MANILA, Philippines – Stranger Things season two is out and anyone who’s seen the new episodes will have already met two new additions to the otherwise familiar cast – stepsiblings Max Mayfield and Billy Hargrove.

Max is played by 15-year-old actress Sadie Sink, who has appeared on episodes of Blue Bloods and The Americans, and has acted on Broadway as well. Billy, on the other hand, is Australian Dacre Montgomery, who was Red Ranger in the 2017 Power Rangers reboot.

The two actors were in Manila in August for AsiaPOP Comicon and spoke to a few journalists about working with the season one kids, filming Stranger Things season 2, and everything about the ’80s. (WATCH: Scenes from AsiaPOP Comicon Manila 2017)

You guys play new characters. What was it like working with the Duffer Brothers, with Winona, and the rest of the cast? 

Sadie: It was good, I mean, it was definitely a bit scary at first, going into it, knowing that they had already established everything in season 1. But we fit right in, it was perfect, there was nothing wrong about anything, and everyone was really welcoming. 

Dacre: Yeah, everyone was extremely welcoming, and Winona was lovely, I remember, because I come from Perth, Australia, which is where Heath Ledger was from, and she knew him quite well. And I remember the first thing she said to me was, ‘I knew Heath,’ and that’s her association to Perth, and it was really nice, and the rest of the cast was really, really lovely and the Duffers were extremely collaborative, they were lots of fun to work with, so it was great. 

Aside from your own characters, can you share with us who were your other favorite characters on the show? 

D: It’s tough. They all add their own flavor. You know, the first season, all of the kids had different idiosyncracies, different ways, that you kind of fall in love with them whether it’s through humor or their curiosity of life, and I think it was definitely the same this season. 

As far as we know, you’re siblings, and you’re both new in the second season. How did you get to know each other? How did you work together? Did you go through some workshops? 

D: Yeah, we didn’t actually have any chemistry reads, but they fluked it. 

S: Yeah, they just… I was expecting that they were going to have us do a chemistry read together, but no, we just both got cast and then met at a cast dinner or something.  

D: Yeah, we didn’t meet them until we were in Atlanta starting to shoot, but [we] got on really well. But our chemistry in the show is a rivalry, right, we’re butting heads, so it was interesting because we were friends and then actually came around and then – not friends.  

What was the process for casting? 

S: It was intense. For me, it was I’d be back and forth doing the same sides that they had given me, but then the Duffers would be like, ‘Okay, have Sadie read it this way,’ and then I’d go in and I’d do it again, and then I’d come in the next day and have them they wanted me to read it in a different way. And that happened 4, 5 times. And then I did a Skype session, then I did a screen test with Gaten [Matarazzo] (who plays Dustin Henderson) and Caleb [McLaughlin] (who plays Lucas Sinclair). 

D: Yeah, I was a little bit different, I was very fortunate… I was in Perth and I made a short film…and I sent it in, Skyped the Duffers, and then they offered me the role 3 days later.

[Dacre,] you came from Power Rangers where you were a hero, in a way. But in this particular drama, it’s about 4 kids who became heroes. What is more difficult? 

D: Yeah, I can’t divulge any information, but actually in Stranger Things, Billy is the villain. He’s the antagonist. Like you said, in Power Rangers I was a hero, a protagonist, so playing the opposite was really interesting. And in real life, I’m nothing like Billy. I mean, the guy is crazy, right? Like, he’s so wild and it’s not a representation of who I am, that’s why it was fun to get into character, because the Duffers gave me – ‘specially towards tthe end of the season – so much to work with about this volatile, unpredictable, insecure teenage boy and putting that into the Stranger Things world is lots of fun. 

I take it that you’ve both seen season 1 of Stranger Things. What was it like to be part of a series that was set in the ’80s, a period before you were born and especially Sadie, what’s it like to listen to all those ’80s music? 

S: It’s interesting. (laughs) I mean, obviously, I didn’t live in the ’80s but my parents did, so if I had any questions, I would ask them, they knew all the answers.  

Did they give any interesting answers regarding the ’80s? 

S: Not really, it was mostly just they would go to set and then my mom would see an extra or one of the characters wearing the shirt or dress and she’d be like ‘I had that exact shirt, I had that dress.’  

D: Yeah, I mean, much the same, my parents commented on different Easter eggs, you know, little things that the Duffers inserted in the second season, that are very reminiscent of – I think it’s not even the ’80s as a whole, it’s that particular year that it’s set in, that came out that year, what was new, what was relevant. Rather than being specific to a decade, it’s specific to a year, you know, a 24-month bracket within that time. So I have a lot admiration for them, and also for the makeup, hair and makeup. I mean, to be so specific to a particular year, you know it’s kind of exciting, because I’m not just in the ’80s, I mean, this month in ’84, that’s cool. I’m learning all the time, I mean, I wasn’t born ’til ’94, so yeah. 

Is there anything about the ’80s that you really found interesting that you would perhaps like to do now or that you wish still exists today? 

S: I guess like, as far as social media and technology goes, there’s certain things that we have now that people get addicted to it. So I guess something in the ’80s, there was obviously less of that and kids were more, go outside and play! You know, be involved in the real world rather than on their phones all the time, so that’s a good quality of the ’80s. 

D: I think I’m envious of the freedom that children had in the ’80s. I have a much younger sister and I, myself, those period of my years coincided with 2000, the turn of the century, it was very different in terms of just being I think afraid to let your kids go outside and stranger danger, all of these sort of things, right? Whereas these kids on the show, are so uninhibited by, you know, ‘Oh, you need to be home by…’ they’re having all these adventures, they’re having these wild you know, and that’s interesting for me to watch you know because I didn’t have that. I went to camp and stuff, but I didn’t get to ride my bike through the wilderness and discover my own demons or demagorgons or whatever. So I think that’s cool. 

Dacre, you said in your past interviews that you used Jack Nicholson to prepare for the role. Can you tell us more about that. 

D: Well, the Duffers, when I Skyped them, when they offered me the role, there was this, in the initial stages of building this character – Stephen has this idea about the human antagonist being scarier than like a monster villain. What they wanted to insert in the second season was a character that was all human that was scary. And I think Jack Nicholson sort of achieved a lot of success in his roles, in villainous roles, because of his unpredictable nature. So they asked me to make reference to him and incorporate some of that into my character. Because it’s unnerving for people to watch something and they sort of don’t know what the person’s going to do, it’s very strange. So that was where it came from, Stephen King and then the link to Jack, and I was able to go back and watch a bunch of Jack Nicholson films. 

Sadie, how was it working with the 4 boys and Millie, because they’re very close. How was it cracking into the circle? 

S: With the boys and Millie, it was great. I mean, with so many of us, all of us find different things to bond over, whether it’s TV shows or you know, different things like that. Millie and I really clicked, being the only girls. She was saying it was nice for her to have another girl on the cast because she’s used to being with all the boys. 

Earlier we were talking about how you guys are so big on keeping things hush-hush because mystery’s a big part of the show. So how do you guys deal with it? Is it true that you aren’t allowed to talk about it with your friends and families, even with your moms? 

S: It is cool because my friends are fans of the show, they’re like, ‘Oh my gosh, you know everything that happens in season two.’ I’m like, ‘Oh, yeah, sorry I can’t tell you.’ 

D: I have actually, a crazy story. So in Australia, there’s like online bettings called Sports Bet. And no joke, you can joke for money, it says ‘Who dies first in season two of Stranger Things?’ It has a list of people and my friends in Australia were coming to me going, ‘Mate, I can win big money, you and me put money in…’ I’m like, what is going on? It’s like a Floyd Mayweather and Collin McGregor fight, we can – what are the odds that such and such will die? So I had friends coming to me, like, ‘We can win, we can win big here man.’ I was like, ‘Yeah, but my career could be over big, and I could have a lawsuit on my hands.’ That’s interesting, all that kind of stuff. – Rappler.com