Carice Van Houten received death threats from Game of Thrones fans after her character, Melisandre, burned Shireen to death. The same thing happened with multiple actors on The Walking Dead and Anna Gunn on Breaking Bad. Stranger Things viewers haven’t gotten that far, but some of them did demand that Jamie Campbell Bower, who plays Vecna on the Netflix series, apologize for the death of Eddie Munson. Just to reiterate, that’s asking a real person to say sorry for killing a fictional character. Very normal.
“I haven’t got a single boo [on the streets] yet,” Bower told NME, but when he and Eddie actor Joseph Quinn went to South America, “they tried to make me apologize to Joseph.” His response: “I don’t want to apologize. I’m not sorry! He’s a victim.”
Vecna innocent! Well, not really. He’s pretty evil. But his actions did lead to the death Jason Carver, the worst character in Stranger Things history, so he’s not all bad.
Bower has had positive fan interactions, too.
The day before we speak, he was boarding a plane from London to LA when a mother and her daughter recognized him. “The daughter was quite reserved, but she just blossomed and bloomed in front of me,” he explains, fondly re-enacting their interaction. “Her mum was like, ‘I’ve never seen her like this before’. This is what I love – being able to encounter people [and hear how] the show means everything to them and it makes them feel heard.”
In related Stranger Things news, the writers are back in the room.
Grid stage pic.twitter.com/b8EmBsafUF
— stranger writers (@strangerwriters) August 25, 2022
It’s inspiring to know that one of the biggest shows on television has the same process as me taking a test in high school. “Eh, I’ll get back to this one.”
(Via NME)
