Stranger Things kids basking in their new-found fame
Instagram verifications and BuzzFeed quizzes confirmed celebrity for close-knit group
Spoiler alert: This story contains spoilers for Stranger Things. NEW YORK— When Stranger Things crept onto Netflix in mid-July, the sci-fi thriller galvanized social media with its ’80s throwbacks, retro titles and ill-fated sidekick Barb (Shannon Purser). But it wasn’t until recently that the series’ youngest stars realized just how huge it had become.
“The moment for me was definitely when there was a BuzzFeed quiz about, ‘What Stranger Things character are you?’ ” says Natalia Dyer,19, who plays older sister Nancy to mis- fit hero Mike (Finn Wolfhard, 13).
For Gaten Matarazzo, 13, who costars as the floppy-haired Dustin, “it was only a couple days ago, when I got verified on Instagram. That’s when I realized, ‘Whoa, if half a million people are following me, this is a big deal’. ”
Stranger arrived on Netflix, which does not release viewership numbers, with little fanfare. Created by relative newcomers Matt and Ross Duffer, the nostalgia-fuelled series has only one recognizable star in Winona Ryder ( Heathers), playing a restless mother whose son, Will (Noah Schnapp, 11), goes missing, setting off a chain of supernatural events in their small Indiana town.
Will’s Dungeons & Dragons- loving buddies Mike, Dustin and Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin, 12) try to track him down, teaming up with a steely, telekinetic runaway, Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown, 12).
The show’s straightforward storytelling borrows heavily from classic sci-fi and horror films such as Poltergeist and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. The preteen actors had seen some of them before; others were required viewing before signing on. The Duffer brothers “had what was called the ‘inspiration board’ in one of our later callback (auditions),” Schnapp says. “It was a bunch of pictures of movies and it was like, ‘You have to watch these movies: E.T., The Goonies, Stand by Me. I watched all of them and I loved them.”
Sitting around a table, the closeknit kids are even chattier than their onscreen counterparts. They continually interrupt each other in a spir- ited debate about who pulled the best on-set pranks (Millie, the selfproclaimed “jokiest”) and filmed the grossest scene (Noah, covered in buckets of freezing goo inside an alternate dimension known as the “Upside Down”).
On set, “they were delightfully mischievous and giggly — sometimes distractingly so — but none of us cared because they were forming bonds and acting like real kids,” says executive producer Shawn Levy.
Cast from a pool of more than a thousand child actors, “we didn’t just need talented kids, we needed authentic kids. Those are extra hard to find.”
Stranger was just renewed for a second season, due next year, although the youngsters say they’re in the dark about what happens next. (The fate of Eleven is literally up in the air, after the fan favourite — spoiler alert! — vanished in the Season 1 finale when she destroyed the Demogorgon monster.)
And then, of course, there’s Barb, Nancy’s faithful friend in mom jeans who was eaten by the creature in an early episode but has lived on in Twitter memes and think pieces.
McLaughlin predicts the redhaired voice of reason will return in flashbacks. Nancy’s boyfriend, Steve (Joe Keery), “was originally supposed to be the monster bait, but then they were like, ‘Hey, Joe’s really likable, let’s keep him and kill Barb,’ ” Wolfhard remembers.
“It was one of those things they wrote in just to move the story along, but now that she’s stuck so well, they have to bring her back.”