You’re thirteen years old. Your emotions rocket from total devastation to euphoria and back—all day, every day—but today, right now, life is pretty fucking bad. It’s November 2015 and you’re eight-hundred-some miles away from home, living with your mom in a god-awful extended-stay hotel. Two doors in this glorified closet—one goes outside, the other to the bathroom. Your family can’t afford anything better.

New Jersey misses you, but you’re a young actor with real talent, and it’s taking you places. He did multiple nights on Broadway, including a stint in Les Misérables . Then a different sort of audition came along—for a sci-fi show called Stranger Things , which hailed from the ascendant streaming service Netflix —and you actually got the part. The cost: a seven-month shoot in

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