As Practical Magic 2 puts her back on the big screen, King's marriage traces back to a Hulu set, a leap-year proposal and a Mallorca estate borrowed from The Night Manager.
Joey King is 27 now, in theatres this week with Practical Magic 2, working again with the producer behind Ramona and Beezus, the film that first put her name on posters. That reunion has sent people back to her personal timeline, and the headline there is Steven Piet, the director she's been married to since the summer of 2023.
They found each other on set, not at a party. King starred in Hulu's The Act back in 2018, the true-crime limited series that got her an Emmy nomination, and Piet directed two of its episodes while co-executive producing the show. King has said the pursuit was hers, not his.
"We worked so well together. There was such an immediate ease. I had a very big crush but waited until the wrap party to ask him out. I worked up the courage and took him aside to tell him how I felt. It was the best decision of my life!" she told Vogue.
The engagement landed on February 2, 2022, a 2/2/22 date that also happened to be their third anniversary as a couple. Instead of one wedding, they had two, spaced a month apart.
The first was a legal ceremony in Los Angeles that August, and King's own account of it, posted to Instagram, reads less like a wedding and more like a dare. "Steven and I legally had to get married in the states before our September wedding in Mallorca," she wrote. "Obviously we wanted it to be a bit of a party. So we got some sickeningly hot outfits, gathered family (my mom made me a bouquet from the dollar store), hit up a place called Same Day Marriage in Los Angeles, and went bowling and partied."
The second wedding, the one meant for family and cameras, happened that September at La Fortaleza, a private estate in Mallorca that's doubled as a filming location for The Night Manager and Lioness. More than a hundred guests turned up, among them Zach Braff, Michelle Williams, Patricia Arquette and Logan Lerman.
Piet's own résumé has been building quietly alongside King's. He debuted as a director with the indie Uncle John in 2015 and has since worked across Channel Zero, Briarpatch, A Friend of the Family and Happy Face. His most recent credits include three episodes of Hulu's Murdaugh: Death in the Family, including the pilot and finale, plus an episode of Apple TV's Cape Fear.
The two have said they want to keep collaborating on screen, not just off it. "We work really well together. We also just really love spending time together," King told Allure. "So getting to do something where we're both doing what we love and we get to hang out with each other, that's the best."
With Practical Magic 2 now playing, the question fans are asking is less about the sequel's box office and more about whether King and Piet will end up on a call sheet together next.
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