David Harbour and Brett Gelman talk Stranger Things’ terrifying fourth season
Rachael Davis sits down with two stars of Netflix’s hit sci-fi horror series to hear why this season, with Winona Ryder, is the most epic yet
Residents of the fictional town of Hawkins, Indiana often say that it is cursed.
Hawkins is the kind of small, sleepy midwestern American town where nothing really happens – that is until 1983, when a gate to an alternate dimension is accidentally opened, unleashing years of supernatural terror onto the citizens.
It is fair to say that those who think the town is cursed are, to quote the character Dustin Henderson, “not way off ”.
In the fourth season of Netflix’s Stranger Things, Hawkins is yet again plagued by a terrifying supernatural entity from the dimension known as the Upside Down.
When the town is shaken by a horrific and gruesome attack, it is not long before our heroic gang of inquisitive teenagers realise that it was not the work of a depraved human, but a creature from another world.
It is 1986 and our group of friends is separated for the first time. Joyce, Will, Jonathan and Eleven have relocated to California, Steve and Robin begin working in a video rental store in Hawkins, Nancy is working on the high school paper while preparing to head off to college, and Dustin, Lucas, Mike and Max start Hawkins High School together.
High school is a rough time for many, and even kids who have fought off monsters from another dimension are not immune to the struggles it brings: bullying, sports cliques, popularity contests and adolescent identity battles.
On top of that, they are also still dealing with the fallout from the Battle of Starcourt before setting out once again to solve a mystery that could finally put an end to the horrors of the Upside Down for good.
Also having a dreadful time this season is former Hawkins’ police chief Jim Hopper, played by David Harbour. A post-credits scene at the end of season three hints that he might still be alive, despite being caught up in the explosive end of the Battle of Starcourt, and that he is locked up in a Russian prison.
We meet him in Stranger Things 4 as he is being punched, kicked, tortured and tormented before being shipped off to a forced labour camp in the snowy wasteland of Kamchatka.
“What’s special this season is that we get to see a very different guy than we’ve seen before,” says Harbour, 47.
“We saw this cop father figure, and now he’s had a death and he’s being resurrected as a prisoner who’s become this kind of brutal warrior to have to survive the frozen wasteland of Russia, the prison life he’s in. There’s also this tremendous guilt that he carries around that he’s going to have to purge.
“We’re going to see a very different guy this season, a man that’s truly broken and living in despair.”
Meanwhile Joyce, played by Winona Ryder, receives a mysterious parcel from Russia which leads her to believe that Hopper might still be alive.
She immediately calls in reinforcements in the form of eccentric Murray, played by Brett Gelman, who became a right-hand man in season three thanks to his fluency in Russian.
Murray is a central part of the narrative this season, the apex of a character arc that has
seen him go from kooky comic relief to an integral pillar of support for Joyce.
“It’s amazing to be able to see how Murray has developed to be more of a part of everything,” Gelman, 45, says.
“Every year my role has grown and it’s such a tremendous honour for me – it’s so exciting to be more and more of a part of a show that I was a fan of.
“Even though he was smaller in the second season, I’m still thinking about the entire arc of what’s going on with him and where he’s coming from, and why he is the way that he is. That’s all being filtered through the comedy.”
Gelman adds that working more closely this season with Winona Ryder, known for her roles in classic 1980s and 1990s films like Beetlejuice and Edward Scissorhands, has been “insane”.
“She is somebody that I grew up learning from as a young person wanting to act professionally, somebody who I was in love with watching on the silver screen. She’s such a remarkable artist, such an amazing person.
“I love the idea of being in a comedy duo in something to begin with, but the fact that it’s Winona Ryder just makes it that much more heavenly.”
Similarly, Hopper’s character in season four is a far cry from the sofa-dwelling doughnuteating cop fans know and love from earlier seasons. He has a number of exciting and physically-demanding fight scenes and action moments, his bravery tested to the limit in the desolate Russian tundra.
“Up until last season, I’d done very little training,” says Harbour about preparing for the role. “I’m just a guy who, for most of my life, kind of knew how to throw a punch, but that’s about it. I’ve never really been a physical guy – I’ve always been like a dorky theatre kid, to be honest.
“I had to train a lot, different weight training programmes and physical rehab with Pilates and stuff like that, and I did a lot of boxing.”
Season four of Stranger
Things is darker, more emotional, more psychologically thrilling and action-packed than its predecessors, though it still retains its trademark comic relief to soften the blows.
It is also perhaps the most epic season of the show to date, as creators the Duffer Brothers engage in monumental cinematic shots which Harbour says made the cast and crew “giggle on set about the big Spielberg nature of what this show’s become”.
“Everything is amplified this season to the millionth degree,” Gelman adds.
“I really love the way the Duffers balance everything in such a masterful way: they are able to balance several different genres at once and scare you, make you laugh, make you stress, have you at the edge of your seat, thrill you from one scene to the next.
“As an audience member, they treat you as a pinball of tone and genre.”
● Stranger Things 4 is coming to Netflix on Friday, May 27 (Volume One) and Friday, July 1 (Volume Two).