We all know him as Dustin from Stranger Things, the nerdy kid who revived Limahl’s ’80s ballad ‘Never Ending Story’ in the Duffer Brothers’ cult show.
Now Gaten Matarazzo gets to enter George Lucas’ epic sci-fi universe in animated adventure LEGO Star Wars: Rebuild The Galaxy, voicing a nerf-herder named Sig who helps turn the universe upside down. Midway through filming the fifth and final season of Stranger Things, Matarazzo hung out with NME to talk lightsabers, ABBA and Barbie…
What made you take on LEGO Star Wars: Rebuild The Galaxy?
Gaten Matarazzo: “It was just a no-brainer. Sig was so much like me. It’s like the only time I’d ever seen a Star Wars fan in a Star Wars show. And it just seemed super inventive and super fun.”
How is Sig like you?
“He grew up a really small town kid, and really enjoyed that aspect of his life and never really expected to be anything else, and he ends up, early in his life, getting whisked away on the journey he never really plans, and starts to see that there’s so much more than just where he’s from in the world, and that he has a lot of untapped potential. It didn’t take long for things to shift in my life in a similar regard.”
The show reverses things, so good guys are bad guys and vice versa. Was that fun to play?
“Oh, absolutely. I think it was a room of Star Wars fans just goofing off. We just thought ‘How much we could test Lucasfilm?!’ And they kind of let us get away with quite a lot, which was really, really fun to do.”
What are your youthful memories of Star Wars?
“Half of my memories from my childhood probably centre around this franchise. I do remember the first time watching the original three, and it was when my uncle, my mum’s twin brother, came to be with us for the summer, because he lived out of state, and I remember he saw me watching The Clone Wars, and asked if I had seen the originals. I told him I didn’t know what he was talking about. And then he immediately turned off the TV, and was like, ‘You’re not watching this until you watch the original Star Wars movies.’ And so we did… it just became my first obsession.”
Were you a collector of the toys?
“I was. I love the LEGOs a lot. I love the games, and I have way too many lightsabers.”
How does it feel to gear up for the end of Stranger Things?
“It’s a lot for sure. Of course, it’s always inevitable. Nothing is really going to last that long. We’ve been doing it so long that it started to feel as though it might be a never-ending fame thing, the never-ending story, for lack of a better pun… I think it’s been a really cathartic process leading up towards the end of it. I think everybody’s just exercising a lot of internal stuff, we’ve all been building over time. And it’s a long, long shoot too. We started in January. We won’t finish until, like, around the New Year, I don’t think. We have a lot of time to really let it settle. And even though we’ve been doing it for about nine months now… it feels like two at the most. It feels as though we’ve just gotten started, which is what everybody said to us initially. They’re like, ‘This is gonna fly by.’ And yeah, they were right.”
Are you gonna miss playing Dustin?
“Yeah, I know I will immeasurably. I think it’s very rare that people have an opportunity to play a character they’re so comfortable around. I mean, we got to build that guy when I was 12 years old initially. And I don’t think I’ll ever play a character again where I can just read off a page and just fully understand how he’s going to take in the surroundings around him.
“There’s always a lot of work that goes into characters, even once you’ve been playing them for a while. But once I’m not playing him, I’m going to be starting from scratch with everything else I do, which is exciting.”
Do you think fans will be happy with season five of Stranger Things?
“Yeah, I do. The way that the shows have been going, the seasons have been progressing, the way we go about this last one just seems like the ultimate plan that Matt [Duffer] and Ross [Duffer] have always had, and it feels like a really satisfying way to kind of put the button on it and seal it once and for all.
“Weirdly enough. I know that Matt and Ross have had a clear vision for quite some time now as to how they wanted to do this. And I wasn’t quite sure what they meant by that, until I read this. I was like, ‘Okay, cool.’ I understand what that process was.”
Do you get a lot of people singing ‘Never Ending Story’ to you when you meet them?
“I think more at me than to me!”
What are you listening to right now?
“A lot of Fleetwood Mac right now, a lot of Sufjan Stevens, which is really, really fun. Weirdly enough, I’ve been on an ABBA kick. That’s been a lot of fun. I didn’t know this about ABBA: there’s not a single song I don’t like. I’m like going down the list of what I listen to, and it’s just banger after banger.”
After Stranger Things, what’s your plan career-wise? Who do you want to work with?
“I mean, Wes Anderson is a big one. Steven Spielberg is always going to be a big one, for sure. Spike Lee’s going to be a big one, absolutely. I mean, these are some of the best visionaries in film to ever live. And Greta Gerwig right now. She’s going to keep making some of the better films that will come out.”
Do you wish you were in Barbie?
“I think everyone probably wishes they were in Barbie!”
‘LEGO Star Wars: Rebuild The Galaxy’ is available on Disney+ now