USA TODAY International Edition
How ‘ Jaws’ sank its teeth into ‘ Stranger Things’
Infamous shark helped inspire the shadowy Monster
Spoiler alert! The following contains mild spoilers for the first season of Stranger Things. The Monster from Stranger Things may not have a face, but he has a name. The man inside the creepy costume is Mark Steger, who specializes in bringing otherworldly characters like the Monster to life. Steger, along with series creators Matt and Ross Duffer, conceptualized and performed the character that brought the horror to the Netflix hit.
In an interview with USA TODAY, Steger explained part of why that monster terrifies us so much: He’s partially based on the shark from Jaws.
“Part of it was also how it was shot,” Steger explains. “You don’t see too much of the Monster for a good bit of the series. And that was how they shot it in Jaws — you could just see a little glimpse of it. And I think that’s what really works in the series.”
But it wasn’t just the way the Duffers kept the Monster hidden that was sharklike, Steger says.
“A shark is basically very welldesigned for what it does. It hasn’t evolved much over hundreds of millions of years, because it’s so good at what it does,” he says. “And one of the main things it does is it feeds. The idea that this Monster I’m portraying appears from this other realm, it’s like another atmosphere, it’s like water is another atmosphere. ... When I come into our consensus reality it’s like I’m breaking the surface. I’m jumping out and grabbing ( actor) Robert Shaw and pulling him back into the deep.
“Because the shark is so welladapted to what it does, I imagine that I was this creature that was perfect for what it does. I do this. ... I’m this perfect eating machine.”
Even on set the shark bit worked, and Steger managed to terrify one of the child actors on one memorable day of shooting.
“There’s actually a funny little outtake from one of the shots with ( Millie Bobby Brown, who plays Eleven),” he recalls. “After they cut she says, ‘ Oh Mark,’ she’s a Brit, she has an English accent, ‘ Oh Mark you scared the life out of me.’ ”