Some takeaways from Stranger Things 4 with a member of the cast:
The actor that played Argyle 2.0 in ST4EP8 was in a podcast from 99porciento on YouTube 3 months ago and he described his experience on set. His name is Andres Figueroa. I will be paraphrasing some things he talked about. He's from Venezuela so the entire thing is in Spanish but I translated some things I considered were cool to share.
On set, Charlie Heaton invited him to eat with the cast so he joined everyone. Charlie smokes a lot (which, duh, there are so many pictures of him smoking) so they spoke a bit during smoke breaks. They played Mario Tennis and the trailer was huge. He said he spoke some Spanish with Millie, who was born in Spain (and was singing a lot of Selena, lol). He has kept contact with Eduardo Franco, who’s parents are Mexican so he has a very neutral accent when he speaks Spanish. He added that Eduardo has a very “stoner” attitude but he doesn’t drink or smoke at all; apparently Eduardo quit all that like 5 years ago.
In one of the takes they did when he was leaving Surfer's Boy Pizza, he actually put the joint (which is not a real joint, it’s a prop) on his lips, which the directors really liked but they couldn’t keep it because they said Netflix will had their asses, lol. The Duffers told him that they loved his audition and were really nice.
So, even if the rating bumped up from TV-14 to TV-MA for Stranger Things 4 (correct me if I'm wrong please), being more bloody, gory, with some sexual and drug references, they still had to hold back on some things. Now, I wonder if they'll go the extra mile on ST5 and increase these references.
Argyle originally had a whole speech trying to convince him to leave so they can use the Surfer’s Boy Pizza kitchen in the script, but they cut it because it may have not aligned with the final product.
This tell us that there must have been many scenes like this, were they cut stuff so it could fit their idea of what they wanted the show to be like (which reminds me of EP9 being initially like 2hr30 something minutes but then they cut like 10 minutes at the end?). It's not farfetched to think this must have happened a few times (like when we saw the bloopers and the first heart-to-heart with Will and Mike on EP4 seemed like it had more dialogue).
Everyone was really nice. He was nervous because he's a fan of the show but it turned out all right. The person he interacted the least with was Noah Schnapp, who was 16 when filming ST4. He said he was laying down on the sofa, scrolling through TikTok the entire time and the rest of the cast were asking him if he was going to play with them (everyone was playing Simon Says or something) but Noah kept using his phone, haha. He added that there have been some issues with Noah from production because sometimes they kept him longer than he had to on set (Noah, being 16 at the time, had to legally film for like 12 hours everyday or something, no more than that, as opposed to people older than 18) and some other things he’s not allowed to elaborate on, lol. I guess those issues are over once Stranger Things begins filming!
The podcast is actually fun and entertaining, so if you speak Spanish, go ahead and watch it. I wanted to share this for a while but I'm really lazy but got inspired today. Hope you enjoy!
