The Unexpected Challenge the Duffer Brothers Faced With Millie Bobby Brown on Stranger Things
At just 11, Millie Bobby Brown was both the spark and the storm on the early Stranger Things set—her bold antics kept the Duffer Brothers on their toes even as her raw talent supercharged Netflix’s breakout hit.
Stranger Things has always thrived on chaos, but some of the early headaches had nothing to do with monsters. They had to do with an 11-year-old Millie Bobby Brown, who was both a revelation and, occasionally, a glitter grenade.
The glitter incident the Duffers still remember
Back in a 2016 NPR interview, creators Matt and Ross Duffer looked back at the show’s early days and how Brown’s talent arrived packaged with, well, kid energy. As they put it, she was an extraordinary actor, but also: she was a kid. The line they kept repeating on set was, in their words, that she was 'still 11.'
The story that stuck with them: one morning Brown showed up covered head to toe in glitter. She claimed she had no idea how it happened. The brothers joked that their adult cast wasn’t exactly turning up sparkly, and production ground to a halt while hair and makeup tried to de-sequin their lead. The cleanup pushed filming by '45 minutes in the morning.' It’s the kind of very specific set problem you only get when your breakout star is literally in middle school.
Jump cut to now: Millie’s oddly relatable camera anxiety
Fast forward to after Enola Holmes 2 in 2022. That movie has Brown constantly breaking the fourth wall, chatting straight to the lens like she’s hosting the scene. Fun on Enola, trickier when you need to go back to Hawkins and never acknowledge the camera exists.
In an interview with People, Brown admitted the habit messed with her head a bit. She compared the Enola rhythm to basically vlogging all day and got worried it would follow her back to Stranger Things. Then she had a dream that made it worse.
'While filming, I had a dream that I was on the set of Stranger Things, and I couldn’t stop looking at the camera - And now, I have this deep-rooted fear that now I will never stop looking at the camera. So now, I’m so obsessed with it.'
Translation: imagine training yourself to talk to the camera for months, then trying to unlearn it overnight. Totally understandable actor brain gremlin.
Back for the endgame
Despite the nerves, Brown is back as Eleven for the fifth and final season, which the cast and creators have been teasing as an emotional, high-stakes sendoff for the Hawkins crew. Stranger Things Season 5 Part 1 premieres on Netflix on November 26, 2025.