It was the morning after Finn Wolfhard shot his final Stranger Things scene. He and his castmates had stayed up, hanging out on set all night, soaking in what might be their last time together for months. Now it was time to drive home, and Finn’s heart felt like it was sinking. The show he’d spent 10 years of his life on—nearly half of his total years on this planet—was truly over. He asked himself the question you have while going through a breakup, because that’s what this felt like: Is this going to last forever, this horrible hole inside me?
Thankfully, his costar Sadie Sink was there. She told him to give it a week; he’d be fine. Probably.
Today, you’d assume the 22-year-old is just that, fine, if his IMDb and Instagram are any indication. His feature film directorial debut, Hell of a Summer, hit theaters on April 4. The A24 film he starred in, The Legend of Ochi, came out on April 18. Finn’s debut solo album, the indie rock Happy Birthday, packed with yearning, nostalgia, and romance-coded lyrics, comes out June 6.
And that’s just the stuff he was able to accomplish while wrapping up Stranger Things, the five-season juggernaut that made him famous and begins its final run later this year. He and his core costars started as a group of prepubescent kids with barely any onscreen experience. In Finn’s viral audition tape, he adorably introduces himself to the camera by saying he’s “sick, late, 4 foot 11, and 12 years old.” Now, they’re all 20-somethings with a combined Instagram following of 160 million. They attend the Met Gala. Their weddings are featured in Vogue. There’s a Stranger Things play on Broadway. Kids dress as Finn’s character, Mike Wheeler, for Halloween. “The best thing I can compare it to is Harry Potter,” Finn says, sitting across from me, drinking tea at the Park Lane hotel in New York City. Like the stars of that franchise, he and his castmates grew up in the public eye, becoming cultural touchstones for entire generations.
That’s both a blessing and a curse, as most child stars would tell you. And while Finn admits he wishes Hollywood studios would pay for counseling, he’s not resentful. He doesn’t do the thing where an actor starts to shit on the project that gave them their career. Quite the opposite, actually. He’s still missing his Stranger Things life, holding on to the experience—to his people—for as long as he can. “That’s the hard part,” he says, “that me and the rest of the cast are never going to be hanging out in the way that we were when we shot the show.” Good thing he’s got months of press for season 5 to ease the transition.
I assume you’ll all have a huge premiere party to celebrate the end of the show. What’s that going to be like now that you can all legally drink?
We thought about that in season 3 or 4. We were like, “Dude, can you believe that one day when the show comes out, the last season, we’re all going to be able to drink together at the bar?”
Who’s the most likely to order the tequila shots?
Gaten [Matarazzo] or Caleb [McLaughlin]. They love a good night out. I’m the homebody of the group. I’m like, “Hey guys, maybe we should go home early.” I like being comfortable in a house, playing a board game or whatever.1
1. He says costars Natalia Dyer and Charlie Heaton have this down to a science. “They love playing Catan. I would take that over a night out any day.”
When was the last time you saw everyone?
Last night. We hadn’t been in the same room together since we wrapped in December. We all lived around the corner from each other when we were shooting. We saw each other daily and started a little commune. These guys really are like family in a lot of ways. I had this fear that after we were done, it was going to be weird to see them.
Like, “Is the magic gone?”
Yeah. I went on a trip with Caleb, Gaten, and Noah a month or two after we wrapped, and it really helped the transition. You know that feeling that whenever you go home, you kind of go back into your role that you were when you were a kid?2 It’s like an archived version of yourself. Within that group, I’ll always be a kid. I’ll always be their 12-year-old buddy.3
2. This might be more real for Finn, who lives with his parents in a house he was able to buy in Vancouver. “The weird part is talking to them like they’re your roommates, like, 'Just so you guys know, I’m having people over tonight.'”
3. He and the other members of the younger cast are now the same age as Natalia, Joe Keery, and Charlie were when they started the show. “We ended at their age when they started. Being able to build these really awesome friendships with them as equals, even though I’m 22 and those guys are 30, 31, we have a really strong relationship.”
Does your friendship feel different now that you don’t have the obligation of work?
It feels all the more important. There used to be this expectation from all of us that if we didn’t talk to each other between seasons, it didn’t really matter. It’s kind of like school in that way where it’s just like, “I’ll see you when I see you.” Then last year, we were like, “Oh, this is it. We’re not going to just see each other just because.”
It becomes a choice.
It deepened all of our relationships, going through the ending of the show—and then being able to come out the other side and still be friends.
You’ve finished filming, but there’s a lot of press ahead. And you’ll probably have awards shows like the Emmys after that. When will it actually feel over to you?
In a lot of ways, and I feel comfortable with this, I’ll never really feel like it’s the end because the show continues to be introduced to people. And I’ll always be recognized as the guy from the show, and that is fine. I like that. And I wouldn’t be here talking if it wasn’t for the show. So I don’t know if it’ll ever feel truly over.
That’s a beautiful way to put it. But I’m also wondering if there’s any part of that that’s scary to you, having to talk about Stranger Things forever.
The scary part to me is the pain that comes along with being reminded of the show. Not because I feel pain about what I think of the show, it’s more just like, “Oh wow, I really wish I was with those people right now.”
And part of me saying that it’s never ending is blind optimism and something that I choose to believe in, because it’s just a tentpole part of my life. In a lot of ways, obviously, I want to move on. That’s why I’m doing all this stuff and I’m directing. I obviously have aspirations outside of the show that I really want to do. And for me, it’s more about the connections with people, less about the show.
Is it hard to find connections that feel authentic? Do you feel like your bullshit detector is getting better as you get older?
Yeah. I think as you get older, even with people at parties or friends or friends of friends, you see that angle. You see people that are being a bit more, I don’t know, fake or something like that.
Social climbing.
Yeah. The more you see it, the more you start to identify it. And when I was young, when I was 13, 14, it was hard to see that because you’re getting all this attention and it’s like, this is great, and it’s not something you really think about.
So far, your music has been a lot more low-key than the show. With your first solo album coming out, do you want it to get as big as Stranger Things?
When I was really young, I expected Stranger Things to be a niche thing. In my head, the furthest it went when it came to fame was just like, “Oh, maybe once in a while, I’ll get recognized in the street; maybe I’ll be on a podcast.” It snowballed and became this big thing, and I think my brain is still there—I still see it as this small show, even though it’s massive.
Making this kind of music, I get to recapture that feeling. I’d love for people to listen to it, but I’m not chasing after playing stadiums or being a pop star. I’m just trying to do this thing that I’ve always liked. If I can play a club I like, that’s all that matters.
It helps when the music is good, which yours is. My favorite song is “Trailers After Dark.” It strikes me as so romantic. What kind of headspace were you in when you wrote it?
There was this channel on cable when I was really young that was a movie trailer channel. I would watch it for hours with my family at home. I started writing this song from the perspective of my mom. I’m not a mother and I never will be, but I imagine that as a mother, you have kids and they’re your entire world. And then it’s like the minute they turn 18, they’re just out of there. I wrote this song about the nostalgia of watching this trailer channel and from the perspective of a parent who’s really missing their child.
Okay, so I was totally wrong and the song is not about romance.4 But that’s so sweet—does your mother know you wrote this song in her honor?
She doesn’t actually know. She’ll probably find out when this interview goes live.
4. In my defense, the lyrics to the song are “Oh, my darling, don’t stop loving / You’re the one I see / Even with the lights out / Trailers after dark,” so you’ll forgive me for the confusion.
Well, fair warning, she’s going to cry. Your directorial debut, Hell of a Summer, plays with nostalgia as well. It’s very ’90s. What’s the biggest thing you learned being in the director’s chair?
I don’t like conflict. I don’t like having hard conversations with people. But it’s necessary for a lot of things. Being able to have conversations that are tougher—like, “This is the problem that I have, how can we get through it together?”—is really important. Filmmaking helped me do that, because it forced me to deal with uncomfortable feelings.
Do you consider yourself a people pleaser?
Definitely. There are so many advantages to being a people pleaser.
Like what? Asking for myself, a people pleaser.
With people pleasers, I think there’s an overall kindness and optimism for things to be okay. Sometimes you need that. But then at a certain point, you have to be realistic, because you’re just doing other stuff for other people. And that’s not good or healthy for you as a person.
Right. How can you grow if you are just trying to accommodate everybody around you?
Exactly. But being able to have empathy for people and want to do right by them, that’s a good feeling to have.
I’m stealing that for my future pep talks. There’s one line in Hell of a Summer that’s stuck with me. Your character is describing hooking up with a female camp counselor and he asks his guy friend, “Does head mean anything to you?” His friend assumes he was the recipient of said head, but then your character reveals that he “blew her.” It’s a really sweet moment that centers female pleasure. Where did that joke come from?
Camp slashers are typically ultra-sexualized in a really gross way, in a really violent, sexist way. We just didn’t want to do that. A lot of guys might watch the movie and be like, What the hell? There’s not enough boobs or blood or naked people. We didn’t want to do that. It can be harmful.
But we wanted some kind of innuendo. We wanted something sexual. I feel like there’s an age-old thing among partners, the classic conversation of, do they give? There’s that cliche, oh, if you’re a good partner, you give. So we basically were like, what would be a thing that she would be stoked about? And the idea that he gave her head for the entirety of Spider-Man 2 was funny to us. We had talked about, what’s a funny movie to put on? And I’d said, “Well, Spider-Man 2 is pretty long."5
5. Spider-Man 2 clocks in at 2 hours and 7 minutes, so yes, that counts as giving.
What inspired the movie’s camp setting?
My mom was a big summer camp person. She went for years and she always wanted me to go. But either we didn’t have enough money, or if we did, I was too scared to go on my own. I would try to get friends to come with me, and no one ever would. And then I got Stranger Things and the show became really big, so it wasn’t one of those things that was easy, like, Oh, I’ll just go to camp.
I imagine it was hard to miss those formative experiences. In the last few years, I’ve seen more people on the internet question whether children should be actors at all, especially considering how it can impact their mental health. As someone who’s coming out on the other side, how do you feel about that?
I think there’s a lot going on when you’re young, subconsciously in your brain, and you don’t know what these feelings are. A big thing with child actors is that because they’re acting and they’re on set, they’re looked at as like, “Oh, they’re in heaven. They’re fine.” It’s like they don’t need the attention of, “Hey, how are you doing?”
My parents did such a great job, but we were all experiencing it for the first time together. So I wish I had someone say to me, “Hey, all of this stuff that you’re really excited about, all this attention, it’s great, but it’s not real.” It might make you a better performer, but it’s not going to make you a more well-rounded person. I think that there’s a baseline thing when it comes to all child actors. When people ask a kid, “Are you okay?” They’ll say, “Yes.” And that means nothing.
Right. Maybe we shouldn’t take a child’s word at face value.
Kids don’t want to disappoint anyone. They don’t even know if they’re okay. I find it odd that these big studios that have so much money and they have media training, training actors to give good interview answers, and they don’t have counseling. It’s not anyone’s fault, but it’s not really talked about.
Do you have any feelings about having, most likely, the most awkward years of your life immortalized on film forever?6
This is going to sound so crazy, but because I was playing a character that was really awkward, it’s almost like I tricked myself into believing that I wasn’t going through that stuff, because I was just doing it while acting. Then, in my normal life, I was normal and cool. It’s so not true. The whole time I was going through my most awkward years. I mean, it’s not great going through puberty in front of the whole world, but I wouldn’t change it.
6. I did come up with this question after accidentally encountering a picture of my 11-year-old self. Finn’s handling it much better than I am.
If you could have had a choice at 12 years old to do Stranger Things then or delay it until now, with the success guaranteed, would you have delayed it?
No. I don’t think so. Because this made me into who I am today. But I think for my son or my daughter, I would say, “If you want to act, you have to wait.” I’d probably allow them to take classes, do high school theater. Because acting’s really hard. I would’ve put myself in therapy at 12. That wasn’t because the show was so crazy. I just wish I would’ve had a therapist that was like, “Hey, what’s going on? How do you actually feel?” Just really asking. Because once you are on a show that’s big, you don’t really have time to stop and think, Did I like that thing that that person said to me? Did I like doing that interview? You’re just doing it.
But also, if I were to go back in time and ask my younger self if I was okay, I’d probably say, “Yes. Get the fuck away from me. This is awesome.” It’s just important to be there or to ask.
What mental health tools do you have now that you wish you had as a kid?
I think, through therapy, I’ve learned how to not treat life as a crisis. You go through these periods where you feel super anxious or super depressed, and in your head, you just think that this is your life now and that this is what it’s going to be. I have learned to treat them as little pockets of hard stuff, hard things. And that’s something that when I was a teenager, whenever I would get these horrible panic attacks and I wouldn’t know how to get through it, I wouldn’t think like, Oh, I’m going to be fine soon, or I’m going to feel normal really soon. It’s more just like this thought, Oh yeah, I’m going to die and this is who I’m going to be forever.
What else are you working through?
Even though I’m so lucky to have the family that I had and I had as normal of a life as I could, there’s things that I’ve missed developmentally, questions that I have about myself that I’d like to experience or answer before I throw myself into a committed relationship.
What are some of those questions?
It’s more about being comfortable with myself, honestly. Because no one is actually comfortable, everyone’s faking it all the time, and I think I would like to be in a place where I kind of admit to myself, Oh, it’s okay to not be perfect, or It’s okay to not be in a place where you don’t feel like you’re in the right place at the right time. I’m really hard on myself in that way. I’d like to be less hard on myself. Because I don’t want to subject someone to that. But that is part of being in a committed relationship, bringing that side of yourself that’s lost.
I assume there are other challenges to dating in your position.
As a person that people know about, I don’t think it’s a very wise decision to go out and start randomly meeting people, because you don’t know if they have a preconceived idea of you. And not in a paranoid way, but you do meet people that don’t want to be around you because they want to be around your personality. They want to be around you because of who you are outwardly. And that’s not a fun feeling. It feels risky and doesn’t make me feel very good about myself. For me, it’s always about meeting someone who I just like talking to. It’s hard to meet someone like that.
Are you actively looking for a partner?
I’ve never been a very romantic person. I’ve never been a guy who has flings with people. I like having a relationship with someone and I want to be able to like them and have a conversation with them and talk to them. I am comfortable waiting for someone who is cool, nice, simple, and stable. But in my life now, with how busy I am, I’m chasing stability, basically.
What else are you chasing right now?
I would love to be in a place where I'm in-the-moment happy. Just being able to see what's right in front of me and be like, “This experience is so great. And I love this thing, or I love this person.” I’m always thinking about what's ahead.
As far as work goes, I just want to do the stuff that inspires me. I’m in a very lucky position to say that. If I was waiting tables in New York, I’d probably say a very different thing. And not in a “I’m not like other girls” way, but I just want to do things that I want to do that don't necessarily equate to what other people think I’m going to do.
And also, I’m really excited to take a vacation. I haven’t figured out where yet. Maybe Europe and just sit somewhere on a beach. Just look out at the water. That’s what I’m looking forward to.
Top look: Bode jacket, Andreas Kronthaler for Vivienne Westwood pants, Our Legacy sneakers, Jacques Marie Mage sunglasses, Eliburch Jewelry ring.
Styled by Brandon Tan. Grooming by Ruth Fernandez. Shot on location at Newark Makerhoods at the Krueger-Scott Mansion. Director of video: Grayson Vaughan. Director of photography: Cal Christie.
Expensive Taste Test—Vice president of video: Jason Ikeler. Director of video: Amanda Kabbabe. Senior producer/director: Brian Murray-Real. Director of photography: Alvah Holmes. Editor: Chris Green and Robert Arrucci. Associate cinematographer: Jay Aguirre.
