One of the most anticipated and applauded cameos in season 4 of the Netflix series was actually filmed miles away.
It has been long in coming, but season 4 of Stranger Things has been, whose first volume has just been released in its entirety on the platform, has turned out to be a real delight for the fans. On the one hand because in its seven episodes some of the questions that had been on the table since the first season have begun to be resolved, but also because of the darkness of its new monster and the adventure to the limit that its protagonists undoubtedly live. Likewise, the new faces of the cast and the various cameos have also delighted the fanswith Robert Englund himself – famous for his role as Freddy Krueger in the horror franchise Nightmare in Elm street– playing the terrified Victor Creel.
However, although we expected Englund to come on the scene like rain in May and the truth is that his plot has been key in the first part of the season, the new star characters of Stranger Things have turned out to be those played by Joseph Quinn and Jamie Campbell Bower. And if you’ve already finished watching it, you’ll know that especially the latter. Also, as had been rumored ad nauseam, Dacre Montgomery he returned in season 4 despite Billy’s tragic death in the third installment. But did you know that the scenes he shot for the series were shot via Zoom?
Haunted by what happened to her brother, Max’s (Sadie Sink) plot in “Volume 1” of season 4 of Stranger Things It was very focused on the young woman’s trauma after witnessing the terrible death of her brother. And precisely that pain is what Vecna used to try to make her one of her victims. She luckily she didn’t get it, but These face-to-face encounters between Max and the horrible new monster of the Netflix series were what allowed the character to be brought back in episode 4, as part of the young woman’s visions.
The challenge of bringing Billy back without Dacre Montgomery being able to leave Australia
Of course, the executive producer and director of Stranger Things Shawn Levy hasn’t hesitated to refer to the process of bringing Montgomery back as “A Rubik’s Cube Challenge”.
“Dacre is a good friend and someone I’ve been a huge fan of from the very first line of his self-recorded casting to be Billy,” Levy told The Associated Press. Entertainment Weekly explaining the odyssey that followed the initial excitement of being certain that the character would be brought back in the episode he would be directing for this stage:
When I read that I had to bring Billy back, I was over the moon. But because COVID scuppered all of our production plans in the middle of a hugely ambitious season, Dacre was unable to leave Australia to film his scene.
“It was rescheduled over and over again, and there was quarantines, protocol updates, more quarantines and stricter border restrictions“, continues the filmmaker describing a scenario that we have no trouble visualizing at all.
With time pressing, we had no choice but to direct via Zoom with Montgomery on a soundstage in Australia, having already filmed the graveyard scene with Sadie Sink a year earlier.
As Max reads a letter to his late brother in front of his grave, Vecna begins to take control of her body while leading her to a dark place where Billy walks towards her. He speaks to her, but her voice is Vecna’s. The scene shot with Montgomery via Zoom would be digitally inserted into the shot recorded with Sadie Sink: “That sequence in episode 4 was one of the biggest challenges of my directing career. Figuring out how to put Billy in that graveyard with Max, without the possibility of having Dacre in the same country as Sadie,” says Levy.
Dacre Montgomery, for his part, did not hesitate to be very grateful to the team for having him despite the situation: “It has been a blessing to work with such an incredible local team and [Levy] directing by Zoom!”
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