(Excerpt from Stranger Things)
TOM HARTLEY, REPORTER: Over the past decade, Stranger Things has become a contemporary cult hit locking in millions of viewers season after season and for the cast, after nine years growing up on screen, the end of the saga is finally feeling real.
MILLIE BOBBY BROWN, ELEVEN: You know when you’re in school, the end of school feels so far away. It’s not really kind of tangible. And then when it’s the end of school, you’re like, I’m done with school forever.
It is such a surreal feeling but there’s so much sadness because you don’t want to leave what’s behind and a piece of your childhood. So it is such a bittersweet feeling for sure.
TOM HARTLEY: Ahead of the release of the final instalment, stars Millie Bobby Brown and Noah Schnapp sat down with 7.30, reflecting on a show that shaped their adolescent years, and their social circles.
I mean you two, on camera your characters are very close, and wondering, as has been reported, does that friendship exist offscreen as well.
MILLIE BOBBY BROWN: It’s just the report. No We’re very, very, very close. We’re the two babies of the family, so we are thick as thieves.
TOM HARTLEY: And much like Millie and Noah in the days before Stranger Things became a cult hit, the show’s creators, were also relatively unknown.
WENLEI MAI, CULTURE EDITOR, THE NIGHTLY: I mean, the Duffer Brothers came out of nowhere basically. They had made one small independent movie, which no one saw, which they themselves will tell you completely flopped.
And the fact that they were given all this money to make this huge high concept sci-fi epic really kind of speaks to those early years of Netflix when they were willing to try lots of different things.
TOM HARTLEY: As the show’s popularity grew so did the budget. By Netflix standards, the first season was pretty modest – around 6 million US dollars per episode. The new season however reportedly cost almost half a billion US dollars for all eight shows.
NOAH SCHNAPP, WILL BYERS: But season one, I mean we had no budget there. It was like the road, the bikes and the lake.
MILLIE BOBBY BROWN: When we were young, the tunnels in season two, yeah, they were really exciting because we would just play hide and seek in them on lunch breaks and stuff. So actually the sets were really exciting when we were kids, because we would just hang out on them.
NOAH SCHNAPP: I’d say the first set where I was like, whoa was season three mall. That was holy crap.
MILLIE BOBBY BROWN: But now it’s like, dare I say, it just feels like stranger things.
TOM HARTLEY: And there’s no questioning the cultural impact Stanger Things has had on the real world.
Set four decades in the past, the show not only gives reference the ‘80s — it revives it.
For example:
(Music –Running Up That Hill, Kate Bush)
WENLEI MAI: Oh, it was incredible. Kate Bush’s Running Up That Hill, which at that point was like a 40-year-old song, had just absolutely skyrocketed back into the charts after the show used it. And it really speaks to the power of not just the show itself, but it sort of working in tandem with, at that point really what TikTok was doing and which was that it was rising exponentially a few years ago.
And the younger kids discovering this artist for the first time and having it go viral on social media, which then in effect has this carry on of it going through the charts. And yes, it was a little grim that they didn’t know who she was in the first place, but better late than never.
The final season will be protracted, released in three stages with the series wrapping on New Year’s Eve.
MILLIE BOBBY BROWN: Our characters are saying goodbye.
But yeah, it’s definitely, I mean, we’re best friends and we’ve been best friends for the last 10 years .
NOAH SCHNAPP: And I think that’s reassuring for a lot of the viewers because they’re so scared to let this show go and let go of the world. But I always say we are best friends. We’ll be friends for the rest of our lives and that’s not going anywhere.
