What it Was Like Working on Stranger Things

Stranger Things may be over, but the post-finale mania has just started… and because the finale has finally been released, I don’t have to worry so much about non-disclosure agreements - meaning I can talk about what it was like to work on the show! And there are definitely some things about the production that will surprise you!

So I worked on the show for about three days and I was cast as Hawkins Military Police and a Military Surgeon. The way casting worked was the same as most shows - the local casting company put out posts for what they needed and you applied by email and then you would just hope you had the look they were going for. Luckily I have a strong military / police look and they generally also like recruiting people with real world experience especially when they are looking for doctors and nurses.

Because Stranger Things is a period show and because the costuming was very specific, they had me come in several days beforehand to do a fitting for both and to take pictures. This is so they can both make sure the outfit I wear on the day of shooting will fit properly and I wouldn’t be surprised it is a good way of double checking what I would actually look like since nowadays there are lots of filters and it other things that can make cell phone pics look a lot better or different than in real life. Usually for BG casting they don’t want headshots, because they want to know what a person really looks like right now and not what they could look like at their best.

We also went to hair and makeup to check our look and do a quick cut to make sure our hair styles were appropriate for the period. I would say about 80% of shows do hair makeup and costuming the morning of the shoot, but with Stranger things they don’t want surprises the day of and because they usually wanted to have people to use for multiple days that could be weeks apart so it was easier to have people come down just for a fitting day, which for me is a bit annoying as it meant driving to Atlanta just for an hour and back, but for Stranger Things it was worth it. The funny thing is despite the massive 760 million dollar budget, the studio that it was shot at is a bit old and has not had a lot of money spent on upkeep. For example the area they did hair and makeup off set called the crow’s nest was on the second floor of a sound stage with rusted out railings on the stairs and a satellite dish that looked like it hadn’t been used since the 90s.

This is something people don’t realize about film and tv - the glamour is just on camera. Generally even large budgets have to be careful with what they spend the money on, and if something isn’t going to be seen, there is no point in dolling it up. I remember one day on set for the Naked Gun reboot where we were shooting in downtown Atlanta and the green room was basically just a random maintenance room on the side of a building and if you looked in you could see Liam Neeson sitting on a lone folding chair with a 24 pack of generic bottled water next to him and things like that even for A list stars are not at all uncommon, unless they are a bit of a diva and put specifics about it in their contract.

Since we are on the topic of stars… let’s talk about the characters I got to work with when I was there. I wasn’t needed as a military surgeon, but I spent a few days being Hawking military police, but with that said the only main characters I worked with were Derrick Turnbow played by Jake Connelly and Dr. K played by the legendary LInda Hamilton. Jake Connelly looks a bit older to me in real life and was a bit taller as well, but also camera angles tricks can make people look quite a bit different on screen. He was only there during the scene where the kids were brought in to downtown Hawkins, which was really fun because the kids they brought in to play Hawkins students were so young that to them they didn’t really get what was going on so when the school bus would drive by with each take, they would just wave or salute to us because they didn’t get the difference between actors and actual members of the military.

Linda Hamilton was very professional and really was just on set when needed, but still had to do the whole networking to be nice thing where all the important people on the crew were introduced to her to say hi and she was cordial despite it being a late night and obvious that most people would rather be in bed than on a freezing cold set in the middle of the night. You all probably want to know if I got to work with Millie Bobbie Brown, but sadly she wasn’t in any of the scenes I worked on. Now I can’t say if I have ever worked with her on set, but I can say that recently she shot a movie called “Just Picture It” in Atlanta in the fall, so who knows?

One more thing that people likely don’t know is that the show kept as many details about shooting a secret as possible and to a much higher degree than most sets. So to give you some idea most sets have a no phones on set policy to prevent people from taking pictures or video behind the scenes because they don’t want people posting spoilers. Now each set is more or less aggressive with this with some sets policing it actively where no phones are allowed to be out, but longer running shows where they trust the background actors more will be much more lenient as they know there may be long periods between takes and a phone is really nice to have to kill time, so if they trust you and you clearly aren’t taking photos of the set, you are likely fine. Stranger Things took this to an extreme - not only were phones not allowed on set, they were all taken during check in and placed into light and signal blocking locked bags so nobody even had a chance of taking a photo, even before arriving to set and the production assistants let us know that we absolutely would be sued if we released anything and blackballed from Netflix productions in the future. And this was strictly enforced as one background actor took a selfie in costume after he got his phone back and a PA was immediately on him and made him delete the picture in front of him so he knew that it was gone. They really didn’t mess around with this and with how popular and how many spoilers we were given access to, you can see why this was so important to them.

Well I think that is all I have to say about working on Stranger Things. Is there anything you want to know about what it is like working on set or any parts of the final season that really blew you away? Let me know in the comments. Thanks so much for watching and keeping things Strange, I’m Frank Cioppettini with Servetty Software and see you in the next one!

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