Gaten Matarazzo recalled the time a woman in her 40s confessed her love for him during a podcast episode of “Inside of You With Michael Rosenbaum.” Sometime during the episode, the Stranger Things star was asked about funny fan encounters, which led him to bring up an interaction that was not-so-funny at the time but rather “upsetting.”
“Funny is a way to say it…There are some that are a little uncomfortable. Like, I remember I did one very, very recently — this is not very funny, but the reactions around it were quite funny — where this woman in her 40s straight up said, ‘I’ve had a crush on you since you were 13.’ And I was like, ‘That’s upsetting.’ I’m sure she just meant like, ‘Oh, this kid’s cute.’ But then she doubled down — ‘I’m aware of the age difference,'” shared the 21-year-old star.
“And then I was like, ‘Alright,’…And her daughter was with her and her daughter goes, ‘Mom, what the f**k?’ I swear to God, this girl must have been like 13. She goes, ‘Mom, what the f**k?’,” The bold fan said all this while having Gaten’s mother sitting next to him.
“That was insane,” he voiced.
The actor — who played Dustin — started filming the sci-fi series back when he had just turned 13 alongside his co-stars Millie Bobby Brown, Finn Wolfhard, Caleb McLaughlin, Noah Schnapp. “It’s been a big chunk of time and I think when you have like five kids from completely different parts of the world, pretty much, I think when you force those kids to be together at like 12 when kids are like antsy and bratty and like everyone’s kind of like at each other’s throats that sets a foundation for like ‘Wasn’t that hilarious?’ in a weird way. You know what I mean? Where you’re stuck with the same people you tend to like bicker and stuff, and that just kind of makes it so much better now when you can look back and be like that’s so great that we had that outlet and that we’ve all remained so so close going forward.”
The newlywed Millie, wife to Jake Bongiovi, even weighed in during an interview with ET back in March. “It’s really strange because you grow up with these people and you don’t get to do what we love to do any more with each other. But it’s not the end of our friendship,” said the actress who plays eleven.
With the blink of an eye, the kids all grew up and according to reports are set to release the fifth and final season of Stranger Things either late 2024 or 2025.