Gregory Ellwood: How many seasons do you have planned out?
Ross Duffer: We’re trying to set the chess pieces, so to speak, for this season to start heading towards that end goal. We know what the destination is, we’re not 100% sure how long it’s going to take travel there.
Gregory Ellwood: But you know what the end is?
Ross Duffer: Yes.
Matt Duffer: There are certain shows where they overstay their welcome. So you don’t want to do that. You’d rather leave when people still want more and also we want to make sure that us and the cast and everyone involved in the show is still very excited about it. You don’t want to turn into a machine. We want it to always have a sort of hand-crafted feel to it. I think one reason movies are special to me is because, [with] good movies, it feels like someone cared about every cut and every frame, and so we tried to do that with the show. And at a certain point I think we’re going to burn out. As soon as you start to daydream about other ideas, I think that’s when we need to go.
Gregory Ellwood: Is there anyone who you learned was a fan that you never would have believed in a million years?
Matt Duffer: I know. Well, we went to the White House. Obama saw the show.
Gregory Ellwood: Oh, wow! I completely missed that.
Matt Duffer: That was the craziest to me. I was told he watched it on his way to China, remember that long trip he made to China?
Gregory Ellwood: And he was a big fan?
Matt Duffer: Yeah.
Ross Duffer: Yeah. The kids and us got to meet him. It’s not like we got to hang out with him for like an hour, but we got to meet him for like four minutes. And he was talking enough about the show that it was clear that he had seen it. I couldn’t speak.
Ross Duffer: No, you just had a stupid, a stupid grin on your face the whole time. That’s what it was.
Matt Duffer: But I was like, that was cool, we barely got in before Obama got out of office. He had [just] a couple of weeks [left]. That was nuts, that he took the time to watch it.
Ross Duffer: That he would even know what it is, much less spend six or whatever, seven precious hours watching it.
Gregory Ellwood: He was a big prestige TV fan.
Matt Duffer: He loves TV. And he has good taste in television too, like his favorite show is “The Wire.” Which is also my favorite show.
Ross Duffer: But it’s funny because Ted Sarandos was like, “Yeah, he called and he’s like, ‘Can I get the DVDs for Stranger Things?'” It never even occurred to me that he can’t be online and stream it.
Matt Duffer: Or like Dwayne Johnson. The Rock just posted he’s watching it through for the second time. It’s just so funny, just imagine Dwayne Johnson sitting there with a plate of cookies watching “Stranger Things” for the second time. It’s like, “What?”
Ross Duffer: Also, the busiest man in show business. He has like fifteen shows and movies going on at once.
Matt Duffer: There’s clearly two of them.
Ross Duffer: Oh yeah, there must be two of them.
Matt Duffer: He’s clearly a twin.
Gregory Ellwood: Yeah, there has to be.
Matt Duffer: This is the other thing, we’re not good at diversifying. We’re only good at doing this one thing.
Ross Duffer: Yeah, it’s bad, because you feel like this sense of everyone wants you to be juggling all these balls in the air. And “Oh, we could produce this…”
Matt Duffer: Producing.
Ross Duffer: And we could do this. And I’m like, “Eh, ‘Stranger Things.’ I can’t.” We’re not the best multi-taskers.
Matt Duffer: This Spielberg, JJ Abrams thing.
Ross Duffer: I’m not sure it’s in our blood. Or even [producer/director] Shawn [Levy]. He has to be doing ten thousand things or he gets antsy.
Matt Duffer: Shawn has that sort of JJ Abrams quality where he’s this incredible energy and he likes to be doing lots of different things simultaneously, whereas we are incapable, which is a bummer, but it is what it is.
Gregory Ellwood: Is there a date where you’ll be done, and you’re like, “We’re going on vacation for a week.”
Matt Duffer: We were just talking about this, this morning…
Ross Duffer: We’re not sure when it is, I mean the trick is that the last time we took vacation we were getting inundated with visual effects shots to approve which kind of ruined the vacation. And now we have way more visual effects this season, so we’re like, “I don’t want to do that again.” So we may need to wait until the visual effects are done so it might be October or something.
Matt Duffer: But I also don’t want to be reading any reviews.
Ross Duffer: That’s true.
Gregory Ellwood: Is it literally down to the wire?
Matt Duffer: It is down to the wire.
Ross Duffer: The last second. They do have to dub it for all those countries. I don’t know what they do to get it ready for streaming or what technical things need to be done, but it does take them a second, so we’ll give them as little time as possible. It’s definitely a pencils down situation.
Matt Duffer: For some reason, South Korea is first up. So, South Korea is determining our delivery date.
Ross Duffer: Yeah, South Korea.
Gregory Ellwood: Speaking on that subject, what country has the craziest fans?
Matt Duffer: Well, I’m amazed but I think our biggest fan base is Brazil which is bizarre. I think Millie did a few conventions down there, and she’s like, “They go insane.”
Ross Duffer: They go crazy. They meet people at the airport.
Matt Duffer: ….that this story that I felt was very sort of steeped in the culture of [our] country is resonating with people in Brazil or South Korea or wherever, that to me is a mystery, but a cool one.
“Stranger Things” season two debuts on Netflix on October 27th.
