Coming of age in Hawkins: Meet the cast of ‘Stranger Things’

Actors Joe Keery, Maya Hawke, Natalia Dyer, Gaten Matarazzo, Sadie Sink and Caleb McLaughlin talk about growing up and fighting monsters in the latest season of their hit Netflix show

Part of the charm of why Stranger Things has captivated an international fan base, is that the hit series is as much a coming-of-age drama as it is about supernatural monsters and hidden worlds. 

Talking to some of the cast members over a Zoom video call — Joe Keery, Maya Hawke, Natalia Dyer, Gaten Matarazzo, Sadie Sink and Caleb McLaughlin — is only testament to this, as the lot discuss how their characters on the show mirror so many of the real-life dilemmas they deal with. 

The new season picks up six months after the epic Battle of Starcourt, in the aftermath of which all the friends are separated for the first time. As the horrors of the Upside Down surfaces again, a new mystery emerges threatening to derail life at Hawkins, in what is their most terrifying enemy yet.

Joe Keery, who plays Steve Harrington, says that the Duffer brothers (the show’s creators) are so good at incorporating everybody’s personalities into the characters, that they might not even be aware of it. “They also try to maximise your strengths as an actor too, and create opportunities to do things that you’re good at.”

Maya Hawke pipes in, “Oh, my character’s foot-in-mouth syndrome resonates with me pretty well (laughs). But I really love her (Robin Buckley) and feel there’s a lot of similarity there.”

There’s no denying the cultural impact that Stranger Things has had over the years, bringing the Eighties back into trending pop-culture. Joe agrees, “It’s so cool to be a part of something that so many people love, but still difficult to wrap your head around it.”

Maya, who is still finding her feet on the show after her character’s introduction in the third season, adds, “The show also represents so much of our parents’ generation, different aspects of their youth, and who they were. There are all these sentimental references to things that were really important to them as teenagers or young adults.”