Stranger Things icon Gaten Matarazzo has confessed that he ‘absolutely despised’ filming the most devastating scene of season four.
The 21-year-old has played Dustin Henderson since the very beginning of the Netflix program, starring alongside Millie Bobby Brown, Finn Wolfhard, Winona Ryder, Joe Keery and David Harbour.
In case you somehow forgot, the last series ended with Vecna (Jamie Capmbell Bower) declaring war on the gang as Eddie Munson (Joseph Quinn) tragically died while protecting Dustin and co from demobats – while Max Mayfield (Sadie Sink) battled for her life.
Unpacking the emotional moments during an appearance at FanExpo in Dallas, he admitted that he really struggled on set, and was ‘drained’ when the cameras eventually stopped rolling.
‘It’s such a cool outlet for the plot to take off for that Scooby-Doo gang, the Hawkins gang, to have a really cool tunnel through everything that was going on,’ he said, via ScreenRant. ‘I think it was such a unique way to go about them figuring out about Vecna and Henry in general.
‘Joe’s an incredible actor. I think he improvised, “I love you, man.” I think that was just him, and his coverage was so good. We filmed that twice because I absolutely despised the first time we filmed that. He was so good and I just wasn’t centering. It was outside at 5am, we’d already done a whole day of filming, and we were just drained and I just wasn’t there.
‘I didn’t feel right. And then we did the scene with his uncle in the gym at the school and then that went through and that felt a lot better. And then Matt and Ross [Duffer] were like, “Great, we want to find that and put that in the scene with Joe.”
‘Joe was kind enough to go back to that space and do it on a sound stage. And I think that’s very much needed, not just for Eddie and the end of him, but also everything that’s going to come up for Dustin going forward. That’s obviously something that isn’t let go easily.’
Production has begun on the new episodes but it is not clear when exactly we’ll be getting our hands on the series.
Ahead of the premiere, Gaten lifted the lid on what we can expect, insisting that they are hoping to get the instalments out as quickly as possible.
‘We’ve been filming for a bit,’ he told TMZ. ‘We want to get it out as quickly as we can. It’s just a big season so it’s taken a bit to shoot.
‘There are delays from the pandemic and both of the strikes and stuff.
‘We’re going full force right now.’
The Angry Birds Movie star shared that he hasn’t been able to read scripts for all the episodes just yet, but has gone through a ‘chunk’ of them.
He also reflected on his previous remarks that he wanted to see more characters ‘killed off’ in the fifth series, as they were ‘too safe’.
When asked about who he would want to see written off in the upcoming season, he had one specific name in mind.
‘I’m going to go for myself, I think,’ he laughed, without skipping a beat. ‘Why not?
‘I hope towards the end if it’s going to happen, just because I want to be in it as much as I can, and hang out with my buds as much as I can.’
Stranger Things first premiered in 2016, following the residents of Hawkins as they battled against a hostile alternate dimension known as the Upside Down.
Gaten’s comments come after Joseph issued the biggest tease yet that he could be returning for the future episodes, despite Eddie being killed off.
Appearing on the red carpet of A Quiet Place: Day One, he was questioned about a possible return to Hawkins, sharing that ‘chances are high’.
‘I love those guys! I’d love to say hello,’ he told Entertainment Tonight, remaining coy. ‘I’m sure they’re working very hard to land the plane.
‘It’s been a long time that they’ve been working on that, so I’m really delighted that they’re kind of getting towards the end, and they’re having a nice time.
‘I’m sure they’re going to deliver it in a pretty epic way. I have no doubts.’
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Stranger Things is available to stream on Netflix now.
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