Stranger Things actor Gaten Matarazzo – who plays Dustin in the Netflix series – has shared how the pandemic has affected the latest season, and why he thinks the new episodes are showrunners the Duffer brothers' best work yet.
Stranger Things season 4 has faced delays due to the pandemic, but that's allowed Matt and Ross Duffer to work a little differently this time. Matarazzo explained usually the brothers would write a bunch of episodes, then slip into director mode, then take a hiatus to finish writing the rest of the season.
"I think they’ve been able to relish in directing in their day-to-day," he told Collider. "There’s nothing else distracting them other than what we’re gonna do today while we’re directing, and I asked them, ‘Do you guys sleep at night?’ they’re like, ‘Literally we dream about directing this show. We go to sleep and we have dreams that we’re just directing this show,’ it takes up their entire minds when they’re making this.
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"So I think it’s a good thing because now they can take their focus off of what the show is going to be about, and now that they know it, they can focus on how they’re going to deliver. And I think it shows."
As for when they'll wrap on the new season, even Matarazzo isn't sure. "There’s very few dates that are reliable," he admitted.
"It really is more of a guesstimation on when we’re gonna be filming next, when we’re gonna be wrapping up, when release is gonna be, all that jazz because we still don’t know on day-to-day if we’re gonna be filming next week. I should be filming like next month for a bigger chunk than I’ve had in a bit, but even though it’s coming up in about two weeks from now, I still don’t know an exact date. So because of that, there’s really no way to figure out when we’re gonna be wrapping."
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