Stephen King, 79, pictured using a cane as he makes incredibly rare public appearance

Stephen King’s celebrated horror works may be all over our TV screens, but the author himself tends to shy away from the spotlight these days. Stephen, who lives a quiet life in Maine with his long-time wife Tabitha, resurfaced this week for a rare appearance in the Big Apple.

The 79-year-old Carrie author was pictured strolling the streets of New York City on Wednesday with the aid of a walking stick ahead of a live book event. Stephen kept it casual in jeans and a jumper, with a puffer vest over the top.

The author was in New York on 4 November for a special sold-out event celebrating the release of his latest novel, Other Worlds Than These, which came out on 6 October and wraps up his Talisman Trilogy with co-author Peter Straub. Stephen joined fans in person at St. Ann & the Holy Trinity Church in Brooklyn for a conversation with bestselling American novelist Emma Straub.

Stephen’s latest hit adaptations

Many of Stephen’s works have been adapted for the big and small screen, including numerous versions of his debut 1974 horror novel, Carrie. After three separate films, Carrie has been reimagined in a modern social media-led setting with a new 2026 series on Prime Video, starring Summer H. Howell as the titular Carrie and Samantha Sloyan as her strict, ultra-religious mother.

The series has been a smashing success, hitting the number one spot on the streaming platform in 105 countries and earning an 85 per cent critic approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. And in good news for fans, it’s already been renewed for a second season, which will delve into uncharted territory after the first series concluded Stephen’s book.

In more TV news, a second season of The Institute, based on Stephen’s 2019 science fiction horror novel, is set to premiere on MGM+ on 8 November. The author’s popular IT series also received a new prequel TV series last year, titled IT: Welcome to Derry, which followed a sequence of events leading up to Stephen’s original 1986 novel.

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How Stephen was involved in the Carrie remake

Mike Flanagan, the director behind the latest Carrie adaptation, went to the author for his input before putting his words to screen for an eight-episode arc. “There’s no world where I’m doing anything like that without talking to Steve about it first,” he told publication Polygon.

“He got to see all of that before I agreed to do the show, and was very intimately involved in deciding how we wanted to expand that universe.”

The series has made several changes to Stephen’s original story, with Mike admitting that some had even been suggested by the author. “Some people seem animated by trying to protect Stephen King in this, and what I want to say to them is, ‘Guys, this is Steve’s idea,'” he explained.

“Steve believed very much that the story had already been told as he had written it. What excited him and animated him about this was the chance to expand that universe and to open it up into a much broader world.”

Stephen praised the director as the “best adapter” of his work in a personal home video message posted on X (formerly Twitter).

“And if you like this and enough people watch it, we might be doing something else that’s really special. But I can’t talk about it,” he teased.