It was the dreaded morning after. Following the joyous celebration of turning 20 in December 2022, Finn Wolfhard had entered the grim Upside Down of the hangover. “I’m not a drinker or a partier but I’d gone out and gotten hammered and I was feeling hang-xiety,” he remembers.
Rather than simply marinate himself in Alka-Seltzer, he channelled his feelings into writing a song, ‘Happy Birthday’, which serves as the title track from his forthcoming debut solo album – a nine-song slacker-rock-hued collection attempting to assemble the puzzle pieces of his identity, anxieties, childhood and loneliness.
Staring down the barrel of the end of Stranger Things – the Duffer Brothers’ Netflix juggernaut in which he has starred as pan-dimensional supernatural-vanquishing teen Mike Wheeler for nearly a decade – and moving into adulthood, Wolfhard felt at a transitional point.
“Subconsciously, I was getting ready for the end of the show,” he recalls. “In a lot of ways, I’m lucky enough to have family and friends in my life that have kept me from going insane, but I also had to grow up pretty fast.” As such, a quasi-existential question nagged at him. “OK, I’ve made it this far – and had a crazy-lucky childhood as an actor where I got to do these amazing things. But now that’s over and I’m not a child anymore, what now?”
He takes a deep breath. “This is the start of a different chapter of my life.”
At 22. Wolfhard is the poster-boy for Gen-Z alt-indie and a Canadian export so in-demand that even Donald Trump wouldn’t impose a tariff on him. Since he first auditioned for Stranger Things (a phenomenon that proved so popular it caused Kate Bush’s ‘Running Up That Hill’ to top the charts in eight different countries), he’s worked non-stop – juggling roles in big-budget Hollywood movies (Ghostbusters, It) while touring in his indie bands Calpurnia and The Aubreys.
“It feels like a weird graduation in my life… but I want to celebrate it”
Now he’s further branching out into multi-hyphenate territory. Just last week, he released his directorial debut Hell Of A Summer (which he also stars in and has co-written). It’s a six-year labour-of-love slasher romp in which a bunch of teens are picked off at Camp Pinewood by a mysterious killer – melding Finn’s love of R-rated horrors such as Friday The 13th with Superbad-style teen comedy.
Speaking to NME via Zoom from his home in Toronto, Wolfhard describes 2025 as akin to leaving college. “It feels like a weird graduation in my life,” he says, running a hand through his shaggy hair. “With Stranger Things ending last year, it was the end of an era, and to have this film coming out – which I’ve been living with for years – feels like a new start. It’s nerve-wracking but I also want to celebrate it.”
Growing up, his mother always wanted Wolfhard to have the coming-of-age summer camp experience she had enjoyed as a child. “But it was something I never did because I had too much separation-anxiety,” he says. “Making this film, maybe I made up for it.” While writing Hell Of A Summer, he would email the drafts to Ghostbusters: Afterlife director Jason Reitman and “mentor” Jesse Eisenberg for candid feedback. “It was a vulnerable place, but you also want people to be honest with your work, so it was important to send it to people who wouldn’t just say, ‘Oh it’s great.’” Reitman was evidently impressed: he’s producing Wolfhard and creative partner Billy Bryk’s next venture, a reimagining of ‘90s horror Idle Hands.
Arguably, 2025 is about to witness A Summer Of Finn – albeit (hopefully) without a masked stab-happy assailant terrorising him. His A24 feature The Legend Of Ochi, about a young girl who encounters a fascinating new species, lands three weeks after Hell Of A Summer. Then, in June, ‘Happy Birthday’ drops, accompanied by a US solo tour. Plus, there’s a return to Hawkins, Indiana, for the heavily-anticipated final season of Stranger Things on the horizon.
While Millie Bobby Brown might be the most well-known Stranger, Wolfhard is the avatar for indie-outsiders. He has a deep passion for music. Upon discovering NME is zooming in from Manchester, he waxes lyrical about his love of Factory Records. He gets visibly animated about DIY punk Jeff Rosenstock, who recently praised his single ‘Choose The Latter’. Wolfhard recently installed a studio in his house so he can record music every day, and his dream is to record at Abbey Road studios like his heroes, The Beatles.
“They’re the whole reason I got into music, and acting too, because with A Hard Day’s Night and Help!”, he explains, referring to the two films the Fab Four released in the 1960s, “that was like a switch in my head: ‘Oh, you can make music and be funny and be in movies.’”
Similarly to John, Paul, George and Ringo, Wolfhard was catapulted to global stardom almost overnight. He was just 13 when Stranger Things blew up in 2016, though, whereas the Mop Tops were already in their twenties. “I don’t know if anyone eventually gets their head around it,” he admits. He was shooting It – the first in a two-part adaption of Stephen King’s killer clown book – when everything started getting crazy. Eating in a restaurant with co-star Jack Dylan Grazer, a woman approached him, asking for his picture, for the first time. “I remember Jack saying, ‘You’re going to remember that for the rest of your life.’ And it’s grown since then. It’s like a rollercoaster ride – you can only sit down and let it take you around a little bit.”
As Stranger Things, rumoured to drop this summer, gears up for its final stand, Wolfhard is confident that the epic final season sticks the landing and is a perfect farewell. Surrounded by his “chosen family”, he describes his final day as “bittersweet”.
“All of us were very emotional,” he says. “It was like saying goodbye to my childhood. It was heavy and intense, but the last day couldn’t have been better. Everybody was in a great place and everyone was on set, so it was a special moment when it finished.”
What made the valedictory lap extra memorable was that everybody lived close to each other and had “amazing hangs”. There were cast outings to Charli XCX, Remi Wolf and Of Montreal gigs. He would regularly consult his fellow actors on music ideas. When he was 10 years old, Wolfhard looked towards Joe Keery as a lodestar. Keery plays loveable himbo Steve Harrington on the show and had fronted Chicagoan psych-rockers Post Animal – but now records music as Djo.
“He was a gigantic inspiration to me and another mentor,” says Wolfhard. “While filming, Joe and Maya (Hawke, who plays the acerbic Robin Buckley) were part of a fun group chat challenge where they would both write and submit a song every week. And I still text Joe to ask him what he thinks about song ideas. I’m hoping we can make music together – even if I wasn’t credited.”
Admittedly, it’s taking time to sink in that the show has ended. “The optimist in me is like, ‘We’ll come back and do this again one day’,” says Wolfhard. “But the day after we finished filming, it felt like a break-up. I drove away from the set for the last time, feeling sad, wondering, ‘Is this going to feel the same again?’” He took a handful of props with him – including his character Mike Wheeler’s bike – as mementos.
“I’m more at peace with the unknown and trying a bunch of weird things”
Wolfhard’s lyrics are perhaps where you’ll find his most revealing work. One of the subjects ‘Happy Birthday’ tackles is anxiety: he’s previously opened up about having suffered panic attacks on sets. “I feel like I’m a confident guy that is constantly wrestling with a super-anxious and worrisome person – there’s two sides to me,” he says. You wonder whether the global impact of Stranger Things – and increased scrutiny – amplified these feelings; look at Brown, who recently called out journalists for bemoaning the fact she had the audacity to look different as a 20-year-old woman to how she did as a 10-year-old child.
“Part of the reason I got into acting, performing and music was that it brought me out of my head and lessened my anxiety, but when you’re thrown publicly into the world and everyone knows who you are… I’m sure it had a big part towards contributing to my anxiety,” he reasons. He recently said he wishes he had sought therapy earlier to deal with overnight success. “If I were to go back and tell myself something, it would be, ‘this is exciting – but none of this is real’,” he sighs. “As a kid, you have mirrors around you showing you who you are. But I had this gigantic shiny mirror showing me, ‘look at all these people who really like your show’ – and I thought: ‘That’s who I am.’ I was lucky to have my parents and good people in my life to steer me in the right direction, because it’s easy to get lost.”
Such is Wolfhard’s preternatural success that he sometimes forgets he’s only 22; hardly a raddled roué. “I’ve obviously been working since I was a little kid, so I’ve had conversations where people say to me, ‘your career’s just beginning’ – which is crazy, because there’s two thoughts…” He laughs. “One is, ‘Really?! I’m pretty tired!’ The other is, ‘If this is the start of my career, shit, what do I do now!?'”
“There are so many possibilities. I’m lucky to be in the position of someone who has an open road ahead of them. I’m more at peace with the unknown and trying a bunch of weird things.”
‘Hell Of A Summer’ is in US cinemas now and ‘The Legend Of Ochi’ arrives on April 25. Finn Wolfhard’s debut solo album ‘Happy Birthday’ is released on June 6