Stranger Things actor Gaten Matarazzo revealed that living with co-star Finn Wolfhard during the filming of the show’s final season was “disgusting” as the pair let mess pile up in their shared home.
Speaking on the podcast Dinner's on Me With Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Matarazzo said moving in with Wolfhard for a year while shooting the fifth season felt “like a college experience”.
Matarazzo was 13 when he was cast as Dustin Henderson in 2015, almost the same age as Wolfhard, now 22, when he joined the series as Mike Wheeler. The two have worked on the series together since the first season.
“I would look around, like, three months after we were living together and be like, ‘This place is disgusting. What are we doing?’” he said, adding that the two roommates “kind of matched each other’s energy” when it came to not keeping up with cleaning.
“It was kind of a little bit like a college experience,” the actor added. “We were the same age, and it was the first time.”
Asked who was the messier roommate, Matarazzo said they “kind of matched each other’s energy”. “And also, we got along so well and had been so close for so long we didn’t really hold each other to a standard.”
Matarazzo said they would only realise how bad things were when other cast members made plans to meet at their house.
“Both of us would be like, ‘No! Do not come within 10 feet of our home,’ There was a real panic. Initially we’re like, our rooms can be messy as long as our shared space and the living room is fine. And that maintained itself for a while. Then little things like clothes would clutter, the laundry hadn’t been done, and dishes would pile up,” the actor said when Ferguson asked for details about the kind of mess they left inside.
Matarazzo said the place got “grosser and grosser” until they learned to clean up after themselves.
“It was for the best. And we learned,” he said. “And towards the end of it, we got better. Yeah.”
Stranger Things returned for its fifth and last season earlier this week, with Netflix releasing the first four episodes of the hit sci-fi series in one batch as “Volume One”.
Many fans said they were left stunned by the closing moments.
Two more volumes are set for release over the coming weeks, with three episodes arriving on Boxing Day and a feature-length finale dropping on Netflix in the early hours of New Year’s Day.
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