Stranger Things may have come to an end, but our adventures in Hawkins certainly haven’t, as the animated series Tales from ’85 is nearly here – but, while they may look familiar, our heroes are going to sound a little different.
Set between seasons 2 and 3 of the original show, the spin-off has brought on board an entirely new cast to voice the characters, with Brooklyn Davey Norstedt as Eleven, Luca Diaz as Mike Wheeler, Ben Plessala as Will Byers and more.
With the cast of the original show becoming so intertwined with their characters by the end of the five seasons, it may seem a strange decision to recast them for the animated spin-off, which is executive produced by Stranger Things creators the Duffer Brothers.
Explaining the decision, showrunner Eric Robles exclusively told Radio Times that it came down to making sure the kids sounded authentically like kids.
“Bringing in anybody from the original cast, you’re now talking about older voices. Everybody’s going to mature. So having these designs that take place in season 2, having these dark, deep voices, it would really throw it off,” he said.
“We wanted to capture the youthfulness, which is what the Duffer Brothers really enjoyed about those early seasons. They wanted the spontaneous words and sentences that would come out of these kids’ mouths.”
He added: “We wanted to capture the innocence of kids being kids. There are things that kids say, that they do, that, as an adult, you almost forget that you talk that way, and so we made sure that we wanted to capture that purity of being a kid.
“So we went out and we found these fantastic actors for the show that really captured that youthfulness. And they play – some of the spontaneous words that they say, it’s them just playing in the booth. Then we capture that and we incorporate that into the show.
“And every once in a while, you’ll hear a voice crack, right? That kind of voice crack, you can’t get with a 24-year-old! It’s such a pure, natural thing, and we wanted to make sure that we caught these kids at an age that really felt authentic to the show itself, and during that timeline.”
The voice cast also initially had no idea what they were auditioning for, with the team behind the show sorting through thousands of tapes.
“They might be young, but they emote these beautiful performances within the show, and we’re able to capture that, and we actually captured the reality of their emotions,” Robles added.
“So even though that was a lengthy process, we feel so proud that we were able to find these characters, that are these kids that really sound like the characters. They’re able to explore new ways of approaching these stories and ways of thinking that probably we wouldn’t have done in the live action, but now we’re able to explore in this animated series.”
The spin-off is set to follow the Hawkins gang during a snowy winter, as they’re faced with saving the town from a new supernatural threat. But isn’t the gate to the Upside Down closed and all the monsters locked away? You might want to think again…
Stranger Things: Tales from ’85 will air on Netflix on Thursday 23 April. All Stranger Things seasons are available to stream on Netflix now.
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