Credit: NetflixStranger Things star Finn Wolfhard says he doesn’t really watch early seasons of the show, but they do make him wish that he was a little less experienced, worse actor sometimes.
Like his co-stars Millie Bobby Brown, Gaten Matarazzo, Caleb McLaughlin, and Noah Schnapp, Finn Wolfhard rocketed to global fame when Stranger Things debuted on Netflix in 2016. While the show featured well-known actors like Winona Ryder and Matthew Modine (and, to a lesser extent, David Harbour), both the story and the media focused on the quintet of young actors, all of whom have grown up along with the show.
Now, with the final season of the streaming show in production, it seems that Stranger Things stars have some differing feelings about how the show has affected their careers. Millie Bobby Brown has been very vocal about her readiness to move on from the show and considers it something like graduating from high school, while David Harbour is literally daring fans to be angry about what happens in season 5.
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For his part, Finn Wolfhard seems grateful for the experience and oddly nostalgic about his lack of acting skill in the early seasons and seems to pine for the days in which he was a worse actor.
In a recent episode of the popular YouTube interview series Hot Ones, Finn Wolfhard sat down with host Sean Evans over extremely spicy hot wings and expressed that he now realizes that he didn’t know much about acting when Stranger Things began. However, he kind of wishes that he still did not sometimes.
When asked about his performance in the early seasons of Stranger Things, Finn Wolfhard said, “I didn’t know what I was doing back then and like, in a lot of ways, I think that really helped me and now, like, as you get older you get so much more, like, kind of like self-obsessed…You get a little more in your head…and I feel like I learned so much more obviously since then, but I wish I had a little bit of that naivete.”
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It is relatively rare that you hear an actor nostalgic for the days in which they knew less about acting, but perhaps having a pretty definitive record of your growth as an actor makes it hit a little different for people like Finn Wolfhard.
Stranger Things season 5 is currently in production at Netflix and is expected to be streaming sometime in 2025. Finn Wolfhard will also be appearing in Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire later this year.
How do you think the child actors of Stranger Things have changed over the years? Give us your thoughts in the comment below!