{"id":261311,"date":"2025-11-13T23:10:15","date_gmt":"2025-11-13T23:10:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/261311\/"},"modified":"2025-11-13T23:10:15","modified_gmt":"2025-11-13T23:10:15","slug":"an-oral-history-of-the-casts-last-day-on-set","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/261311\/","title":{"rendered":"An Oral History of the Cast’s Last Day on Set"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tWhen \u201cStranger Things<\/a>\u201d premiered on Netflix on July 15, 2016, the show\u2019s cast was made up almost entirely of young people at the starts of their professional lives. The show\u2019s creators, Matt and Ross Duffer, have told a decidedly grown-up adventure story filled with ferocious monsters and equally terrifying adult authority figures. But they built \u201cStranger Things\u201d on a foundation of pre-teen innocence and adolescent angst, as vividly reflected in the youthful faces of the dozen or so actors who would eventually come to populate its cast.<\/p>\n

\n\tAlongside veteran actors Winona Ryder, David Harbour, Cara Buono and Matthew Modine, the core \u201ckid\u201d group first consisted of children sitting on either side of 13 (Millie Bobby Brown, Finn Wolfhard<\/a>, Gaten Matarazzo, Caleb McLaughlin and Noah Schnapp<\/a>), while the \u201cteens\u201d were comprised of young adults barely over 20 (Natalia Dyer, Charlie Heaton and Joe Keery). As the show exploded in popularity, the cast expanded to include new kids played by Sadie Sink and Priah Ferguson (in Season 2), and a new teen played by Maya Hawke (in Season 3)\u00a0\u2014 as well as a few other characters who, by and large, were killed off along the way. (R.I.P. Bob, Billy, Eddie.)<\/p>\n

\n\tWhile some of the \u201cStranger Things\u201d series regulars had worked before, none of them \u2014 except Ryder \u2014\u00a0had experienced anything close to the phenomenon that the show became. Practically overnight, they transformed from unknowns into global household names, and as the story of Hawkins, Indiana progressed through its first four seasons, audiences got to \u201cgrow with the show in the same way that I got to grow with the \u2018Harry Potter\u2019 movies,\u201d says Wolfhard. \u201cI felt like I really knew those people, knew those characters. The way that you relate to them is so special.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAs with the \u201cHarry Potter\u201d films, \u201cStranger Things\u201d is coming to an end<\/a> almost a decade after it began, the first four episodes premiering Nov. 26, the next three at Christmas, and the finale on New Year\u2019s Eve. Its original stars \u2014 all of them now adults, yes, even Ferguson \u2014\u00a0spent the entirety of 2024 in Atlanta filming the final eight episodes of the show, culminating with the feature length series finale that the Duffers, who wrote and directed the episode, have promised will provide a definitive end to every character\u2019s story. (That includes young Holly Wheeler, now played by Nell Fisher, who takes a more central role in Season 5.)<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a series of interviews conducted by Variety from July through November, the Duffers and the cast of \u201cStranger Things\u201d relayed the experience of concluding the show that has defined the most formative decade of their lives \u2014 and how, even as they knew the end was coming, none of them were quite prepared for how intense those last days would be for them. Here, in their own lightly edited \u2014 and spoiler-free \u2014 words, is the story of the final days of \u201cStranger Things.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tMatt Duffer and Ross Duffer<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tAndrew Cooper\/Netflix<\/p>\n

\t\tThe final table read took place on Sept. 8, 2024, on Stage 16 of the Atlanta production facility that was the home of \u201cStranger Things\u201d for the majority of its five-season run. The occasion \u2014 attended by just a few people outside of the Duffers and the cast, including executive producer Shawn Levy \u2014 was unique in many ways, first and foremost because none of the actors had seen the finished script for the finale until that day.\t<\/p>\n

\n\tMatt Duffer (creator, writer, director): Ross and I don\u2019t share anything with anybody. The actors poke around, especially Millie. She\u2019s pretty good at guessing things, too.\u00a0But everybody was reading it cold for the first time. Ross and I were nervous, because no one aside from us and maybe two other people had read the script.<\/p>\n

\n\tRoss Duffer (creator, writer, director): I know the actors are so protective of those characters, too. Some people knew some broad beats of the stuff that was going to happen, but generally, they didn\u2019t know how they were going to end up.<\/p>\n

\n\tSadie Sink (Max Mayfield): I always get really nervous for table reads, but that was the most nerve-racking of them all. Usually, we get to look at it on our own time, and then come together and read it. But that was the first time it was just a completely cold read.<\/p>\n

\n\tCharlie Heaton (Jonathan Byers): It was really intimate. It was with Matt and Ross, the cast, and Shawn. In the past, we did these really big table reads for 50 or 60 people.<\/p>\n

\n\tNell Fisher (Holly Wheeler): For the first six episodes, we were on quite long, menacing tables with microphones in, like, an all-black room. But for the final episode, we were just kind of sitting around. Some people were on couches, some people were on bean bags, and it was all very relaxed.<\/p>\n

\n\tCharlie Heaton: The table read for us is our version of watching and experiencing it for the first time. And then there\u2019s the heightened element of this is the last time we\u2019re all going to sit together and read it and experience it.<\/p>\n

\n\tPriah Ferguson (Erica Sinclair): I was sad, but I was also excited to see how the story will end and how it all comes together.<\/p>\n

\n\tNatalia Dyer (Nancy Wheeler): The scripts are always very fun to read. They kind of jump off the page. So the table reads generally have always been something you look forward to. It\u2019s like reading a book that you really enjoy. Often, it\u2019s the first time you\u2019ve seen each other for a while, and it\u2019s for the first of the episodes, so there\u2019s a lot of new beginning energy. I don\u2019t think we normally would read the last ones together so much. So there\u2019s definitely a different energy in that last one.<\/p>\n

\t\tIn truth, a few of the actors had already shot part of the finale script before the table read.\t<\/p>\n

\n\tNell Fisher: I had actually filmed some scenes from Episode 8, without having read the script, which was quite funny.<\/p>\n

\n\tMatt Duffer: There were certain scenes in the finale that took place in a summer setting that we had to shoot before we had completed the script. That was unusual, in that we did feed some pages completely out of context to our actors, and we had to shoot scenes from Episode 8 part way through production. It\u2019s a horrible thing to do. You don\u2019t want to be establishing continuity in that way, but it was necessary. It ended up working totally fine, thank God.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tNoah Schnapp, Gaten Matarazzo, Caleb McLaughlin and Ross and Matt Duffer<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tAtsushi Nishijima\/Netflix<\/p>\n

\t\tOne crucial member of the cast \u2014 who plays the show\u2019s main villain \u2014 couldn\u2019t attend the table read.\t<\/p>\n

\n\tJamie Campbell Bower (Vecna\/Henry Creel): I\u2019ve discussed Henry and Vecna, and this idea of isolation and loneliness. There are lots of coincidences\u00a0\u2014 well, seeming coincidences\u00a0\u2014 that happen in life in general, and one of those for me was upon being asked to come in to read the final episode of \u201cStranger Things,\u201d I decided to get COVID. So my read through for that final episode was done on Zoom in isolation whilst everybody else was in the room. I thought it quite a fitting end.<\/p>\n

\t\tBefore the table read began, the Duffers were called upon to commemorate the occasion.\t<\/p>\n

\n\tMatt Duffer: Everybody started yelling, \u201cSpeech! Speech! Speech!\u201d First of all, we give really bad speeches. Last time we gave one, Millie was like, \u201cWhat was that?\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tCharlie Heaton: It was very beautiful. It was just this culmination of the whole thing.<\/p>\n

\n\tMatt Duffer: I said, \u201cEverything we wanted to say about the show, the experience of making the show, you as actors, and your characters \u2014 we tried to put all of that into the script. I\u2019m not going to be able to say anything better than that. We write much better than we speak. Let\u2019s just read the script.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tNatalia Dyer: It felt very reverent. Everybody\u2019s really anticipating this moment, and it also felt like a turning point, when you have it in your hands, and you finally have all these answers. It\u2019s so complex and layered, all the things that you feel: You\u2019re so grateful, you\u2019re so happy, you\u2019re so, so sad.<\/p>\n

\n\tCharlie Heaton: I was sitting in front of Noah and Finn. I assumed it might get emotional. But 20 minutes in \u2014 and we\u2019re not even a third into the script \u2014\u00a0Noah is bawling his eyes out, like deep sobs. And then Finn was crying. That really set everyone off.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tMillie Bobby Brown and Matt Duffer<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tAtsushi Nishijima\/Netflix<\/p>\n

\n\tFinn Wolfhard (Mike Wheeler): It\u2019s going to be interesting if that ever comes out, because it\u2019ll be pretty embarrassing. The whole thing is just crying. I was like, \u201cI\u2019m not going to cry. I\u2019m going to feel very normal, and it\u2019s going to be great.\u201d And then halfway through, I just started totally bawling my eyes out.<\/p>\n

\n\tNoah Schnapp (Will Byers): I can only imagine how that\u2019s going to feel on screen, with scoring and real faces and not just words on a page, but it hit a lot of us.\u00a0It felt like they were writing the end of our real people lives \u2014 it went beyond just the screenplay. I can\u2019t spoil it, but like, I always connect my life to some of the beats that they wrote in the script.<\/p>\n

\n\tFinn Wolfhard: A lot of our dialogue was echoing stuff \u2014 like, the whole thing is about the end, it\u2019s also final season for us. We all had dialogue in the final episode that we had said in some way or another in real life.<\/p>\n

\n\tRoss Duffer: Honestly, as we were writing that last script, which is the longest we\u2019ve ever spent on a script before, what they\u2019re talking about wasn\u2019t really a conscious thing. We were just talking about these characters. It really was once we did the final table read that it was like, \u201cOh, of course.\u201d That is when I saw how much it was mirroring their real-life experience.<\/p>\n

\n\tCharlie Heaton: Joe, Natalia and Maya and I were sitting together, and there was a little moment at the end where we all just looked at each other and were like \u201cWow.\u201d You feel so bonded to these people and have worked with them for 10 years. They\u2019re like family. We all hugged at the end afterwards. It was a lot more emotional than I expected it to be.<\/p>\n

\n\tJamie Campbell Bower: We finished doing the read through, and then Matt and Ross came up [to my Zoom screen], and they were almost like, \u201cOh my gosh, you\u2019re still here. Hi!\u201d Just because I\u2019ve been watching these people go through this emotional experience and thinking about how much this show has been there for people, I started to cry. All I could say to Matt and Ross was, \u201cThank you. Thank you for making this such a huge part of so many people\u2019s lives.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tDavid Harbour (Jim Hopper): The events that happen in that script pay off a lot of things that we started in the first season. The series begins with kids in the basement, and then when we leave the series, they\u2019re not kids anymore. They\u2019ve grown up. The passage of time is often just very moving in and of itself.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tMaya Hawke, Joe Keery, Finn Wolfhard and Charlie Heaton<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tAndrew Cooper\/Netflix<\/p>\n

\n\tPaul Dichter (writer): I remember going up to Ross and I was like, \u201cI\u2019m done. I just heard the final script of the final episode of \u2018Stranger Things\u2019 read out loud, and it\u2019s perfect. I\u2019m a writer on the show, and I just now,\u00a0just now, realize that I\u2019m done after 10 years, and it feels\u00a0crazy.\u201d And he was like, \u201cUh huh.\u201d He was not crying. I was like, \u201cYou don\u2019t feel done, do you?\u201d He\u2019s like, \u201cNo, I got months of shooting, I got a year of post, I got editing.\u201d I was like, \u201cYeah, you\u2019re not taking this moment in. You\u2019re not done.\u00a0I\u2019m\u00a0done. And it feels crazy. And when you have that same moment\u201d \u2014 which is honestly coming up very, very soon for them \u2014 \u201cyou\u2019re going to feel this way too, times 10 or a million.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tFinn Wolfhard: And it was on Gaten\u2019s birthday, so we threw a little party for him afterwards, and went to Medieval Times. It was a great day.<\/p>\n

\t\tWhat actually happens in the finale remains a tightly guarded secret that will be revealed when the episode debuts on Netflix and in select movie theaters<\/a> at 5pm PT \/ 8pm ET on Dec. 31. But speaking with Variety, the actors did share their experience of their final days on set. Thanks to some savvy work by the show\u2019s production staff\u2026\t<\/p>\n

\n\tMatt Duffer: We were actually able to structure it so every actor\u2019s last day was their last scene.<\/p>\n

\n\tNatalia Dyer: There are so many ways that that could not work out. You have so many moving pieces: There\u2019s schedules and filming and weather. The fact that they were able to pull that off, and they made a point of doing that, was really touching. Getting to do that with your character is really, really lovely. It really amps up the emotion of the moment and that day. It almost felt a little masochistic and indulgent\u00a0\u2014 but in the best way possible.<\/p>\n

\n\tMaya Hawke (Robin Buckley): I will be forever grateful to them for allowing our last moment not to be like, \u201cOK, and now throw a grenade at the monster again. Cut! That\u2019s a wrap on Maya!\u201d It was a monumental day, and they allowed it to really be that \u2014 and feel like that.\u202f<\/p>\n

\n\tCarmen Cuba (casting director): I hadn\u2019t visited the set since the first season. It was outside. It was freezing. I was overwhelmed with how gigantic it was. I\u2019ve worked on, I don\u2019t know, four Ridley Scott movies. It was bigger. And the guys are just sort of the same in every part of their job.\u00a0They\u2019re calm, they\u2019re direct, they\u2019re articulate. I was like, \u201cHow are they doing that, with this epicness around?\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tMatt Duffer: There was a sense at the end of those days that this experience that we all had is something that none of us will likely ever have again. It was really hard. Each day was saying goodbye. Now, each of those actors only had to say goodbye once. Ross and I had to do it four different times.<\/p>\n

\t\tEach actor\u2019s final day took on an even greater sense of occasion.\t<\/p>\n

\n\tNoah Schnapp: I went to every single person on that call sheet\u2019s last day. I did not want to say goodbye to anybody. Every single goodbye hit me so much more than I expected. Like, I was at Winona\u2019s last day, and I was like, \u201cOh, this is a work goodbye, we\u2019ll see each other soon.\u201d And then I was in her trailer, and I was like, \u201cNo! You can\u2019t leave!\u201d I was holding on to her, just sobbing. I didn\u2019t want to say goodbye. I did not expect it to hit me so hard. I realized after that how important that relationship was to me. She really was a second mother to me growing up, and not having this show to keep us together was really hard, especially with her, because she\u2019s hard to keep track of. I\u2019m not always seeing Winona Ryder. So it was a hard goodbye.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tCaleb McLaughlin, Finn Wolfhard, Winona Ryder and Noah Schnapp<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tAtsushi Nishijima\/Netflix<\/p>\n

\n\tMillie Bobby Brown (Eleven\/Jane Hopper): I bawled more than I expected I would. While I was at the point personally and professionally for the show to come to an end, I realized in that moment the finality was so real and I was maybe not emotionally prepared.<\/p>\n

\n\tNatalia Dyer: People came to my last day, and you just feel that: It\u2019s really nice. There\u2019s a family element to it. At the end, there was a lot of people supporting each other emotionally. Crew, as well. I think we really felt it all in a big way.<\/p>\n

\n\tJoe Keery (Steve Harrington): A lot of people came who weren\u2019t working that day, and everyone was just sort of hanging out. The scene itself was really fun to work on, \u201cfun\u201d being sort of a loose word. It is kind of heavy. I think everybody was feeling the fatigue of shooting for a year. I mean, the amount of material that they got in one year is truly incredible.\u00a0Everyone was looking forward to being done, but then once you get to the finish line, you look back and think, \u201cOh, man, can I just have one more?\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tCharlie Heaton: Me, Joe and Maya drove a VW van to work. You\u2019re just going through everything for the last time, and you\u2019re very aware of that. It\u2019s the last time in hair and makeup. It\u2019s the last time you get your mic on.<\/p>\n

\n\tMaya Hawke: They did such a beautiful job of choosing a last scene that mirrored the emotional experience that we were going through as people in ending the show. And that\u2019s not a spoiler, because you don\u2019t know my experience!\u00a0But it was such a gift, because it allowed the feelings that we were working through with each other on that day to become a part of the scene, and to be this integrated emotional experience.<\/p>\n

\n\tRoss Duffer: At a certain point, these characters have become so enmeshed with the actors. Matt and I were just thinking about Robin, but, of course, Maya is Robin. She\u2019s made Robin into who she is. It makes sense that that happened.<\/p>\n

\n\tMaya Hawke: I think it changed me as an actor forever. I am a different actor today, and I think a better actor, because of that opportunity to do a scene that was on such a high-stakes emotional day of my life that was also a high stakes emotional\u202fscene. I felt like I got to connect a red wire and a blue wire, and all of a sudden, I understood how to be present as an actor. I feel forever changed, and like I have access to a part of my emotional experience when I\u2019m working that I didn\u2019t used to have access to. It was just this extraordinary gift.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tMaya Hawke and Brett Gelman<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tNiko Tavernise\/Netflix<\/p>\n

\n\tMillie Bobby Brown: It felt like a massive milestone in reaching this achievement that was finally coming to an end, like, \u201cWe did it!\u201d But also the weight of this being the end was so heavy.<\/p>\n

\n\tMaya Hawke: I did spend 12 hours in a rolling cycle of weeping. I would start weeping, and then I\u2019d have to pull myself together to go back to the beginning of a scene. And then in the middle of the scene, I would start weeping again. And then I would weep after it was over. It was a weepy, weepy day.<\/p>\n

\n\tRoss Duffer: It was hard to even get through take after take. You\u2019re just going, \u201cThey\u2019re feeling every moment of this.\u201d Occasionally, they were actually too emotional when it was a little too early in the scene. We\u2019re like, \u201cYou\u2019re not supposed to be upset!\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tPriah Ferguson:\u00a0I cried more at home. I tried to keep my composure around my castmates. But at home, I did cry.<\/p>\n

\n\tJamie Campbell Bower: On my final day, they called final checks, and my incredible team of hair and makeup people who I work with came over. I remember turning around to our first [assistant director] and just going, \u201cNo final checks here. This is not it. This can\u2019t be the last time that we\u2019re doing this.\u201d So often that when you\u2019re working on a film or a TV show, there\u2019s always like, well, maybe we\u2019ll come back. This, it was like, \u201cNo, this is it.\u201d There is a finality to what we\u2019re doing in this moment, which is quite a difficult thing to think about.<\/p>\n

\n\tSadie Sink: They did a really good job of giving us all the ending that we wanted and that the show really deserved. And I think that\u2019s so important when dealing with something as special as the show was for all of us, when it\u2019s a decade of our lives. It was important to give it the proper closure it deserved, and I think we all definitely got that.<\/p>\n

\n\tJamie Campbell Bower: Sadie was there on my last day \u2014 not in the scene that I was doing, but she just went, \u201cIs this how it feels?\u201d And I was like, \u201cI don\u2019t know. I don\u2019t know how it\u2019s going to feel for you, but this is how it feels for me right now.\u201d She\u2019s like, \u201cYou look like you\u2019re in shock.\u201d I was a bit. Somebody took a photograph of me. I looked like I\u2019d come in from a world tour carrying all these bags, and I just dropped them. I just let go of the weight.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tCharlie Heaton, Natalia Dyer and Joe Keery<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tClay Enos\/Netflix<\/p>\n

\n\tMaya Hawke: If you\u2019d asked me three years ago, I would have said that I thought it would have been bittersweet, and it was \u2014\u00a0only in that it\u2019s so sweet to love people so much. But the ending really was just bitter. It was just really sad to say goodbye to everybody. And not that it\u2019s goodbye forever, but it will never be the same. You know, my first two seasons, I couldn\u2019t ditch my \u201cnew kid\u201d syndrome. I felt like a friend who\u2019d been invited to Thanksgiving, you know? In the last season, I really felt like a part of the family. Which was sad in its own way, because it\u2019s like, \u201cOh, I just got to be a part of the family, and now the family\u2019s breaking up!\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tDavid Harbour: It\u2019s like you\u2019re asking me to talk about my family. All I can say is, there\u2019s a lot of love in this entire thing, and there was a lot of love on that day.<\/p>\n

\t\tOccasionally, the warm and fuzzy vibes were splashed with a spot of vinegar.\t<\/p>\n

\n\tBrett Gelman (Murray Bauman): I gave two speeches, actually. I gave a speech that was very heartfelt. I was maybe not full-on crying, but on the verge. Everybody crowded around. I hugged everybody. I thought I was wrapped. And then Matt and Ross walked up to me and were like, \u201cHey man, we messed up. We need you for one more shot.\u201d So then we did it and then I was wrapped again. And then I gave a funny speech where, like a real jerk, I said they should all be grateful, and that I\u2019m sorry if I mistreated anyone. I don\u2019t totally remember it.<\/p>\n

\t\tFor many of the show\u2019s actors, their final day had the culminating feeling of a graduation: a day of elation and exhaustion, nostalgia and heartache.\t<\/p>\n

\n\tRoss Duffer: The hardest was just saying goodbye to the young cast. They were\u00a0so\u00a0young when they started, and we\u2019ve seen them grow a lot. Finishing the scenes with their characters, and saying goodbye and seeing them emotionally process it, I think that was where it really hit us.<\/p>\n

\n\tCaleb McLaughlin (Lucas Sinclair): I knew I was gonna cry because I kept asking everyone the last week, \u201cYou gonna cry tomorrow? I want to know if you\u2019re gonna cry! Because I\u2019m not.\u201d I was probably the first person to cry, and didn\u2019t stop crying.<\/p>\n

\n\tNoah Schnapp: Every minute was, like, counting down, \u201cNo, not another minute!\u201d Like, I was standing in the bathroom, saying goodbye to every piece of this set. It felt really reminiscent of Season 1 childhood, all of us on set. Like, there was an ice cream truck and we were rolling around in the grass and playing tag, just being like kids again. All our moms showed up to set. They haven\u2019t obviously come to set for us since, like, Season 2 and 3. They got a cute picture together.<\/p>\n

\n\tGaten Matarazzo (Dustin Henderson): It\u2019s almost like a last day of school, when you\u2019re not really hunkered down and doing your work, you\u2019re just buzzing and zipping around and hugs and lots of sentimental conversations. And everybody who had worked on the show at any point, seemingly, was in the room at that time. It was probably a fire hazard.<\/p>\n

\n\tCaleb McLaughlin: It was an emotional roller coaster. All of the memories and all the moments that we\u2019ve had on set just started up in my heart. I\u2019m like, \u201cWow, you remember this happened? Remember when we did this?\u201d I was like, Oh man, does it really have to end now?<\/p>\n

\t\tThe final day of production was on Dec. 20, 2024. No one wanted it to end.\t<\/p>\n

\n\tNell Fisher: My scene was actually the last scene that was shot. It was on the very last day. It was running a bit behind schedule, and so I had about three hours of just hanging around with the rest of the cast who were in my scene. I finished slightly earlier, but I waited until the final wrap, which was \u2014 I mean, it was incredible. I cried. Everyone cried!\u00a0There were a\u00a0lot\u00a0of tears. I\u2019m surprised Atlanta didn\u2019t flood, to be honest.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tAbove: Caleb McLaughlin, Gaten Matarazzo, Finn Wolfhard and Noah Schnapp in the series premiere of \u201cStranger Things,\u201d filmed in 2015; below: McLaughlin, Schnapp, Matarazzo and Wolfhard on the set of Season 5, photographed in 2024<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tNetflix\/Courtesy Everett Collection; Atsushi Nishijima\/Netflix<\/p>\n

\n\tNoah Schnapp: I can\u2019t get into real details of the scene, but when they yelled, \u201cThis is the last one,\u201d we were in our set, and we just didn\u2019t want to walk out.<\/p>\n

\n\tFinn Wolfhard: I remember looking at everyone and saying, \u201cLet\u2019s not go out. Let\u2019s just be with each other as long as we possibly can in this moment before we go out.\u201d Because then it becomes about everyone. It\u2019s not just our thing anymore. It\u2019s not just us.<\/p>\n

\n\tNoah Schnapp: We were just sitting there, kind of huddled up, hugging and crying for a solid 10 minutes of just silence \u2014 all these people outside waiting for us. I\u2019ve never experienced anything like it.<\/p>\n

\n\tFinn Wolfhard: It was less than 10 minutes. I think it was probably like three or four minutes, just sitting there, just so we could feel like we\u2019re doing it in our own way, and processing it together. It was really special to just be sitting around everyone and just taking it all in together. It was the most real feeling \u201cStranger Things\u201d episode ever.<\/p>\n

\n\tNoah Schnapp: And then we left this set to our parents and all the actors and all the crew members that we\u2019ve grown up with all just waiting there, clapping. It felt like a dream. And then there was balloons coming down, and then we all went around giving speeches and thank yous to everyone for being there for us and growing up with us. I could barely get through my speech.<\/p>\n

\n\tGaten Matarazzo: As many tears as there were \u2014 certainly on my part, on a day like that \u2014 it really did feel like a big party to celebrate the accomplishment that was this show in its entirety. And being able to be there from start to finish is a really cool perspective that I share with only a few members of the cast. They gave us a family in that show.<\/p>\n

\t\tEven Netflix chief creative officer Bela Bajaria attended the last day.\t<\/p>\n

\n\tBela Bajaria: It was really about seeing everybody and looking them into the eye and saying thank you for this incredible run, and how creative it was \u2014 just to be able to do that in person.\u202fIt was really being there to witness all of these people together that have worked on this show for 10 years. There was a lot of gratitude and emotion for each other and what they had built. Every time they wrapped a character \u2014 just the applause and the tears and the hugs. I mean, they\u2019ve been together for so long! Growing up, coming of age \u2014\u202fliterally\u202fcoming of age on screen.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tMatt Duffer, Sadie Sink, Nell Fisher, Caleb McLaughlin, Joe Chrest, Finn Wolfhard, Winona Ryder, Priah Ferguson, Alex Breaux, Gaten Matarazzo, Natalia Dyer, Brett Gelman, Noah Schnapp, Charlie Heaton, Jamie Campbell Bower, Joe Keery, Maya Hawke, Millie Bobby Brown, Amybeth McNulty, David Harbour, Shawn Levy, Jake Connelly, Ross Duffer, Cara Buono and guests at the \u201cStranger Things\u201d Season 5 world premiere in Los Angeles<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tMichael Buckner\/Variety<\/p>\n

\n\tMatt Duffer: I\u2019m never going to spend 10 years on something again, I don\u2019t think, where you become this much of a family with the people who are working on it, get to know them as well as you do, and have them influence the show and the characters to the degree that these actors did.<\/p>\n

\n\tMaya Hawke: I should probably lie about this, but I\u2019m at a\u00a0loss\u00a0without the show. I miss it so much? I think about being in Atlanta with everybody every day.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tCharlie Heaton: Everyone\u2019s been like \u201cWhat\u2019s it like now that you finished?\u201d And in my opinion, it ended so perfectly. It doesn\u2019t feel like anything was left, and I wouldn\u2019t change anything about how it ended. We wrapped and then we got to be with the kids when they wrapped, and we got to see them go through it and support them. It\u2019s like a little death and you\u2019re mourning, and then you wake up the next day and you feel a sense of loss. It was a really unique experience.<\/p>\n

\n\tFinn Wolfhard: I don\u2019t think I\u2019ll ever truly feel like it\u2019s the end. The show will live on in so many ways that I hope it still feels relevant to people years down the line. As far as the actual end of the story goes, I don\u2019t know. I mean, there\u2019s a reason why we ended it, and it\u2019s done.\u00a0But who\u2019s to say that the Duffers, in 10 years, when they get another idea, they do it? It\u2019s up to them. I think it\u2019s good that it\u2019s the end, but part of me hopes it\u2019s not.<\/p>\n

\n\tNoah Schnapp: It still doesn\u2019t feel like the end yet. I mean, obviously, I\u2019ll never forget that last day for the rest of my life, and that definitely felt like closing not just a chapter, but an era of my life. But still, I mean, we\u2019re gearing up with so much to look forward to. Regardless of the hype and attention, just the fact that we all get to be together doing this for another few months is what I really look forward to, because that\u2019s what really matters to me \u2014 all the people. So it doesn\u2019t feel over yet. I\u2019d say when the show\u2019s out, the promotional tour is done, and there\u2019s nothing really keeping us all together again, then it\u2019s going to be like, \u201cOh wow, I really have to sit with this.\u201d But for now, there\u2019s still lots to come.<\/p>\n

\n\tJennifer Maas, Marc Malkin, Andrew McGowan and Leia Mendoza contributed to this story.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When \u201cStranger Things\u201d premiered on Netflix on July 15, 2016, the show\u2019s cast was made up almost entirely…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":261312,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[96,107971,59,107972,51145,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-261311","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-finn-wolfhard","10":"tag-gb","11":"tag-noah-schnapp","12":"tag-stranger-things","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom","15":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261311","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=261311"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261311\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/261312"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=261311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=261311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=261311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}