Deceased (film)
Stephanie "Steff" Drayton (née Stephanie Stepanek) is the wife of David Drayton and the mother of Billy Drayton.
Biography
Stephanie went to the University of Maine. She married David Drayton at an unknown point before 1975 in December (presumably before 2002 in the film), and the two had a son, Billy Drayton, circa 1975/2002.
Five years later, their home is damaged by a storm, and she, her husband, and her son witness the Mist moving across Long Lake from Shaymore. While David, Billy and Norton drive into town to buy supplies to repair the damage, Steff stays behind to clean up the debris.
Novella
Steff's fate is unknown, but since she was working outside, and the picture window of David's studio was broken open during the storm, her chances of surviving the Mist are very slim.
Film
Steff's cocooned corpse.
When the Mist reached the Draytons' home, Steff was killed by Gray Widowers and her body was cocooned in web silk onto the broken picture window. On the third day of the disaster, Steff's body is discovered by her husband and a group of other survivors.
Relationships
David Drayton
David and Stephanie were apparently a happily married couple, and Stephanie was shown to find David's sarcastic comments funny.
Billy Drayton
Stephanie was a bit more serious with Billy than David normally was, and would become deeply terrified and concerned for her son's safety when he went near dangerous hazards such as fallen utility poles.
Brenton Norton
Stephanie disliked Norton, who appeared to be attracted to her.
Mrs. Carmody
Stephanie liked to browse around Mrs. Carmody's antiquary, and was uneasy when invoking Mrs. Carmody's name (David believed that this was because Mrs. Carmody had subconsciously found Steff's mental achilles heel).
Trivia
- However, Stephanie was originally going to be killed by Gray Widowers, but the scene was too dark, grim, sad and emotional, and Frank Darabont told Martin Shafer while looking at the scenes, "It's too scary, we'll have adults crying in the lobby and a lot of angry security guards, you don't want that?". Because the scene was too frightening to show the audiences, Frank Darabont changed The Mist's run time from 177 minutes to 126 minutes.