Though Netflix and Stranger Things would go on to define the next part of her career, Winona Ryder allegedly didn’t even know what the streaming giant was when she first sat down to discuss the project with the hit show’s creators.
In an interview with producer Shawn Levy on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, Levy remembered an early meeting with the Academy Award-nominated actress to discuss the project.
“The Duffers and I sat down and had tea with her. She opened by asking, ‘What is Netflix? What is streaming? Is it like TV but different?’” he said, referring to the Stranger Things creators, the Duffer Brothers.
Levy continued, “Winona took a little on-boarding to explain this merging form of storytelling called Netflix and streaming.”
But if Ryder didn’t know what streaming was before, she sure would after agreeing to do the show. Ryder has had a renaissance in her career following her performance as Joyce Byers, the determined and loving mother to Will Byers (Noah Schnapp) and Jonathan Byers (Charlie Heaton). She would go on to earn a Golden Globe nomination for the show’s first season in 2017.
While the production of the show’s upcoming fifth and final season has been stalled due to the ongoing SAG-AFTRA strikes, it appears that the scripts for the season have been completed. Levy shared a teaser later in the interview about what to expect from the finale season of the streaming giant’s tentpole series.
“This season is epic and broad in its cinematic scope, but it’s very much Stranger Things,” he shared.
Since its first season, the show has become a global phenomenon, launching the careers of several of its young stars, including Millie Bobby Brown and Sadie Sink.
With each season since, it’s become a more massive production and undertaking. One of my main gripes with the show has been the on-and-off quality of the story that made it such a special, unique hit in the first place. As a result, Ryder’s role has felt less and less substantial as the series has gone on.
But, according to Levy, the show’s final season will maintain the character-driven intimacy that fans clamor for amidst all the big production values and visual effects.
“You read the scripts and you remember again and again and again that their instinct for anchoring the epic in the intimate, and for anchoring the darkness of genre in the warmth of these characters – it’s so innate to them,” he said. “As a result, Season 5, like every season before, gets bigger in scale but doesn’t forget who and what it is.”
We’ll just have to see when the final season drops.
Stranger Things is now available to stream on Netflix.