The Most Tragic Details About The Cast Of Stranger Things

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The following article mentions addiction, suicide, mental health, and domestic violence.

The cast of "Stranger Things" has been on our screens since 2016, and (spoiler alert) in that time they've gone from reluctant small-town schoolkids to winning battles against the Upside Down armed only with '80s British sophisti-pop songs. They've changed a lot IRL, too. Just take a look at these jaw-dropping before and after photos of the "Stranger Things" cast from Season 1 to now. But being such stalwarts of streaming means there've also been a few tragedies along the way.

Between online abuse and addiction issues, the cast's BTS issues can sometimes make their time in Hawkins look like a relaxing Buddhist retreat. Although each member of the cast reportedly earned upward of $5 million per episode in Season 5, per Business Insider, details of their lives outside the show put paid to the idea that money will solve all your problems. Millie Bobby Brown attested to this when speaking to Vanity Fair about growing up in the spotlight. "I don't have many friends, because of who I am," she told the outlet in 2025. "I didn't go to school, so I don't have the best social skills when it comes to people my own age and friendships. I struggle with that quite a bit." With that, let's take a look at more of Hawkins' finest and their off-screen struggles ...

Death, taxes, and online hate. Unfortunately, the latter has become such an inescapable part of life that it can be grouped in with the IRS and the Grim Reaper. From royalty to retail workers, no one can escape the wrath of the internet. Even Prince Harry has shared his thoughts about online trolls. But Millie Bobby Brown (Eleven) didn't just have online haters. When she decided to change up her look, she had haters in print media too.

Bobby Brown went blonde in 2025 to promote her film "The Electric State." In turn, newspapers, social media, and even former "The Great British Baking Show" host Matt Lucas had something mean to say. "It's the very, very, and, I have to add, very poor styling and blonde hair that makes her look 20 years older than she is," said one user on X. Alongside that, headline writers questioned why she looked so much older and analyzed (read: scrutinized) her facial features.

How did the "Enola Holmes" actor feel about the forensic examination of her platinum-hair era? "I was depressed for three, four days. I was crying every day," she told British Vogue. "This isn't journalism. This is bullying," she said in a 2025 Instagram post about the furor. "Why is it the knee-jerk reaction to say something horrible rather than just say something nice?" We're asking the same question, Millie.

Imagine being a child actor on a shoot with a crew of hundreds, with millions upon millions spent on the production, and learning so many lines that it's like having your SATs every day. With all that on your mind, you then have to go and perform. It can be tough. So, we can understand if it sometimes gets to be a bit too much, as it did for OG "Stranger Things" cast member Finn Wolfhard.

"I was having normal first-relationship struggles and juggling COVID and the show," the erstwhile Calpurnia frontman told Time Magazine about shooting Season 4 of the Netflix show. "Halfway through a scene, I started hyperventilating. It was kind of like a fishbowl because a lot of the extras are fans. It culminated in sort of a panic attack." (ICYMI, a psychologist revealed what you need to know if you see someone having a panic attack.)

"It was incredible and subconsciously terrifying to be 13 and all of the sudden everyone knows who you are," said Wolfhard in the same interview. Indeed, life as a child star can be a burden. In fact, there's a lineage of once-popular child stars who've completely vanished for this reason. But if you don't see Wolfhard on your screen, don't fret. He has already let us know he'll be focusing on music from now on.

Winona Ryder has a tragic real-life story, so when it came to working on her role as Joyce Byers on "Stranger Things," she was able to draw on some of that personal tragedy for her art. "I had this experience when I was in my early 20s: There was a girl from the town that I grew up in. Her name was Polly Klaas and she was kidnapped. I knew her family," Ryder revealed to Interview Magazine. "She was missing for two months, and very tragically, she had been killed."

In case you've been living under a rock without a stable Wi-Fi connection, the narrative catalyst of "Stranger Things" Season 1 is the disappearance of Joyce's son, Will Byers (Noah Schnapp). This plotline cut a little too close to the bone for Ryder. "I was actually really freaked out with 'Stranger Things,' because I wanted them to know how f****** serious that is," she continued. "[T]hat you can't use disappearances as a tool to advance — it feels very personal." It just goes to show how something so intimate can also be so universal. "I also talked to Polly's dad," Ryder added, "and a lot of my performance in that first season was connected to him." Props to the "Heathers" actor for turning a personal tragedy into work that moved viewers.

"I lost everything," said David Harbour on "The Off Camera Show." Here, Harbour was not referring to all the details about his messy breakup with Lily Allen, but rather the consequences of his pre-fame drinking days. "I was practically homeless," he explained. "My friends started to abandon me because I was very angry and a horrible human being to be around. Finally, my girlfriend, who I never thought would leave me, left me." Things got so bad that Harbour considered taking his own life. Thankfully, however, he was able to kick the drink via Alcoholics Anonymous' 12 recovery steps. But other struggles were amplified during Harbour's early sobriety ... 

"Here's the interesting thing," Harbour said in 2018 (via the NME). "I was actually into this Catholicism thing ... and I was sober for like a year and a half. I was 25, and I actually did have a manic episode. I was diagnosed as bipolar." Fortunately, he was able to quell the symptoms of his bipolar disorder with medication after a stint in a mental health facility. Harbour also found solace in acting, with his mental health improving the more he treaded the boards. We're glad he's found what works for him.

Cleidocranial dysplasia, otherwise known as CCD, affects circa one in a million people, per Johns Hopkins Medicine. One of those one in a millions is "Stranger Things" actor Gaten Matarazzo. For people with CCD, teeth and bones may be fragile, unusually formed, or even absent. "It's not a fatal condition, but that doesn't mean it doesn't affect people's lives negatively," Matarazzo told Future of Personal Health. Indeed, it has had a major impact on his work and personal lives.

"In some way, it affects me — whether it be my height or my teeth or making me look younger," the "Prank Encounters" host revealed to Health Insight. Matarazzo added that, although the condition helped get his acting career off the ground, he hopes it doesn't define him. "Hopefully, I can evolve from that and not just get roles because of the condition, I can play parts that don't have physical disabilities or anything like that," he continued. Here's hoping. It's fair to say that Matarazzo was one amazing kid who refused to let any of life's obstacles get in their way.

Fandom is a strange thing. While, ostensibly, fans (or stans) are champions of a musician or actor's work, in other ways, they're the artist's worst enemy. Caleb McLaughlin, who played Lucas in "Stranger Things," suffered the dark side of fandom in the worst way on his first trip to a Comic Con with the Netflix show.

"At my very first Comic-Con, some people didn't stand in my line because I was Black," he recalled when speaking at the Brussels' Heroes Comic-Con in 2022 (via X). "Some people told me that, 'Oh, I don't want to be in line because you were mean to Eleven,'" he continued. "Even now, some people don't follow me or don't support me because I'm Black."

It's particularly tragic when you consider that McLaughlin was 14 when he began working on the first season of the sci-fi series. "When I was younger, it definitely affected me a lot," he added. "You're like what ... 'Why am I the least favorite? Why don't I have followers?' I'm on the same show as everybody from Season 1." Racism is not something anyone should have to go through. That didn't stop the "High Flying Bird" actor from taking the high ground, dedicating himself to spreading love and positivity through his platform as an actor. More power to him.

Here's something you won't find in Natalia Dyer and Charlie Heaton's complete relationship timeline. In October 2017, headlines stated that, when traveling to the "Stranger Things" Season 2 premiere from the U.K., Heaton was found with cocaine traces in his luggage at LAX. He was subsequently denied entry and sent packing (literally and figuratively). Cue a whole hullabaloo online. "Petition for Charlie Heaton to be [allowed] back in the US so they can film 'Stranger Things,'" cried one user on X.

Heaton himself was quick to quash any suggestion of his wrongdoing. "My planned travel to the U.S. last week was affected by an issue at U.S. immigration," he said in a statement (via Deadline). "I do want to clarify that I was not arrested or charged with a crime." But the media speculation wasn't easy for "The New Mutants" actor. "It was f****** awful. It was just awful," Heaton told Faunt Magazine, recalling his brush with U.S. Officials. "It was hard. Everything happened so fast, and I hadn't come to terms with the fact that I was famous," he continued. "When something steps in from the work you are doing and breaks into your personal life ... you feel kind of vulnerable." Indeed, once news of his TSA travails reached his homeland, England, the media decamped to his parents' doorstep. Suffice to say, it was all pretty upsetting for the Yorkshireman.

You may remember a certain basketball-playing, car-driving, and beer-chugging "Stranger Things" character called Billy Hargrove. Billy was a bully, but the actor who played him, Dacre Montgomery, was actually a victim of bullying himself. While growing up in his native Australia, Montgomery was given a hard time by bullies, and he channeled his experience with these individuals for his role. "I had a really tough time in high school," he told Men's Health in 2019. "I feel like there's a lot of people in my life that have possessed those types of qualities that I represent in the show."

The Netflix series also helped Montgomery see that his own bullies were also unhappy. "What I realized shooting ['Stranger Things'] was seeing the insecurity of the people who bullied me," said Montgomery to The Daily Telegraph Confidential in 2019 (via the Daily Mail). "You're like 'this person is the epitome of bad,' but there is always something going on on the other side of the lens." 

According to Everytown Research and Policy, 125 people in America are killed by guns per day. It's a shocking statistic. One made even more shocking when you consider that around 64% of Americans have, or know someone who has, suffered at the wrong end of a firearm, per The Lancet Regional Health. One of those Americans is Matthew Modine. "Gun violence is something that came into my family's life," Modine, who plays Dr. Martin Brenner in "Stranger Things," told RogerEbert.com. "My mother's sister, her husband, came home and shot her, and then shot himself in front of the two children, in front of Elizabeth and Russell, when they were only about 4 and 7 years old." From then on, his young cousin's lives were never the same. "Being witness to that was something that [Russell] struggled with for many years until he got into his 30s," Modine added.

The incident clearly stayed with the California native, and it even colors his earliest childhood memory. "We were having dinner and my cousin said we were eating my pet chicken, Susie," said the "Full Metal Jacket" star when speaking to the Guardian about his very first recollections. "We adopted my mother's sister's children five days before I was born, after my aunt's husband came home and ..." Well, you know the rest. So, spare a thought for all those who have also been affected by gun violence, all two-thirds of Americans.

It's a common misconception that all nepo babies have it easy. In the same way you shouldn't judge a book by its cover, don't judge a nepo baby by their parents. Although Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman's daughter, Maya Hawke, has established herself as a prolific actor and critically lauded indie singer-songwriter, her early school life wasn't such an unmitigated success.

"I did get, like, kicked out of school for not being able to read when I was a kid," Hawke told NPR of her experience with dyslexia, while promoting her debut album in 2020. "And I went to a special school for kids with learning disabilities. And it took me a long time to learn how to read, and I still am limited," she continued. "Every grade that went by, you get dropped down into a lower and lower reading group. And other kids find out. And there's bullying in place." However, as she grew older, Hawke found herself thankful for her dyslexia. "There's something about having had a limitation in regard to my ability to produce and take in stories that made me even more determined to love them and understand them and grow in them," she added. Now, that's one you know; here's what you don't know about Hawke.

Many people see red carpets, Netflix deals, and sold-out concerts as bona fide measures of success. But for Joe Keery, that wasn't quite the case. "I've been incredibly lucky, so I do have a pretty heavy sense of imposter syndrome-slash-gratitude," Keery (who's also known by the synth-pop moniker Djo to fans of his music) told the Guardian in 2025. According to the National Institutes of Health, imposter syndrome affects high-performing individuals who, despite their external success, doubt their abilities. With Keery being a SAG Award-winning actor who has also reached No. 1 on Spotify's global streaming chart, it's even more tragic that he feels this way. If you can't feel successful with those titles to your name, how can you ever feel successful at all?

Well, the author of "The Imposter Cure," Dr Jessamy Hibberd, has an answer. She told the Guardian that those who suffer from feelings of imposterism should note down everything they do well each day to connect themselves to their successes. Maybe Keery could try that next time he's back in Chicago and feels it, as the verse goes?

If you or anyone you know needs help with addiction issues, mental health, or is in crisis, help is available:

• Visit the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration website or contact SAMHSA's National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357).
• Contact the Crisis Text Line by texting HOME to 741741, call the National Alliance on Mental Illness helpline at 1-800-950-NAMI (6264), or visit the National Institute of Mental Health website.
• Call or text 988 or chat 988lifeline.org.