Tabitha King rescued her husband’s career before it began.
Stephen King, 77, had already thrown the opening pages of Carrie in the trash when his wife fished them out, read them, and told him to keep writing. The intervention came in the early 1970s, when the future horror legend was working as a schoolteacher and living with his family in a trailer.
“I did three single-spaced pages of a first draft, then crumpled them up in disgust and threw them away,” King wrote in a 2000 Guardian essay. Without Tabitha’s rescue, one of the most celebrated horror novels in history might never have reached shelves.
Publishers rejected Carrie 30 times before Doubleday finally took a gamble. The book hit shelves on April 5, 1974, and the reaction stunned the publishing world. The paperback rights sold for $400,000, an extraordinary sum at the time. King used half the money to pay off his debts and support his family.
The novel spent months on bestseller lists and launched a career that has since produced more than 65 novels and hundreds of short stories.
Two years after publication, director Brian De Palma turned Carrie into a film. The 1976 adaptation starred Sissy Spacek as Carrie White and Piper Laurie as her terrifying mother, Margaret. Both actresses received Academy Award nominations, a rare achievement for a horror film at that time. Spacek’s portrayal remains one of the most iconic performances in the genre.
The story has been adapted several times since, including a 2013 remake starring Chloë Grace Moretz and a 1988 Broadway musical. The musical was famously short-lived but has since built a cult following.
Now Amazon has mounted an eight-episode television series. Director and showrunner Mike Flanagan aimed to “do Carrie different,” he said. “Brian De Palma’s film is an immortal classic and a near perfect adaptation of King’s novel. There was no reason to do that again but I couldn’t stop thinking about it.”
The new series follows high schooler Carrie White, played by Summer H. Howell, 22, who was chosen from more than 1,400 actresses. Carrie has spent most of her life isolated at home under the watch of her ultra-religious mother, Margaret, played by Samantha Sloyan. After losing her father unexpectedly, Carrie is forced to attend Ewen’s public high school, where she becomes the center of a bullying scandal that spreads across social media. Her telekinetic powers are unleashed in the aftermath.
King himself has endorsed the new version. “I couldn’t stop watching the show. It feels like it gets to the heart of teenage misery (and occasional bright shafts of joy),” he said. He added that while the book and De Palma’s film were about blood and horror, Flanagan’s version is about “the horror of social media.”
The original novel’s path from trash can to cultural touchstone began with a frustrated schoolteacher crumpling pages and ended with a wife’s faith in what she had read.
Amazon’s Carrie series is now streaming.