywise in ‘Not It’. Even though the whole thing was dedicated to his creation and he had previous with The Simpsons, showrunner Matt Selman admitted to CinemaBlend that he wasn’t interested in a second bite at the apple.
“Former guest star Stephen King declined to participate in this one,” he said. “Yeah, he didn’t want to do it. I don’t know what his problem was. I don’t think he quite… Some of these authors, they don’t understand that they have all the power. He’s the brand. He must know that; he’s Stephen King. So iconic. Like, I don’t even think I have time to read all the books he’s written in the rest of my life, let alone for one person to write all those books.”
The part scripted for King was “as a scary gravedigger who turns out to be a monster, and he said no.” Of course, just because The Simpsons has evolved into a pop culture monolith over its four-decade run on TV, it doesn’t mean celebrities are obligated to come running when asked to appear.
Besides, King had scratched the show off his to-do list in the early 2000s, so it’s not like either the author or the creative team will rue each other as the one who got away.
