Finn Wolfhard revealed in a new interview with Time magazine that he suffered a panic attack during production of “Stranger Things 4,” given the series’ intense fandom, which was at times “unconsciously terrifying” to deal with. Wolfhard plays Mike Wheeler in the hit Netflix series, which begins its fifth and final season in November. The actor was just 13 when “Stranger Things” debuted and catapulted him. to international fame.
“It’s just a symptom of what cinema can be, which is chaotic,” Wolfhard told the publication. “As a child actor, you try to make things easy for people. You don’t know how to stand up for yourself. You don’t know how to ask for a break… It was incredible and subconsciously terrifying to be 13 and all of a sudden everyone knows who you are.”
While filming “Stranger Things 4,” the pressures of fame collided with post-COVID production protocols, and Wolfhard “was having normal first relationship struggles… In the middle of one scene, I started hyperventilating. It was a bit of a fishbowl because a lot of the extras are fans. It culminated in a sort of panic attack.”
Wolfhard’s co-stars Caleb McLaughlin and Gaten Matarazzo “took him aside and reassured him that they felt the same pressure,” Time wrote.
Whatever pressures existed for Wolfhard and the entire “Stranger Things” cast, they only intensified as they entered production on “Stranger Things 5.” The series finale is sure to be one of the most scrutinized episodes in television history. As fans of shows like “Lost” and “Game of Thrones” know, a wildly controversial series finale can risk tainting a series’ entire legacy.
“Honestly, I think everyone was pretty worried,” Wolfhard told Time magazine. “The way ‘Game of Thrones’ was torn to shreds in the last season, we’re all heading into this saying, ‘We hope this kind of thing doesn’t happen.’ But then we read the scripts. We knew it was something special.
“Stranger Things” creators Matt and Ross Duffer said Variety in an exclusive cover story that they have been planning the end of the series for several years and have always written towards it, which will hopefully create a series finale that delivers the goods.
“We pretty much knew what the final scene was for years – it wasn’t something we bothered to create,” Matt said. “Some elements were discussed for weeks, but the central idea of the ending, we had it for a very long time.”
“Stranger Things 5” kicks off with Vol. 1 on November 26.
