Duffer Brothers on ‘Game of Thrones,’ ‘Stranger Things’ Cast Aging

For Variety’s Oct. 15 cover story on the fifth and final season of “Stranger Things,” the show’s creators, twin brothers Matt and Ross Duffer, sat for nearly four hours of interviews in July and September, both times at their postproduction offices in Hollywood. While they are self-proclaimed introverts, the Duffers were nonetheless remarkably candid and open about themselves and how much they’ve changed — and haven’t changed — since their show premiered on Netflix in 2016.

In advance of the Nov. 26 premiere of Season 5’s first four episodes on Netflix, here is an edited excerpt of our conversations with them, in which they also discuss why Finn Wolfhard and his character Mike Wheeler are the most like them, what they learned from “Game of Thrones” about negotiating with Netflix, their favorite moments from the show, why they aren’t sweating how much their cast has aged and why they feel their show’s success is based in part on their failure to be as scary as they’d like.

Shawn Levy, who really championed the show in the beginning through his production company 21 Laps, told us that when you first started working on “Stranger Things,” you were comfortable talking only with each other in what he called a “bubble of twinship.” But that now, you are much better at working with your department heads and the studio. Do you agree with that assessment?

Ross Duffer: Want me to take it?

Matt Duffer: Sure.

Ross Duffer: I’m sure that is true. We had never run anything of this scale and we’re introverted people. That was one of the biggest lessons, just learning how to lead and how to clearly communicate your vision.

Matt Duffer: I would say the core philosophy, though, hasn’t shifted. Generally, we just choose to work with people who we think are really good at what they do, and then for the most part, leave them alone. We still do that. We don’t like to micromanage. Just as an example, Amy Parris, our costume designer, she just knows so much more about costuming. She’s done all the ’80s costume research. Who am I to tell her?

And with actors?

Matt Duffer: The same for actors. I always say with the kid actors, it wasn’t like we were pulling these performances out of them. We were giving very minimal direction. The most impact you can have is in the casting by far. That’s like 99% of it. If you start having to be super hands-on, then you’ve made a poor hiring decision, is what I’ve usually found.

By the way, Shawn told us that his group text nickname is “Warlock,” and he said to ask you what that meant.

Matt Duffer: I actually don’t remember when we started calling him Warlock. Very early on, I would say. Shawn had worked in the studio system for a really long time. Ross and I had next to no experience. So not only were we very green working on the set, but we were not politically savvy in terms of dealing with and navigating studio politics. Shawn’s a master of it. So when things went wrong, would call in Shawn, who we called “Warlock” at some point, just because he had some form of dark magic that he could wield when necessary. You don’t want to set the Warlock loose too often, but when he needs to come in, he will solve any situation no matter how dire.

Do you feel like you were calling upon the powers of the Warlock less frequently as you went through the seasons?

Ross Duffer: Early on, we were leaning on him more for advice in terms of mentorship, dealing with production of this scale. But season by season it gets more complicated. There are more fires. And so certainly whenever we’ve needed to call up the Warlock, we have. But I think yes, we now know so much more than we did back then.

Matt Duffer: We learned a lot from him about how to handle these situations. And I think Shawn would probably agree with this, we’re much better now than we were at handling those types of situations.

Your lives went, apologies, upside down overnight when the show premiered in 2016. Was there anyone who had a similar career trajectory and you thought, “they did things that I want to emulate” or “they did things I want to avoid”?

Matt Duffer: M. Night Shyamalan was a big influence. Like us, he had a movie that was a total dud, and then he did “The Sixth Sense,” which became this massive phenomenon. Yes, he continued to do some version of the twist thing, but I thought he took a lot of pretty exciting risks. He kept making original films. I don’t know if I was consciously thinking about it after “Stranger Things,” but he’s been such a big part of our life that I’m sure it was in there. (To Ross) Can you think of anybody else?

Ross Duffer: Well, what’s strange about our trajectory is we’ve been on this show for 10 years, so it’s a very specific situation that we’re in. It’s hard to find a one-to-one.

Matt Duffer: In terms of television, we always looked to “Game of Thrones” and what (showrunners) Dan (Weiss) and David (Benioff) did. They used the success to scale the show up and evolve it, and it snowballed. We would always take that example to Netflix for reasons why we should scale up the show: It’ll scale up the audience. At least, that was what we told them.

There are the obvious ways your lives have changed, but what do you think fundamentally is the most different about your lives now versus 2015 when you were first starting to do this?

Ross Duffer: Matt having a family has sort of changed the dynamic in the biggest ways. For most of our early career, we were living in the same apartment together. Even though we do still work together, there’s more distance there on the personal side. It used to be just all-consuming.

But every time we’re starting a new season, we’re trying to get back to when we were brainstorming Season 1. You’re always chasing that high that we felt, and the excitement when we first came up with that idea.

Matt Duffer: It’s weird. It’s both easier and harder. You have more influence, it’s easier in some ways to make things happen, but there’s so much more noise and pressure. It is a little bit harder to tune that out — and that’s the most important thing. The best way Ross and I have of doing that, and this has always been true of us, is we don’t actually talk to that many people. It is a pretty small group of people that we hang out with. So that’s worked in our favor.

I’m not online at all. Ross has Instagram, and even that I find annoying, but you’re kind of in this little bubble. That’s the best way to just get back to where we were 10 years ago, where you’re just going, “OK, this is just exciting to us.”

Is there anything with the story that you would do differently if you could do it all over again?

Matt Duffer: There’s not a single season where I’m like, “Bam! Perfection. Where’s our 100% Rotten Tomatoes score?” After Season 1, I just remember feeling overwhelmed and somewhat numb to everything. I don’t remember feeling the excitement that I should have felt. It was almost too much to absorb because it was so different than anything else we had experienced, which was mostly failure. Shawn did call us, I remember, and said, “This is unusual. You need to soak this up.” We were told to do it, but it was hard to do. So, if I went back, I would probably tell myself that.

Ross Duffer: Enjoy the ride.

Matt Duffer: Enjoy the ride, and don’t stress so much. That is what we’re trying to do a little bit more now. The fact that I do have a family now, I’m going, “I cannot be working on the weekends,” just making a little bit of space for yourself.

What have been the most autobiographical parts of the show for you — and which characters do you relate to the most?

Ross Duffer: The friendship of all the young characters to us is the most autobiographical. We had a small group of really close friends. We were playing Magic: The Gathering and video games and making movies and having adventures in the woods. So a lot of especially the early years was us attempting to remember what that felt like and tapping into that feeling again.

Do you have some of your old childhood friends being like, “Am I Dustin? Am I Will?”

Matt Duffer: Not exactly, because there’s not a one-to-one. It’s more trying to capture the spirit of what it felt like to hang out with those people. I mean, Mike is the closest to our doppelganger. Finn in real life is the most similar to who we are, which is probably why we cast him. Season 4 was the most autobiographical in terms of how difficult high school specifically was for us. There wasn’t any one character who, again, was a one-to-one, but Max’s storyline was a way of us communicating what a lot of high school felt like to us, and same with what the boys were going through.

You don’t shy away from the darkness of adolescence, especially with Max’s storyline in Season 4. Did things get that dark for you when you were that age? Were you looking at this show as a way of exorcising it?

Matt Duffer: Yeah, high school was really, really challenging, but at the time, there wasn’t a lot of mental health awareness. It wasn’t something that anybody was talking about. Looking back on it now, do I understand what I was going through. But it’s scarier when you don’t understand what it is that’s going on with you. You just feel like there’s something wrong. The best thing that ever happens to me with this show is when young kids or teenagers come up to me, some of them are older now, and they say the show helped them through these periods.

So yeah, we’re trying to channel a lot of what we went through. A lot of the writers we work with, they’re all weirdos, so they all had challenging childhoods in different ways. That’s probably why we created this fantasy of Eddie, because you don’t want the show to become too depressing.

But then you killed Eddie off.

Matt Duffer: Yeah, that’s true. But I’ve always looked up to a show like “My So-Called Life.” That was probably the first show I saw that tackled this stuff head on, and that was realistic and honest about what high school was like or what it was like to be young. It’s important to put stuff out like that out because there wasn’t a lot of that when we were growing up, and (that absence) just can make you feel more isolated. It’s also something that people don’t do with younger protagonists. That’s why we had them cursing in the first scene, just to immediately indicate that this is not a kid show, even though it’s stars kids.

You’ve mentioned Mike and Max. Do you each have characters who you love writing for and characters who are more challenging to write for?

Matt Duffer: We love writing all the characters. Given that, the kids are easier for us than the adults, especially the government, military characters — the scientists and so on. It becomes easier once we cast someone. Season 1, we really did not understand Dr. Brenner: Matthew Modine really helped us lock in on who he was. This year, once we cast Linda Hamilton, it became a lot easier once we started to see what she was able to do. Whereas, Dustin, I can write in my sleep.

Ross Duffer: Also, whenever there’s some sort of exposition, you’ve got your checklist of characters you want, because we just know it’ll be fun. So it’s like Robin, Dustin, Steve.

Matt Duffer: Steve’s always like, “Whaaaat? I don’t understand. What are you talking about?” And then someone who talks very quickly, which is usually Dustin, can explain to him.

Ross Duffer: It’s a very, very helpful dynamic duo to have with Steve-Dustin. We can get across any amount of exposition in.

Matt Duffer: I will say though, this year, more than any other year, if a scene was too easy to write, it probably means we’ve written a version of it too many times, and we need to come up with a more interesting way to do it. Same with filming it. There’s only four or five scenes in the show where I felt like we’ve really done this before. As much as possible, you’re trying to avoid doing that, because then you’re repeating yourself. It’s boring for you and it’s boring for the actors.

What have your biggest fights with Netflix been about? Matt, your eyes just really bugged out!

Matt Duffer: Oh, no, no, no! (Pause. Clears throat.) Listen, it is crazy the creative leash that we have at Netflix. We’ve had a really great experience. There haven’t been too many insane fights. If there are disagreements, it’s usually budget-related. There’s certain concepts that we have to fight for as essential to the narrative. There’s usually compromises to be had.

Ross Duffer: Season 4, we had toyed around with stuff in the mind before with Eleven, but suddenly we’re making a pretty big U-turn from our gooey monsters to going, “(Vecna) is someone that’s going to invade your mind. He’s going to speak.” Now it seems obvious, but at the time, it took a lot of explaining. At that point, luckily, we were far enough along that ultimately there’s trust in us in the process, even if it took a second for everyone to fully understand the direction we were taking.

What have been some of your favorite moments from the show when you look back on it?

Matt Duffer: Oh geez.

Ross Duffer: The moment I went, “I think this show could work,” was seeing the editor’s cut of when Eleven vanquishes the Demogorgon and disappears in the classroom (in Season 1). I just remember seeing it and how incredible Millie (Bobby Brown) was and the emotion of Finn and with the synth music and going, “Hey, this might actually work.”

Matt Duffer: The first scene we shot, which was the scene with the kids playing Dungeons and Dragons in the basement — that’s the first time we had them in a room, in a set performing a scene from the show with cameras running. Just watching that come together was a massive, massive relief. Even though it was 10 years ago, I’ll never forget that moment.

Ross Duffer: Season 1 was a lot of big swings, just a mishmash of ideas that don’t really make sense together, and is it just going to look silly? But even as we became more confident in moving forward, we still have those fears. We didn’t know if Vecna was going to work until Jamie (Campbell Bower) spoke for the first time, and we saw Barry Gower’s makeup on him in the lighting and suddenly went, “OK, this is going to work.” When you’re taking a big swing like that, those are the moments I remember the most, because you’re like, “What a huge relief that is.”

Matt Duffer: It’s really hard for us to re-watch the show because you just start nitpicking stuff, but there’s certain episodes that I’m really proud of. “The Battle of Starcourt.” “The Massacre at Hawkins Lab.” “Dear Billy.” And this year there are a couple episodes that I think really came together. You don’t always nail it, but sometimes you’re like, “That’s pretty close to what I wanted it to be, and that script flowed the way we wanted it to flow.” Because you’re moving so quickly, sometimes you just make mistakes or you just can’t completely figure something out.

When did you know that it was going to be five seasons?

Matt Duffer: At the end of Season 2, we were feeling pretty burned out. I remember I told some journalists that I was like “four (seasons) and done.” I think it was probably midway through working on Season 3, we realized we just aren’t going to be able to properly wrap this up with four seasons, and we needed five. So it was probably a little after Season 2 and part way through Season 3.

Did you have in your heads events that had to happen in order to reach the end? Could you do the mental math of, “I can fit this much into a season, but not the rest”?

Ross Duffer: Yes, it was as we were working on 3. And then obviously once we got into 4, you’re fully building out the end game of it.

Matt Duffer: Three is an unusual season in that it probably advances the overall story the least. We had built the sandbox, and it was the one where we just played the most with our toys. That’s why it’s such a fun season, but in a way, an outlier. Season 4, we had to get a little bit more serious about laying the groundwork for the end game. So especially the time we were working on 4, we knew roughly where we were going with it.

When did you start sharing your plans for Season 5 with other people?

Matt Duffer: We don’t like sharing anything until we’re happy with it. Scripts and edits aren’t turned over until we think they’re ready. We’re not averse to notes, but I want to get to a point where I’m going to be annoyed by any note, because I feel like I’ve gotten it where we’re happy with it. So we don’t share until we’re absolutely forced to share, basically.

I don’t like people looking at unfinished work. We make sure the sound is polished. We make sure the color looks as good as possible. We make sure the music is good as it can be. I don’t like when people give me vomit drafts of a script. How am I supposed to know if this works? They’re like, “I know it doesn’t work.” “Why are you showing it to me?” That’s how my brain works.

Ross, are you better at that? Does your brain work differently?

Ross Duffer: No, we’re the same in regards to that. It goes back to when we were little kids, though. We always just kept things very close to the vest.

Do you rewatch the show or does it just live within you?

Ross Duffer: I haven’t, like, sat down and watched, like, a full season since the season’s been completed. We’re constantly going back, whether when we’re writing it or when we’re directing scenes, and re-watching moments that we need to. And sometimes I’m surprised when we go back, because you get some distance from it. But I have yet to go back and just sit down and, like, watch Season 1 again. It’s been nine years or something since I’ve done that.

How are you keeping track of all of the show’s mythology, like a show bible or notecards?

Matt Duffer: Yeah, we probably should have something more organized, like you’re suggesting. So many of the writers, the vast majority of them, have been on since at least Season 2 — one of our writers, Paul has been since Season 1. So I feel like collectively, we have a pretty good sense, and then if we forget something or are unsure, we just double check it, or we have an assistant check it.

Ross Duffer: It does mostly live in our heads. Netflix wasn’t certain how everything worked and connected, and what was Upside Down, and what are Eleven’s powers? So they made us write a mythology document out on Season 1, that we did look back on when we went to this season. But it’s not like a Bible that we’re constantly referring to. That’s the closest that we have.

Was Vecna part of that document?

Ross Duffer: We did obviously figure everything out about the Upside Down because it was so prevalent, but we honestly didn’t think this was going to go on for more seasons. So most of the build out of the mythology started on Season 2. It’s why Season 2 was such a challenge for us, because we are on a pretty tight timeline and we were trying to build out a mythology that could sustain multiple seasons.

Matt Duffer: But I do think there’s too much emphasis now on mapping out a massive mythology, rather than just focusing on making one great season. I don’t know how much of it’s coming from pressure from the writers themselves, or the studios. As much as possible, we just try to focus on one season at a time. I think it works best for us.

How much is the play “The First Shadow,” which is set in 1959 and introduces the backstory for Henry Creel, going to factor into Season 5?

Ross Duffer: There is stuff in Season 5 where it’s calling directly to the play. And even to the play that Joyce put on in the play — we do a little callback to that. And you see a little glimpse of it. There is direct connective tissue.

Matt Duffer: But everything you need to know and understand is in the show. I think the play itself would sort of flesh some of it out for you. 

Ross Duffer: And it’s fun, I think, if you’ve seen both. It should work either way.

You’ve said that you wanted the show to grow up with your audience. Where does Season 5 fall into that arc?

Ross Duffer: I think 4 is as violent and dark as the show gets. We were gross in 3 at times, but a fun kind of gross. With 4, we really wanted to push the horror. Season 5, there was less conversation about that. But we certainly didn’t want to backtrack, I’ll say that.

Matt Duffer: I feel like a key to the success of the show is that Ross and I are always striving to make things as scary as possible. But we can only get so scary, for whatever reason. Some of the success results in our failure to be as scary as we want to be. I really believe that.

You want it to be scary, but…

Matt Duffer: We’re not James Wan. We just can’t. Season 1 in particular, I wanted it to be scarier than I think ultimately it was. It’s more accessible than we actually intended it to be. Which helped the show!

Was that something you discovered about your own sensibilities, that you were more accessible than you’d though you were?

Ross Duffer: I think so. Some of that is just the show became what the show became, just over the course of making it. But I think that’s correct that our sensibilities only go so far in terms of darkness and horror.

Matt Duffer: We’ve always had somewhat mainstream taste. That’s probably helped us out. We have a pretty healthy diet in terms of consuming all sorts of different types of movies. Especially when we were growing up, we gravitated towards somewhat mainstream films. In film school, we didn’t have the hippest taste, you know what I mean? Everyone else was making these sorts of deep movies, dramatic films. Our senior thesis was about a cannibal. That’s just where our taste gravitated to. It’s very helpful because then we’re just writing what we love, rather than trying to write what we think people like or what will reach a broad, wide audience.

From the series premiere in Season 1 to the Season 5 premiere, how much time has passed?

Ross Duffer: Honestly, I’d have to look it up. I can’t remember when that first season — was it ’83? Five years, maybe?

Matt Duffer: So it’s been maybe four fewer years than reality or something? 

The energy of the Upside Down just accelerated everybody’s aging. 

Matt Duffer: It’s not as dramatic as people think. There was a scene in Season 4 in Episode 4, the “Dear Billy” episode. Sadie (Sink) is in the basement, writing her letters, and then she walks out of the basement outside, and a year has passed for her, because we shot the two scenes at the beginning and the end of production. And you can’t tell. No one’s ever, ever noticed that. That’s a full year.

Because of the COVID shutdown.

Ross Duffer: If you’re paying attention, you can notice it.

Matt Duffer: But my point is, nobody’s ever noticed it. As they get older, it’s less of a dramatic jump. Coming to shoot Season 3 was shocking to me and Ross. And we had to quickly adjust the writing, because we had been writing them too young. 

Their voices changed.

Matt Duffer: We’re still dealing with that. We were recording with actor Jake (Connelly), who plays a new character this year, and his voice has already dropped quite a bit since we shot him. Luckily, there’s EQ technology. We actually were just listening today. It’s fine. We got worried for a second, but it’s OK.

So how often are you two apart?

Matt Duffer: When it comes to work, we’re never apart, except when we’re this far apart working on our individual computers. So what is that, five feet? There have been a couple instances when there’s been a family or a medical emergency where Ross is not there. It does cause quite a bit of panic for me.

What’s the longest that you’ve been apart, just in life?

Ross Duffer: It may be when we took a break after Season 4. We didn’t see each other for three weeks.

Matt Duffer: We probably will have the longest break we’ve ever had after we finish Season 5. It’ll probably just be about three and a half weeks, because I’m going to be with my kids. That’s not much of a vacation, anyway.

Ross Duffer: We love working, and since we only work together, I start to go a little crazy if I’m not doing something creative. I can’t imagine going much longer than that in the near future.

So what are you thinking your life is going to look like on January 1, 2026? What do you think you’ll be doing?

Matt Duffer: I think it’s going to be two weeks of recovery. I’ve realized, do not go on vacation right after the show releases, because there’s just so much noise and online stuff, you can’t enjoy yourself. So I was like, two weeks, let it set in. Especially this being the last season. So just deal with the reactions. We’ve probably had less than three months’ (vacation) in 10 years.

Ross Duffer: But we’re excited. We haven’t really worked on something brand new for almost 10 years. 

This Q&A has been edited and condensed from two interviews.