“It’s taken about a decade of my life and it’s the most formative decade of my life,” Matarazzo said of his time on ‘Stranger Things’
Gaten Matarazzo is feeling all the emotions as Stranger Things nears an end.
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Matarazzo, 22, explained that the final two seasons of Stranger Things taking longer than expected to air was actually a blessing in disguise. Given the fact that he’s been on the show for so long, he said the idea of it coming to an end is sad.
“I love to do it, so any delay in the process is certainly frustrating, but now that we are getting towards the end of our filming process for the fifth season, I’m asking for a Time-Turner,” he joked. “It’s been a pretty jarring thing to realize how quickly it all flew by. I remember so many things from that first season so vividly as if it was yesterday. We were so young, and it was such a weird, wild experience that it kind of blended together. So it’s not that I remember the process of filming season one incredibly sharply, but there are a few distinct things that feel like they just happened.”
“And at this point, I’ve almost been doing Stranger Things longer than I haven’t,” he continued. “It’s taken about a decade of my life and it’s the most formative decade of my life.”
“So I’ll always be really grateful, and coming to terms with letting that go is increasingly difficult, for sure, in a work sense and in a life sense,” he added. “You can always expect that next season, work-wise and emotionally. So it’s going to be a different adjustment and I can’t wait to see what happens next.”
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From left: Maya Hawke, Joe Keery, and Gaten Matarazzo in ‘Stranger Things’ Season 3
Teasing the upcoming fifth and final season of Stranger Things, Matarazzo said it truly is the “biggest, darkest, scariest” one yet.
“I think that’s the goal,” he shared. “That’s certainly the intention behind writing it. The one consistency of this show is that it just grows every year in scale and size and in the message that they want to bring. So this season is not different in the slightest, and I knew that they had prepped that, initially.”
“They said, ‘Hey, this one is going to be really, really big. We’re not going to candy-coat it: it’s a full year shoot.’ And that led to a big reaction of, like, ‘Oh, so we’re really going for it,'” he recalled. “So we have been [going for it] and we still are. I’m excited for people to see it.”
Although he told THR that he would be okay forever being known as the actor from Stranger Things, Matarazzo’s latest animated project, LEGO Star Wars: Rebuild the Galaxy, has introduced him to a new world of voice acting. As an avid Star Wars fan, he said working on that, along with Mark Hamill, who has played Luke Skywalker since 1977, was a dream.
“To have [Mark Hamill] come back and do this is really, really kind,” Matarazzo gushed. “He elevates the show so much, and he also accentuates how brilliant the show is since people from the original trilogy wanted to be a part of it. We’re eternally grateful.”
“I’m a Star Wars fiend, and so when I was approached, I was like, ‘I don’t care if the script is dog s—; I’m doing it,’” he went on. “And, of course, the script wasn’t that. So everything just fell into place to be a full-blown dream project that was basically a fan film. Lucasfilm let [showrunners] Dan [Hernandez] and Benji [Samit] get away with pretty much whatever they wanted, which was a miracle in and of itself.”
Now, Stranger Things’ producer and director Shawn Levy is developing a Star Wars movie, and that is certainly on Matarazzo’s radar.
“We’ve all been making little bits about it, for sure, but he’s got so much on his plate right now,” he explained. “He’s been going and going and going, and I’m really excited for him. Of course, he’s a very established director who’s done some of my favorite works even before he worked on Stranger Things, but all of these new projects are well deserved. He would bring such a levity and a joy to Star Wars, and that’s what the franchise definitely needs right now.”
He added: “So I’m here!”
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Seasons 1-4 of Strangers Things are currently streaming on Netflix. A premiere date for season 5 has not been announced.
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