Finn Wolfhard

Finn Wolfhard is an actor born and raised in Vancouver, Canada, surrounded by a creative family: his mom, a lifelong artist who went to art school; his dad, a screenwriter who still works in movie production; his brother, a voice actor. Growing up watching movies created in him the notion that he'd one-day work in film. "I just didn't know what, and then it sort of clicked for me," he says. "The more movies I watched, the more I saw, acting and characters, I got a lot more interested in it as we went along." Stating that although he watched the Tobey Maguire version of Spiderman, "which is a pretty heavy movie for a baby," it was a VHS version of Jurassic Park that really blew his mind. "I'd never seen a movie like that before. That sort of peaked my interest."

The audition for Stranger Things came about through Finn’s agent, and when he read the logline for the show (an eighties love letter tribute to John Carpenter and Steven Spielberg films) Finn was instantly sold. He’s always been interested in the 1980s and thinks that time period is “insanely cool,” stating: “I've wanted to act in an eighties thing. The slides we're really really good and the script was amazing.”

For the audition, although he was sick in bed, Matt and Ross Duffer (the show’s creators) scheduled a Skype call with him where the entire conversation revolved around which movies fascinated them. Wolfhard says the fact that the Duffers are regular people is what makes them so cool: “the Duffers, they weren't Hollywood kids. They grew up in North Carolina and they were regular kids and they watched movies and they were just as interested like I was. They went to film school and they finally hit it big.” Somewhere in the midst of that first call, they asked Finn to come to LA, and after one audition he met co-stars Millie Bobby Brown, Caleb McLaughlin, and Gaten Matarazzo. He returned a month later for a follow up, getting the congratulatory call of his acceptance the following month.

It’s not hard to notice that Finn is at home in the Sci Fi genre – in addition to playing Mike Wheeler in Stranger Things, Finn has played in an episode each of The 100 and Supernatural, as well as playing troublemaker Richie Tozier in a remake of Stephen King’s It, currently in post-production. He’s excited to someday expand his horizons to comedy or indie drama, and is even determined to explore other forms of media as well – directing and performing music to be exact.

I was lucky to be on a set that was so supportive where they let you see the behind the scenes and see how they direct."

After finishing his scenes on the laidback set of Stranger Things, Finn would go back to the Video Village (an area on set with portable monitors) and watch other cast members to learn what he could about the directing process. “I was super interested in it and I was lucky to be on a set that was so supportive where they let you see the behind the scenes and see how they direct,” he says.

“Working with them and getting to know them more and getting to know the director's style. It was really supportive.” Finn stated that having a good bond with the director is the most important thing you can do for a performance, adding that it doesn't end up working if that relationship doesn’t mesh.

Finn’s passion for film and filmmaking originates from his father, but his love for the eighties/nineties music culture stems from both of his parents: they used to play him artists like the Clash, Tears for Fears, A-ha, and Guns N' Roses while driving around in the family car. Later, Finn’s mom introduced him to the Beatles, which started his plunge into other similar rock groups of that era. The autoplay video feature on Youtube where like songs lead into each other was a driving force: a Beatles song would lead to a Led Zeppelin track, followed by a Rolling Stones one, and so-on.

Finn picked up the guitar around the age of 9, but didn't think much of learning more than the first few power chords since learning bass was more popular at the time.

“When I turned 12 I got super into guitar,” he says. “I've been passionate about really playing guitar for about three years and wanting to get the music and doing music courses.”

He got a taste of being professionally involved with the music scene in 2014, when the Canadian band PUP needed an actor for their music video for “Guilt Trip.” “My agent at the time was like, ‘Here's an audition. They're called PUP and here's a video they did before,’” he says. Finn says that he’s always nervous to audition, but after watching their gory video for “Reservoir,” he fell in love with the idea.

Still, he really started loving the band and their music, which made him more anxious: “I ended up going and just meeting with the two directors who are two of my best friends and they're part of my family now. We ended up talking, it was not even an audition, and then we started listening to the song and then that was it,” he says. About a month after the video came out, the band was passing through Seattle, only two hours away from Vancouver.

Finn, accompanied by some friends, wanted to make a weekend out of it. “We ended up going and I ended up texting Stefan ‘Yay, can you get us in? We're only eleven years old so I don't know if it's all ages.’ He was like, ‘Yeah,’ and he was super cool about it and got us in.”

He says that ever since the band came out before their set to meet them, they’ve all felt like brothers: “they're the definition of supportive because they have to have support when they're touring,” Finn says.

Fast forward to 2016, when PUP was talking about doing music videos for their new album, The Dream Is Over. “Ever since the ‘Guilt Trip’ video came out I was like, ‘we got to do a second one, we got to do a second one,’ all the time.” When Finn was in the midst of shooting the remake of It, he met up with them in Toronto. “We had ramen with our director Jeremy and they were talking about music video ideas and as a joke we were like, ‘we should do a Guilt Trip two.’ They were like, ‘Okay.’” After two weeks, and some back-and-forth with song choices, Finn got an email from the director stating that the video would be for “Sleep In The Heat,” and immediately after getting the treatment and the script, he was in.

When Finn is back home in Vancouver, he loves that it’s possible for him to just be a normal kid surrounded by his friends, and to not have to talk about acting and everything that comes with it: “All of my friends have been friends with me before I started acting so they don't care. Which is the best thing for me,” he says. “Because it's more realistic to have friends that don't care about what you do and they just want to play video games and watch movies and be creative and do their own thing.”

Photography by Ryan Gibson | Interview by Heather Hawke