Gaten Matarazzo Says Living With This “Stranger Things” Costar Was ‘Disgusting’ — And Strangely Unforgettable
For a show built on monsters, mayhem, and the occasional interdimensional catastrophe, it’s almost poetic that the most chaotic experience for one Stranger Things star happened not on-screen, but inside a shared apartment in Atlanta. Gaten Matarazzo — who has played the beloved, quick-witted Dustin Henderson since he was 12 — recently revealed that living with costar Finn Wolfhard during filming of the show’s final season wasn’t exactly the wholesome, nostalgic coming-of-age story fans might imagine. If anything, it sounded more like the kind of college roommate saga most people spend years trying to forget.
The actor opened up about the dynamic during an appearance on Dinner’s on Me With Jesse Tyler Ferguson, offering a surprisingly candid look at what life looked like behind the scenes of one of Netflix’s biggest cultural landmarks. According to a report from Yahoo Entertainment—which summarized the conversation and provided additional context—Matarazzo didn’t hold back when describing how disorderly things became.
A Year of Friendship, Filming… and Filth
Living with a co-worker is always a gamble. Living with a co-worker who also happens to be your closest friend, all while filming the most high-pressure season of your career? That’s a different beast altogether.
Matarazzo said what began as a fun, spontaneous decision eventually spiraled into something far less adorable than fans might envision. Three months into their lease, he found himself staring at the chaos around him — laundry mountains, rogue dishes, mysterious smells — and asking the kind of existential questions only a shared apartment can provoke.
“I would look around, like, three months after we were living together and be like, ‘This place is disgusting. What are we doing?’”
When Ferguson pressed him on who was messier, Matarazzo claimed neither could take the moral high ground. They “matched each other’s energy,” which, in this case, meant that clutter spread like spores from the Upside Down, slowly migrating from their bedrooms into every shared space.
It reached the point where friends asked to stop by and both actors responded with a resounding “absolutely not.” As Matarazzo put it:
“Do not come 10 feet to our home.”
A Bittersweet Goodbye to Hawkins — and a Final Season With a Roommate Plot Twist
Despite the chaos, Matarazzo described the experience as “so much fun,” perhaps because it let him savor what was, for both actors, the end of an era. After more than a decade in Hawkins, Indiana — and years of growing up under an enormous cultural spotlight — sharing a messy apartment felt oddly appropriate. It mirrored the show’s essence: imperfect, emotional, and deeply rooted in friendship.
The final season of Stranger Things is structured like a farewell tour. The first four episodes debuted on Netflix on November 26. Three more arrive December 25, and the two-hour grand finale lands on December 31 — complete with a one-night theatrical run in 350 theaters across the U.S. and Canada. As the Duffer Brothers noted in a joint statement, seeing the finale on the big screen with fans offers “the perfect — dare we say bitchin’ — way to celebrate the end of this adventure.”
For Matarazzo and Wolfhard, their living arrangement became its own subplot of that final chapter: the kind born not of scripts or creature design, but of real life, where relationships deepen and habits clash and, eventually, everyone figures out how to clean the kitchen.
Growing Up in Public
Part of what makes Matarazzo’s story resonate is that the Stranger Things cast came of age while the world watched. The teen years are messy — literally and figuratively — even without the pressure of a global franchise.
What Matarazzo describes reflects a familiar rite of passage for many young adults. It’s the transition from being a kid living at home to suddenly managing your own space and responsibilities. The fact that this happened while the stakes of the show’s final season loomed in the background only heightened the experience.
And in a way, the messiness feels grounding. It strips away the illusion of celebrity and reveals something universal: even household-name actors have to learn, at some point, how to do their dishes.
A Friendship That Survived the Laundry Pile
The most telling part of Matarazzo’s reflection wasn’t the complaints — it was the warmth. He admitted he wasn’t sure living with Wolfhard would go smoothly, and yet the experience became one of the highlights of closing out the final season. The mess eventually got cleaned. The apartment became presentable. And two friends walked away with a set of memories that no soundstage could ever replicate.
In an entertainment landscape obsessed with polished images and carefully curated personas, it’s refreshing to see something as mundane — and deeply human — as two actors simply learning to share a space.
It’s a fitting last chapter for a pair of characters who helped define a generation of TV fans. As Stranger Things enters its final stretch, their off-screen chaos offers an unexpected reminder: growing up is never tidy, but it’s often where the best stories hide.
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