Steven Prusakowski
As Vecna looms as the Upside Down grows closer to consuming all of Hawkins, it seems the Stranger Things has consumed its fans who rabidly await the beginning of the end for the beloved series. Yet for those who made Stranger Things, the actual ending came months earlier, in Atlanta when some of the cast turned the basement into one last childhood hideout and refused to go home after filming wrapped, as learned during my conversation with Finn Wolfhard (Mike), Director Shawn Levy, Caleb McLaughlin (Lucas), and Gaten Matarazzo (Dustin). (Full video below.)
VIDEO INTERVIEW
Nearly a decade ago, when it first aired, no one knew what to expect from the series. Levy, then a feature film director with no real TV experience, read a spec pilot by the Duffer Brothers, unknown twins whose only previous movie never even got released. “I read that script and I called them into my office the next day,” Levy remembers. “I was like, this is just, this is so good. I don’t know what I’m going to be to you on this show, but I’ll be whatever you need. I just got to help make this real.” Netflix took the gamble on the heavily 80s nostalgic show that “broke the main rule of television at that time,” Levy explained. “It was a show about kids that wasn’t for kids.”
Meanwhile, the group of actual kids walked onto the set excited, and as Wolfhard explained, uncertain of what was coming for them. “I had never done anything that big of a scale ever. I had no idea what I was doing. No, I still don’t really know.” The 80s horror homage quickly became a global obsession.
Fast-forward a decade. Those kids are grown and their performances in season 5 are, in Levy’s words, “the fruition of 10 years of maturation and just getting really, really good at their job.” When that ten years came to an end some of the Stranger Things crew was not ready to say goodbye. Matarazzo explained that since this series is closing out on such a positive note, it makes it tougher. “It almost feels easier to say goodbye on bad terms sometimes. We’re saying goodbye when we don’t want to.” Wolfhard agreed, comparing it to “a breakup with someone you still love.”
“The final day was the weirdest, most positive, coolest moment ever; this huge celebration with deep emotion… immediately followed by the hardest depression the next morning when we had to pack up and leave,” shared Wolfhard. The cast slept over on set that night, building forts in the basement, running and jumping around the set like they were kids again, refusing to let the magic die.
“We slept over on set. We didn’t sleep at all, but we all shared couch cushions on the ground. I built a tent.” McLaughlin shared, “Mine was literally almost the width of the basement.” For a few precious hours they pretended the story didn’t have to end.
When morning came, the final goodbyes occurred. “We all said goodbye like at the end of season three where everyone’s hugging because they’re moving away,” Wolfhard revealed. “We all said goodbye outside. We all drove away in different directions.” Wolfhard, Gaten, and Sadie Sink piled into one car. Gaten drove. Wolfhard rode shotgun. Sadie was in the back. No one spoke much. “It was so misty. So foggy. A really gross morning after the most gorgeous day. You couldn’t see anything. Just miserable,” recalled Matarazzo
McLaughlin felt the entire final day like “a 90s anime flashback. A score was playing and I was reminiscing on the past, the present and the future at the same time. I felt like I was sitting there with my younger self just like, ‘Wow. We did it!’”
Levy, hearing the full sleepover story for the first time in our conversation, just shakes his head. “I didn’t know this.” After the interview ended the cast confessed that they never shared that story before.
Season 5 is finally here. The battles will be bigger, the emotions higher, and the stakes apocalyptic. No matter what happens on screen it will only tell half the story of this close knit group of friends and actors whose decade-long journey has come to a conclusion.
The full video interview (below), comes complete with stories about first-day farts, Demogorgon survival strategies, favorite heroic moments, and more. More Stranger Things interviews to come including with Vecna himself. Jamie Campbell Bower.
The first for episodes of the final season of Stranger Things premiere on Thanksgiving, followed by another installment on Christmas, and the final installment on New Years Eve only on Netflix.
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