Stranger Things: the secrets of Gaten Matarazzo (Dustin) on the last episodes

Is it possible? Is it true? Accept the
Stranger Things
kids really grown upwards?

I’thousand talking to Gaten Matarazzo, who, in the primordial era of July 2016, was in one case the babiest of all the baby
Stranger Things
kids—playing Dustin, the goofy ane with the trucker hat—and he’s telling me nearly moving into a new place with his girlfriend. Matarazzo is wearing a technicolored cardigan that’s fashion cooler than annihilation in my cupboard, and probably yours, too. He still has that sweetness-hearted grin, the one fabricated of butterflies and confetti, and now, the slightest tinge of aged wisdom, the kind that merely comes when you’ve lived a certain amount of life, and been through a certain amount of things. Sure, Matarazzo played
Switch Sports
until i a.chiliad. the night before we met (he’s a tennis guy!), but he’southward highly concerned about bathroom appliances, too. “The lightbulbs in my bathroom haven’t been changed in a month and I’m completely fine peeing in the dark,” he says. “I’m like, ‘I should probably change those!'”

Well, fuck me. The
Stranger Things
kids accept, in fact, grown up.

Seeing the likes of Matarazzo and his co-stars emerging from pubescent hibernation may very well show to be the trendiest existential crisis of the summertime, when
Stranger Things
returns this Friday for its 4th and penultimate season. For the record, Matarazzo was fourteen years old when the testify debuted,
charming audiences with its ’80s-hued horror mystery—which sees demons from an alternate dimension invade their tiny Indiana town.
At present, Matarazzo is 19, with a handful of non-Stranger Things

projects in the works, similar starring in this summertime’s
Honour Society
alongside Christopher Mintz-Plasse, and joining the Broadway bandage of
Dear Evan Hansen. Outside of work, yep, he’due south uttering phrases that will make you feel deeply, ego-shatteringly onetime, similar “working in the city” and “an apartment with three cats.”

But there’s still the main attraction, the
Stranger Things
of information technology all, one of Netflix’due south last true franchises, even if the by 2 seasons oasis’t
quite
matched upwards to the hype of the outset. Clearly, Netflix is tossing every last one of its eggs into the Upside Down,
splitting
Stranger Things 4
into two gargantuan volumes—the first of which runs a whopping nine hours long across but vii episodes—released a month apart. It kind of
needs
to work. “Before [Season 3] I really didn’t recall much of it,” Matarazzo says of whether or non he feels like a dissimilar dude after all these years.
“I call up people get a little fleck more self-enlightened, cocky-conscious even when they become into their late teens, early ’20s.” Now, information technology feels like Matarazzo, a man who feels similar he’s on the edge of his Adjacent Big Act, is all of a sudden equipped to bring
Stranger Things
to the beginning of the stop.

gaten matarazzo
Could a
Star Wars
function exist in shop for super-fan Gaten Matarazzo? “I’ve been trying so hard that I might just prove up to 1 of them,” he says. “I should merely walk in the background for i of them. That would be so great. I don’t even intendance, man. I will do whatever.”

Nathan Johnson

Showtime, though, we do demand to know how Gaten Matarazzo is equipped to alive in his ain New Jersey apartment, with his girlfriend of four years, and the iii cats, too, when about nineteen-year-olds are falling asleep in shitty dorm room bunk beds, sweating alcohol all over the bedbugs. “You know what’southward weird about information technology? Is that information technology doesn’t experience weird,” he says, like he’due south working this out in existent fourth dimension. Matarazzo only 20 minutes away from dwelling house, living with his best friend, free to play badminton or tennis or bowling (he’s pretty stoked about rolling a 257 the dark before) in
Switch Sports
whenever he damn well pleases.
It’s the dream, isn’t it? Matarazzo oozes the vibes of a guy who’s figured it all out—even if he’d argue that he admittedly hasn’t—always smiling, laid back in his seat, game to talk for a solid 10 minutes nigh the New York Rangers’southward goalie state of affairs.

That could, of course, change in a couple months. The arrival of
Stranger Things 4
marks the start of the busiest summertime for Matarazzo, since, well, the summer
Stranger Things 3
dropped. On the big screen, we’ll soon encounter Matarazzo in
Honor Gild, a nighttime comedy almost an evil high schoolhouse senior who tries to sabotage her peers for a shot at Harvard. (Matarazzo on his character: “Polar opposite of Dustin.”)
Later this summer, the teen will motility across the river to a New York Metropolis apartment, when rehearsals for his limited run appearance in
Love Evan Hansen
on Broadway fire up. He’ll play the scattershot
family unit friend
of the Hansens,
Jared Kleinman, in what’ll marking Matarazzo’s third Broadway credit. (After 2011’southward
Priscilla Queen of the Desert
and 2014’s
Les Misérables.) “I’ve been trying to go dorsum on stage since I left when I was 12,” he says, “It’south the most fulfilling thing on planet Earth. You get to have the experience of starting a project and wrapping it up all at the same time, every single day.”

As for what’s next—afterwards
Dear Evan Hansen,
Accolade Order, and
Stranger Things
—Matarazzo’s plans calls to mind Daniel Radcliffe, who escaped child stardom with barely a scratch, partially thanks to Broadway turns and delightfully bizarre independent flick roles. “I call back I’ll merely have some time to practice weird projects, weird stuff that I probably wouldn’t have had the assurance to practice before
Stranger Things, Matarazzo says. “Just experiment a little flake, bask the work, learn. I really desire to learn more than from incredible people and take my time with it.” Though he’d certainly head dorsum
into the blockbuster mainstream for 1 title:
Star Wars. Zip official, of form. He’southward only a fan. “I’ve been trying then hard that I might just show up to 1 of them,” he says, joking, just would Jon Favreau really plow Gaten Matarazzo down at the door? “I should just walk in the background for i of them. That would be so corking. I don’t even care, man. I will do whatever.”

gaten matarazzo stranger things
Season Ane of
Stranger Things
introduced the world to Matarazzo’s Dustin “Dusty Bun” Henderson, whose wise-cracking made him an instant favorite.

Curtis Bakery / Netflix

If anyone’s proved themselves virtuous enough of the Jedi mantle, it’south this man and his cute cardigan. The actor has brought an unquantifiable amount of awareness to the genetic bone condition he was built-in with, called cleidocranial dysplasia (CCD). Information technology affects the development of the jaw, skull, teeth, joints, and frequently clavicles—Matarazzo is missing his entirely. Since CCD ofttimes necessitates surgeries non covered by medical insurance (he’southward has had iv so far), Matarazzo co-founded a nonprofit, chosen CCD Smiles, to raise funds to comprehend them. What’s surely helped on the sensation stop is that
Stranger Things
creators Matt and Ross Duffer wrote Matarazzo’due south status into the script, so that Dustin non merely has CCD, besides, but often makes cracks about it. “The segues into it are then natural,” he says. “It makes me emotional thinking about how weirdly accurate they bring it up every flavor. There’due south ever a piddling reference in a weird little joking manner. It’south the fashion I would joke nigh it with my friends.”

Matarazzo received his diagnosis two days after birth, started seeing doctors at the Children’southward Infirmary of Philadelphia when he was 8, and had his first surgery at 14, to start extracting his infant teeth and pulling downwardly the adult ones. (Another symptom of CCD: none of that happens on its own.) “In that location were days in which I would go to the orthodontist, it would hurt a lot. Just I would look forward to it because it was i of the merely environments in which I got to walk in and feel similar an equal rather than feeling talked down to. It was 1 of the but times in which I felt genuinely, truly respected,” he says. “I was in a hospital where there were kids dealing with conditions that were very much life-threatening in incredibly horrific means. And I e’er saw how parents would e’er comprehend their kids’ ears when talking about what they were going through. I understand the desire and need to do that, like to feel similar they aren’t scared. Only kids are smart in ways that I don’t think adults volition e’er be able to sympathise. They are able to sympathize energies and know what’s going on.”

Then yep, Gaten Matrazzo, two years away from his first legal beer, always feels like the most carefree of the
Stranger Things
lot when they’re all grouped together on pressers. It takes a certain amount of life, and going through a certain amount of things, to get there.
“Information technology kind of felt like this old thing that I used to do,” he says of the whole printing junket, premiere, and promotion train. “It’due south like nosotros don’t actually do that much anymore. I just realized,
No, nosotros do. It’s but we haven’t been able to in and then long.” The rap on this batch of
Stranger Things
episodes?
The show is honest-to-god spooky, now. Hawkins is once over again home to another Big Bad, a telekinetic mess of flesh and bones by the proper noun of Vecna, who looks similar Freddy Kreuger if you took the sweater off. Book One has serious
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Burn down
tones, where the kids don’t look like kids anymore, sure, merely they actually show signs of trauma from having the golden years of middle school mucked up by a sentient tentacle monster.
“They’re growing up, despite their kind of desire to cling onto a bit of lost babyhood,” Matarazzo says. “Considering they definitely lost a lot of experiences they could have had early on on because they needed to focus on saving the world. Which is always a bit of a dilemma, I think.”

gaten matarazzo
“There were days in which I would go to the orthodontist, it would hurt a lot,” Matarazzo says of receiving medical treatment for his cleidocranial dysplasia. “But I would look forward to it considering information technology was 1 of the only environments in which I got to walk in and feel like an equal rather than feeling talked down to.”

Nathan Johnson

What’south bewildering to fifty-fifty Gaten Matarazzo is that this season sees Dustin becomes the unofficial leader of the Hawkins gang. Even though he’ll notwithstanding pause into the occasional high-pitched bleat when things go to shit, Matarazzo imbues Dustin with smartest-person-in-the-room energy, as the gang begins to understand the bizarre physics of the Upside Downward. “I feel like I’chiliad free to make choices in any fashion that I actually desire to and it’ll withal feel like Dustin, because I’ve been playing him for seven years,” he adds. “Information technology really is like a second nature.” And if yous were at all worried about whether or not
Stranger Things‘southward prized bromance—the friendship between Dusty Bun and Joe Keery’s Steve Harrington—would get enough play
this flavour… don’t. Plenty of meme-deserving banter to go around. Matarazzo’south greatest laughing fit of the day comes when I inform him that Keery, in an interview with
Vulture, called him “the 60-year-old uncle that I never had.” I enquire if that makes Keery the nephew. “Yeah, that sounds about right,” Matarazzo says. “I think it flip-flops. “I feel like there are certain days in which I’m simply the giggly little brother, and and so at that place are others where I feel similar I’one thousand the kid wrangler.”

Cheers to Tom Holland’due south original sin, whatever young actor who so much as utters a spoiler in their own caput has committed a punishable thoughtcrime. So Matarazzo will genuinely exist damed if he and then much as teases
Stranger Affair
s‘s adjacent and final season. But he
does
believe it needs to have a destination indicate. “Of course I’m going to be heartbroken to go out the show behind,” he says, “only as well I’m simply glad that they have an end in sight. I think every single testify needs that.”

One last volley for Mr. Matarazzo in this proverbial game of
Switch Sports
tennis. Does he believe that David Harbour has long known how
Stranger Things
ends?

“No, he doesn’t! No. He doesn’t. If he knows, I’grand then mad that he knows. They won’t tell me annihilation,” he says before pausing. Matarazzo goes quiet, and seems to reconsider his mortal existence before lighting upward again.

“No, I call bullshit!”

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Source: https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/a40093833/gaten-matarazzo-stranger-things-interview/

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