Why Matthew Modine Officiated ‘Stranger Things’ Costar Millie Bobby Brown’s Wedding: ‘It’s My Papa’
Millie Bobby Brown wanted her papa by her side when she married Jake Bongiovi.
“The second Jake proposed, I said, ‘I know who needs to marry us. It’s my papa,’” Brown, 21, said of Stranger Things costar Matthew Modine, who plays Dr. Martin Brenner, a.k.a. “Papa,” on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon earlier this year.
Brown said that when she initially called Modine, 66, to ask him about officiating the wedding, he said, “OK, sure.” However, when they sent him the invitation eight months later, she asked if he was still willing to officiate — and he responded with surprise.
“He was like, ‘Oh, you really wanted me to do that?’” she recalled.
Millie Bobby Brown and her fiancé, Jake Bongiovi, have tied the knot after two years together. People confirmed the wedding news on Friday, May 24, revealing that the duo had tied the knot less than a week prior. A separate report from The Sun revealed that Brown and Bongiovi “quietly” exchanged their vows and will have “a […]
Brown added that the ceremony turned out “perfect.”
“You put so much pressure on if it’s going to be good and actually when I kind of turned up, I was of course directing the whole thing because that’s my nature,” she said. “When I went down the aisle, everything became so real and pure, and nothing about that was like a production. It felt so beautiful and the most meaningful thing I’ve ever done in my life.”
Modine previously opened up to Access Hollywood about officiating the ceremony, revealing in March 2024 that he had “one of those licenses to get people married.”
“Millie thought it’d be great and then Jake said it would be a great idea, so I wrote the wedding vows and they loved what I wrote for them to join hands and to become husband and wife,” he said.
Brown and Bongiovi, 23, tied the knot in May 2024 after three years of dating. The pair announced this past August that they had adopted their first child together, a baby girl.
Millie Bobby Brown, Matthew Modine Eric Charbonneau/Getty Images for Netflix
Meanwhile, Brown and Modine have worked together on Stranger Things since season 1 filming began in 2015. The British actress plays Eleven, a young girl with telepathic abilities who escapes a testing facility run by Dr. Brenner, whom she refers to as “Papa” throughout the series.
Modine gushed about his friendship with Brown during a Stranger Things Epic Cons panel in Jackson, Georgia, in October 2024, according to People.
“It begins and ends with Millie,” he said at the time. “I met her when she was 11 years old on the set. I fell in love with that innocent 11-year-old child.”
Modine called Brown “so focused, so determined” and “so intelligent,” adding that their dynamic is “a friendship I will carry with me for the rest of my life.”
Modine is not the only father figure that Brown has gained from Stranger Things. She also developed a close bond with David Harbour, who plays Eleven’s adoptive father, Jim Hopper.
“David [Harbour, who plays Hopper] and I connected on another level,” she told Empire Magazine in their October issue. “He always looked out for me, and I always annoyed him like a daughter or a younger sister. I was always trying to climb all over him and he was always rolling his eyes and laughing at me.”
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However, there is now reportedly tension between the onscreen father and daughter. On November 1, a source told the Daily Mail that Brown “filed a harassment and bullying claim” against Harbour, 50, “before they started shooting the last season” of Stranger Things, adding that “there were pages and pages of accusations” and that the investigation “went on for months.”
According to the outlet, Brown claimed that Harbour bullied and harassed her on set. She reportedly did not include any sexual misconduct allegations in her filing. Brown reportedly had a representative on the set of the Netflix series, which wrapped filming in December 2024.
Neither Brown, Harbour, nor Netflix have publicly addressed the allegations. Us Weekly reached out to reps for all three for comment.
