The role Matthew Modine never wants to play again: “It can be very destructive”
There has been a very interesting, if possibly far-fetched rumour doing the rounds online over the last few weeks that, despite Stranger Things coming to an end in spectacular fashion back on New Year’s Eve, there may be more twists to come. And one man who wouldn’t be happy at all about that is Matthew Modine.
The idea that there might have been a secret ‘episode nine’ filmed by series creators the Duffer Brothers actually began pretty quickly after the show finished with an explosive two-hour episode that not only broke some hearts, but some audience records too, racking up a faintly ludicrous 8.65billion minutes of total viewing around the globe.
In the months since, in the manner that internet sci-fi geeks are accustomed to, every little moment of the final season has been pored over, every piece of set-dressing assigned a meaning, every word spoken or glance shot has been decided as proof that either mind-bending, nosebleed-prone teen psycho Eleven is dead or that spidery, sulky man-child demon Vekna is still alive or that the whole thing was all just a board game.
There has, of course, already been an animated spin-off, an acclaimed stage show, and a behind-the-scenes documentary, but according to Netflix and most of the actors involved, that really is it in terms of spooky goings-on in Hawkins, Indiana. And breathing a sigh of relief about that, sitting in his house in New York will be Modine, who was there right at the start, even if (spoiler alert) he wasn’t there quite at the end after Eleven finally got her revenge on ‘Papa’ at the end of season four, together with some help from an armed helicopter.
While Stranger Things became well known for bringing back stars of the 1980s like The Terminator’s Linda Hamilton, The Goonies’ Sean Astin and Nightmare on Elm Street’s Robert Englund, it was Modine who set the tone from the first episode in 2016 as Dr Martin Brenner, the senior research director at the secretive Hawkins National Laboratory and the mastermind behind the experiment that produced eleven kids with alarmingly violent psychic tendencies.
Modine had risen to fame in the ‘80s as the star of films like Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket and Alan Parker’s Birdy, but after being Golden Globe-nominated in the 1990s, it’s fair to say his fame had faded somewhat until the call from the Duffers came. He was brilliant as the despotic Brenner, though, deservedly nominated for a Screen Actors’ Guild award after that fantastic first season, and returning for more great work in the fourth.
So maybe it’s surprising that he wouldn’t want to revisit the character, mainly due to the physical and mental demands of playing someone so evil. On being Brenner, Modine told Men’s Health, “Your body doesn’t know it’s acting. Even though I’m memorising lines and I understand the physical aspects of acting, you put your body through whatever that character is going through. It can be very destructive to your body. I don’t ever want to get in the skin of someone like Dr Brenner again.”
Pushed on whether it has all really come to an end, though, Modine is typically cagey, adding, “I wish I had an answer for that. The Duffer Brothers were asked that question and said, ‘Brenner is no longer with us.’ Does that mean he’s dead? I don’t know.”
Which answers precisely nothing, let’s face it. In the meantime, what we do know is that Modine is working on a couple of other projects, including a comedy movie with Liam Neeson and John Cleese called The Splendid Thing, which should at least give us a break from constant rumours about the ‘Upside Down’, just as long as it doesn’t have the same initials as Stranger Things or anyth… ah God dammit.
