Finn Wolfhard has revealed the one thing he would do differently amid his Stranger Things rise to fame – and it says a lot about his experience of Hollywood.
Born in 2002, Wolfhard was 13 years old in the first season of Netflix sci-fi hit series, which was released in July 2016.
His role as Mike Wheeler made Wolfhard an overnight star, along with his fellow child actors including Millie Bobby Brown, Caleb McLaughlin, and later Sadie Sink.
Now 22 years old, Wolfhard has reflected on the sudden change to his life and named the one thing he would do differently in those early years.
Speaking to People magazine, the actor said: “I don’t think I’d ever go back and do something over, but maybe I would go back to when the show first came out and blew up, and I would directly put myself into therapy.”
On why he didn’t enter therapy at the time, Wolfhard explained: “It was so crazy and overnight that there was not really any time to think about that.”
That said, he added: “I would end up probably making a mistake in a different way anyways. I think childhood, and life in general, is about trial and error.”
This is not the first time that Wolfhard and his Stranger Things co-stars have spoken about their struggle with overnight fame.
Speaking in 2023 to GQ, Wolfhard – who is also a musician – said that his “crazy whirlwind career” affected his mental health, stating that it caused him to have routine panic attacks.
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“Everyone was like, ‘Look at him, he’s fine. He’s having the best time,’” the It star said. “But in reality, I was probably also developing, and things were happening in my brain, and anxieties were forming, and [there were] things that I didn’t realise that I had to bury because of how I had to feel at work.”
Bobby Brown, who plays Wolfhard’s love interest Eleven in the Eighties-set series, has also spoken out regularly about the challenges of growing up under the public eye.
Both actors will star in the fifth and final season of the hit show, which wrapped production in December last year and is expected to be released on Netflix sometime this year.
Wolfhard told Variety that his last day on the Stranger Things set was “incredibly emotional, obviously”.
