Stranger Things has dominated Netflix with the sheer adorableness of its cast and its
perfectly curated '80s nostalgia.
But, as any good parent would ask, do these kids have a fallback plan?
As it turns out, they basically all have great heads on their shoulders.
Here's how far the cast of Stranger Things got in school.
Millie Bobby Brown
According to Millie Bobby Brown's primary school teacher, Gemma Hill, the young actress
was a star from the very start.
Mrs. Hill told the Bournemouth Echo that Brown, quote, "loved any kind of performance" and
had the "ambition and drive" to really make it.
It's not surprising that things happened quickly for the actress, who's since become a pop
culture phenomenon.
"I dump your ass!"
After her family left England for Florida, the star enrolled in stage-school where she
was discovered and encouraged to move to LA for auditions.
Unfortunately, California was tough on the family's finances, and they eventually went
back to the UK in 2015.
Shortly after, they learned that Brown had landed the role of Eleven on Stranger Things.
Schooling wasn't easy for Brown, but if the girl can defeat the Demogorgon , who cares
about bullies?
She told Glamour UK,
"I was bullied at school back in England.
So, it's extremely important for me to speak out against bullying.
I actually switched schools because of it.
It created a lot of anxiety and issues that I still deal with today."
Hill was hired to help tutor Brown upon her return to the UK, but she's home-schooled
online in America.
In a 2017 tweet, Brown admitted she had been home-schooled for five years and that it's
worked well for her.
Gaten Matarazzo
There's a reason Gaten Matarazzo absolutely nailed Dustin's NeverEnding Story song sequence;
he's been juggling Broadway acting and school for years.
In 2011, the South Jersey native landed his first Broadway role in Priscilla, Queen of
the Desert.
The following year, he starred in Les Miserables, but struggled to balance his classroom workload.
He told SJMag,
"I'd go to school in the morning and then miss my last period of the day.
I'd do my homework at the theater when I wasn't onstage.
We'd get out at 11.
I'd get home about 1:30 am and then get up at 6:30 am to do it all over again."
Today, school seems a bit easier to balance for the actor.
In an interview with NJ.com, Matarazzo opened up about how his Stranger Things co-stars
went to school on-set, which is undoubtedly less of a time-suck than commuting back and
forth from South Jersey to Manhattan.
When he's not filming, he attends Pinelands Regional High School, where he's part of the
school's theater group, in his hometown of Egg Harbor Township.
According to PhillyVoice, Matarazzo performs in the drama club's productions and even went
to junior prom with his girlfriend, a fellow actress who attends the same high school.
Finn Wolfhard
When Finn Wolfhard isn't smooching Eleven in Season 3 of Stranger Things, he's going
to school just like everyone else.
It's safe to say that he's tutored on-set with his Stranger Things co-stars, like Gaten
Matarazzo suggested in a NJ.com interview, but he does attend regular school during his
off-time.
In 2016, the actor revealed to Vulture that he went to Catholic school, even though he
was Jewish.
Wolfhard, who's best known for his role as Mike in the Netflix series and starring in
a string of music videos for the Canadian punk rock band Pup, has acted through a great
deal of his schooling.
His first credited role came in 2013 when he was around 11 years old.
It's remarkable that the young star manages to hit the books at all between balancing
Stranger Things, film roles, and touring with his rock band Calpurnia.
The experience sounds only slightly less stressful than getting trapped in the Upside Down, but
at least he sees a light at the end of the tunnel.
He told Consequence of Sound,
"We have one more year [of high school], one more eternity, and then once we're done with
that eternity, we'll be in, what do they call it, Hell?
They call it Hell.
Purgatory.
No, being in high school is the Hell part."
Noah Schnapp
For Noah Schnapp, fame feels like a double life.
The dude is totally pulling a Hannah Montana, sans the blonde wig, and with the addition
of some slimy slugs.
Like Matarazzo, Schnapp probably attends school on the set of Stranger Things, but when he's
home, he attends a normal school just like everyone else and gets to experience at least
a little bit of a regular childhood.
He told People,
"I also go to regular school and to the same summer camp I've been going to since I was
7.
It's like I have two lives.
It's fun!"
"Now can we play D&D?"
"No!"
Where there are normal classes, there are normal middle school dances.
In 2017, the star told Vanity Fair that middle school dances are nothing like they looked
in the Season 2 finale, even if everyone is dressed up.
Apparently, things are pretty awkward, no one dances, and nerves appear to be as high
as someone who just witnessed a Demogorgon lunging through their middle school hallways.
He told the magazine,
"From my middle school dance...the boys were on one side, and the girls were on the other
side, and we never interacted with each other."
Caleb McLaughlin
Caleb McLaughlin is another Stranger Things star who got his start on Broadway, so he's
quite familiar with the work-school struggle.
From 2012 to 2014, the actor starred as young Simba in The Lion King.
He also attended The Harlem School of the Arts, but it wasn't his passion for acting
that led him to have a nontraditional middle school and high school career.
He began home-schooling long before he ever landed the role of Lucas on Stranger Things.
In a 2019 interview with People, McLaughlin opened up about how he asked to be home-schooled
when he was in fifth grade, saying,
"I was like, 'I want out of this.
I want to do home-schooling.
I want to learn on my own leisure.
I just finished high school, I graduated.
So I'm done, but I'm going to college this fall."
McLaughlin plans to take a similar approach to college as he did to high school.
While he's likely no longer attending classes on set with his Stranger Things co-stars,
he does plan to take online college courses, and continue learning at his own pace.
Sadie Sink
Like Gaten Matarazzo and Caleb McLaughlin, Sadie Sink, who joined Stranger Things in
Season 2 as the California cool-girl Mad Max, was plucked from the Broadway stage.
In 2013, she served as an understudy and alternate for the red-headed lead in Annie, then nabbed
the part of Young Elizabeth in The Audience a few years later.
Throughout all of her success, which includes being a muse and model for the Italian high
fashion brand Miu Miu, Sink still managed to attend a regular high school, where she
studied things like calculus and psychology, and even made plans to take the SAT.
There's one thing, however, that she is not: a normal high school student.
In an interview with W Magazine, the actress admitted that she once wore Miu Miu to class,
saying,
"People looked at me kind of weird, like, 'Oh, my God, she's wearing Miu Miu to school.'
It was kind of outrageous, it's this beautiful red sweater with all these jewels on top.
But I didn't care; I was like, 'It's beautiful.
Get over it.'"
Sink also doesn't plan to stop her education at high school.
The star told Interview that she's always envisioned herself going to college eventually,
and definitely plans to go when she has the time.
Natalia Dyer
Natalia Dyer, aka Nancy Wheeler, is actually quite studious in real life.
The Tennessee native graduated from Nashville School of the Arts where she performed alongside
community theater groups like the Circle Players, the oldest non-profit community theater in
Music City.
Dyer's acting career sparked by accident after she sprained her ankle on the first day of
sports camp.
She told The Tennessean that her parents put her into "something a little less active"
after that, and eventually, she managed to make her way out of theater and onto the big
screen with a role in Hannah Montana: The Movie.
Though Dyer certainly has her plate full with Stranger Things, the star still managed to
find time to go to college.
"I feel like this is the best idea I've had all summer!"
According to Teen Vogue, she studies at NYU's Gallatin School of Individualized Study, but
she pulls from her high school experience to make Nancy shine.
"I see some similarities to her in high school and me in high school, just the way that she
straddles groups.
I was always a floater.
I had a lot of different social groups, always trying to figure out where [I] really fit
in."
Joe Keery
Joe Keery's character is vying for the biggest redemption arc in all of Stranger Things.
Over three seasons, his character transformed from cool guy jock to Dustin's compassionate
sidekick.
"Oh yeah.
Yeah, this'll do.
This'll do just fine"
Who would have thought?
It makes sense that Keery could handle such meaningful character development.
The star is quite a bit older than the rest of the Stranger Things kids, and he spent
that extra time perfecting his craft with higher education.
Keery attended Newburyport High School in Massachusetts, where his sister got him a
spot on the drama club's tech crew as a freshman.
After graduation, the future Netflix star honed his craft at DePaul University.
In 2014, he graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in acting, and landed the role on Stranger
Things not long after.
Charlie Heaton
Charlie Heaton graduated from his secondary education at age 16, which sounds young, but
it's typical for British students who don't have the same high school structure as Americans.
Instead of going into further education and taking the A-Levels, Heaton high-tailed it
to London where he tried to make it as a musician.
According to the Evening Standard, Heaton had no formal acting training and started
going on auditions because, after touring with several bands, money was extremely tight.
He only had a few small TV credits before landing a role on Stranger Things, but he's
been honing his craft ever since.
He told the outlet,
"It's the best way!
You can go to school and learn and that works for some people.
But I think the best kind of learning is practical and learning on the job."
Maya Hawke
Maya Hawke is the daughter of Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman, but she didn't consider acting
seriously until her junior year of high school.
After that, according to WWD, the star acted in every school play possible.
She even spent entire summers at acting camp, but for some reason, when it came to actually
joining the family business, she had her reservations.
She told the outlet,
"I was like, 'I don't know, do I want to get an English degree…?'
I was simultaneously doing a play at my school, and it was the only thing I liked doing.
I didn't like studying for my SAT, didn't like writing essays, but I felt so alive and
capable in the theater at my school."
Maya ended up enrolling in Juilliard but, according to Elle, dropped out after a year
because she landed a role in the 2017 BBC production Little Women, which filmed in Ireland.
David Harbour
What about the adults of Stranger Things?
David Harbour, aka Jim Hopper, grew up in White Plains, New York.
He first graced the stage in kindergarten when he played the Tin Man in a school production
of The Wizard of Oz.
The star eventually went to high school, but was a troubled student and picked up a drinking
habit.
This habit continued when he enrolled in Dartmouth, his father's alma mater.
He told Dartmouth Alumni Magazine,
"I'd look out the window at 9 a.m. to see three feet of snow and thought it would be
a better idea to skip class and drink peach schnapps.
I just wanted to create this void to destroy myself."
Despite his drinking habit, which he eventually quit, Harbour reportedly stunned in Dartmouth's
productions of Hamlet and Macbeth.
He graduated in 1997 and started racking up acting credits five years later.
Winona Ryder
Much like her younger Stranger Things co-stars, Winona Ryder was a Hollywood ingenue, but
her parents forced her to juggle school and acting.
In an interview with Marie Claire UK, the Beetlejuice actress admitted that they only
allowed her to film during school holidays, and even then only if she could maintain her
good grades.
She graduated from high school with a 4.0 GPA, but it wasn't an easy ride.
Before Ryder won a Golden Globe, became an Oscar nominee, and got entangled in what might
just be the most highly publicized shoplifting case in history, she had trouble with junior
high bullies.
After an incident, she was briefly home-schooled while attending the American Conservatory
Theater's Young Conservatory program.
Things didn't get better for Ryder in high school.
According to an interview with Marie Claire UK, Ryder hoped Beetlejuice's success would
give her a popularity boost.
She said,
"I remember thinking, 'Ooh, it's like the number-one movie.
This is going to make things great at school.'
But it made things worse.
They called me a witch."
Ryder's biography reveals that the star was finally vindicated years later when her junior
high bully asked for an autograph after she'd become famous.
Instead of handing over a signature, she just cursed her out instead.
"You goddamn b----."
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