Eleven years into his retirement, Frank Darabont, the legendary writer and director behind The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile, and The Mist, found himself heading to Hawkins, Indiana.
The three-time Oscar nominee — and self-professed “obsessed fan” of Stranger Things — decided to return to the director’s chair in honor of the series’ final season. “By the time I met the Duffer Brothers, I think my wife and I had watched all four seasons four times,” Darabont tells Tudum. “Six months would go by, and we’d say, ‘Oh, let’s watch it all again.’ ”
Helming Episode 3, “The Turnbow Trap,” and Episode 5, “Shock Jock,” Darabont was tasked with — among other things — reanimating a Demogorgon, capturing a brawl between Steve (Joe Keery) and Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo), and revealing that Will (Noah Schnapp) is able to physically harm Vecna (Jamie Campbell Bower).
Darabont also directed the viral “I told you to eat your damn pie” scene, featuring a gleeful Erica (Priah Ferguson) attacking her friend Tina (Caroline Elle Abrams) with a syringe. “One of the questions I had for the Duffers was, ‘At the end of this scene, the script says the needle plunges into [Tina’s] neck … do you actually want to see that or can we suggest it?’ ” Darabont recalls. “And they said, ‘No, no, no, go for it. We want to see. We want to see this really horrible, horrendous sort of 1980s horror movie moment where the needle goes into her neck.’ ”
Below, Darabont breaks down how he brought some of his biggest Stranger Things scenes to life and what, exactly, goes into directing a Demogorgon.
How did you approach Episode 5’s seminal scene, when Will taps into Vecna’s mind and hurts him?
Darabont: It was complex because you’ve got these things happening in various locations. What I had to do was tear [Will’s] pages out of the script and put a box around all the beats with Noah. I told him, “If it’s OK, I’m just going to be off-camera, and I’m going to read these beats out to you so you know exactly what you need to be doing in order.”
He was so open to that and actually really hungry for it. When we shot his part that night, I said, “OK, now Vecna is doing this, and now you’re freaking out over that, and now you’ve got control, and now you’re snapping his leg.” I was shouting out these cues to him, and Noah was acting his ass off. What he was delivering on set was astonishing. I was so proud of him because he’s actually a very sweet, very quiet, very shy person. But boy, when the cameras are rolling, he lets it fly. He’s a fearless actor — as many of them are, of course — I was so impressed with what he did.
It was a tricky, complex thing to shoot, but I loved it. Sometimes you’re in your little video world watching takes, but sometimes you can get out there with the actors and really get into it with them. I think they enjoy that. And I certainly do, too.
The action doesn’t stop there — what went into shooting that fight between Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo) and Steve (Joe Keery)?
Darabont: There was a lot of careful preplanning of what the physicality would be when they’re grappling. Once you’re in Hawkins Lab, you’re shooting in what is essentially supposed to be a completely dark environment, and you’ve got a couple of flashlights. That was a tricky thing. I thought our director of photography, Brett Jutkiewicz, did a great job of cheating light into a place where you only have two flashlights.
It’s the lead-up to that physical altercation that I find so marvelous. Those guys were great at the physical stuff as well as the emotional stuff. We had a couple of stunt doubles at a certain moment doing the flip into the other room … but Gaten and Joe really did most of that work.
Vecna has become something of a cult-like leader to the kids he kidnapped in Episode 5. What were some of the conversations you and Jamie Campbell Bower had around developing that side of his character?
Darabont: He’s so dialed in to his character. He would come up to me sometimes and say, “OK, in this scene, here’s what I think he’s thinking.” And I would just say, “Yeah, that’s absolutely right. Go with that.” I love how mildly he presents himself when he’s fooling people, which was established back when he was the orderly in the Hawkins Lab when Eleven was little. There’s just this beautiful mildness that he brings that winds up being so creepy when you realize it’s an act. He seems like such a nice guy, doesn’t he? But he’s just awful.
Jamie is an actor who really blows my mind. He’s tremendously versatile, tremendously gifted, but also I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more patient human being. His makeup for Vecna, especially in the earlier seasons, was like eight, nine hours every morning.
In this season, they advanced the full Vecna makeup with a bodysuit with tracking marks. I’m sure it was still hours and hours in the makeup chair, of course, and I’m sure it was tremendously uncomfortable, but never a complaint. I would have conversations with the makeup artists, and they would just marvel at how much stamina and patience Jamie has.
Are there moments you remember being particularly struck by Jamie’s performance?
Darabont: I think my favorite moment would have to be when he’s talking to all the children in the living room of the Creel House, and the camera just slowly pulls back from him, and all the kids are in the semicircle. Just watching how he commanded that scene, the moment that he chose to stand up and walk, and how he crouched down for the little girl to talk to her. I loved his command of it. I never asked Jamie if he had done a lot of stage work, but it certainly wouldn’t surprise me because it really felt like the instincts of a great stage actor in that sequence — how he commanded the room and commanded their attention and commanded our attention as viewers.
You directed two pivotal Demogorgon scenes in “The Turnbow Trap” and “Shock Jock.” What goes into directing a Demogorgon?
Darabont: It’s actually pretty hilarious because the guy walks in, and he’s in this great bodysuit and has this headdress on. It actually looks kind of silly, right? The eye lines [on the headdress] are for the other actors. You just have to suspend your own disbelief and say, “You know what? By the time the special effects geniuses are done with this, this is going to look amazing.”
The trickiest part was when he falls through the carpet [in Episode 3]. We had him on a cable and a harness. The Demogorgon leaps back out on fire and Mike (Finn Wolfhard) is there with his weapon beating him, and then he jumps across. That had to be really fast. You’ve got a guy on a cable, and they’re reeling him up. They have this LED vest to throw interactive light for what will be digital flames. We wound up putting that vest on a big pole so we could get the speed required for the interactive light. Finn was just miming at thin air. It wound up looking pretty darn good.
And then there was electrocuting the Demogorgon in Episode 5!
Darabont: Oh, that was really fun, too. We had this big silicone body, this Demogorgon body that weighed about 300 pounds. Getting it up on that roof was not the easiest thing in the world. That’s another thing where you go, “OK, we shoot these pieces, and the effects people are going to do something marvelous at the end of it.” When computer effects are used right, it can be truly extraordinary.
Sometimes it’s the little things, like when Vecna is onscreen, and you see there’s a little glimpse of light on the vines that are crawling on him. That’s another digital effect that brings so much life to the image and to the character. It’s wild. I love it.
There’s a great shot of Nancy with her shotgun in Episode 5. What conversations did you have with Natalia Dyer ahead of shooting that scene?
Darabont: She looks like a badass when she’s got a shotgun in her hand. Hilarious, because she’s such a sweet, quiet, and I think somewhat shy person. But you put a shotgun in her hand, and she turns into Ripley from Aliens, and she gets that look on her face like she can’t wait. As a director, if you’ve got the actors dialed into what they’re doing, all you really have to do is capture it on camera. There’s nothing they need to know from me. If they’re smart, if they’re good, if they’re gifted, if they’re prepared, if they’ve done their homework, it’s really a matter of blocking. Nobody has to have long conversations when those actors are as dialed in as [this cast was]. A lot of these young people have been doing it half their lives.
What a thing to have to say goodbye to, by the way. I wasn’t there for the last few days of shooting, but I heard that everybody was crying. It really is a goodbye to something that’s incredibly significant in their lives. You can have the best experience on a movie, but it’s just not the same. The Green Mile was one of my best casts ever, but that was five months of shooting. It’s a little sad when you have to say goodbye, but it’s not devastating. After 10 years? That had to be so difficult for them.
Did you feel that finality in the air while you were shooting your episodes?
Darabont: I don’t think it had really sunk in for them yet. They knew, of course, that this was the last season, but they still had so much work ahead of them. They were really focused on that. I tried to give them as much of a pep talk as I could because there’s the danger of fatigue setting in when you’re going to be working for a year, and you’ve been doing it for a decade. I just wanted to remind them how important this show was to so many of us who are fans. And I think they appreciated hearing that.
The first seven episodes of Stranger Things 5 are streaming now on Netflix, followed by The Finale on New Year’s Eve at 5 p.m. PT. Find out when the final episode arrives in your part of the world here. And test your knowledge of Stranger Things with our superfan quiz.
