“Stranger Things” star Natalia Dyer is calling out inappropriate fandom.
The 25-year-old actress who plays Nancy Wheeler on the Netflix horror show defended her teen colleagues in a new interview with the Independent.
“I generally feel like, to me, it’s over-sexualizing them,” she said of the cast members, who play a squad of mystery-solving preteens in ’80s-era Indiana. “I feel protective over the younger kids even though they’re not kids anymore, they’re teens. They’re all great people and all having to grow up in very crazy circumstances.”
Star Millie Bobby Brown, 16, was listed on W Magazine’s “why TV is sexier than ever” list when she was just 13 years old. Brown, who plays the main character Eleven on the show, has spoken out about her distaste for this kind of attention. Finn Wolfhard, who plays Dyer’s character’s younger brother Mike, has said that he’s received sexual messages from adult fans since he was 14 years old.
“As a private person, I just feel like, leave people alone — unless you’re talking about their work or what they want to talk about. It’s a very tricky and complex issue,” Dyer said.
The third season of the Netflix hit tackled some increasingly mature themes — including an uncomfortable romance between Wolfhard and Brown’s characters. Co-star Sadie Sink said she felt “stressed out” by an unplanned kiss in the show’s second season.
The actress noted that this is not specific to her co-stars, but part of a larger problem. “[Sexualizing young actors is] a cultural issue, there must be a bigger concept behind it as to why. Just let people be the people that they are, without any judgment,” she said.
Dyer stars in a new film “Yes God, Yes,” about a 16-year-old Catholic school girl who discovers masturbation.