Millie Bobby Brown Admits She Played Eleven For So Long, She’d ‘Gone Insane’ On Set: ‘Stop Pitching It, It’s Not Working’

eleven in stranger things season 5
(Image credit: Netflix)

It’s possible that no 2025 Netflix TV premiere has been more hotly anticipated than that of Stranger Things Season 5. Not only have fans with a Netflix subscription been waiting for over three years to watch the Hawkins crew finally defeat Vecna, but their adventures will come to an end when the fifth season does, meaning that emotions are high for viewers and cast members. In fact, Millie Bobby Brown has admitted that shooting the final episodes after playing Eleven for so long led to her going a bit “insane” and wanting to try some things that definitely would have been weird.

What ‘Insane’ Thing Did Millie Bobby Brown Want To Try While Filming Stranger Things Season 5?

No one can say that the run of Stranger Things hasn't been an extraordinary one. The mega sci-fi horror hit has been a part of our lives since its debut in the summer of 2016, meaning that as the cast continues to promote the last season, they’ve been working on the show for a full decade. Stars like Finn Wolfhard and Noah Schnapp have discussed how emotional their final days on set were with co-stars like Winona Ryder (Will’s portrayer found himself “sobbing” on her last day). But, they really haven’t talked about how playing the same character in such heightened situations for so long can make you kinda loopy.

Well, thank goodness for Millie Bobby Brown! During a joint interview with Schnapp about the upcoming season with Jake’s Takes, the duo were asked if they ever came to a point where they simply couldn’t think of a new way to do their character’s signature movements (Eleven holding out her hand to manipulate things/Will rubbing the back of his neck when he can feel the Upside Down meddling with the Rightside Up), and Brown revealed that filming Season 5 got her to that point, saying:

It actually happened to me this season. I thought, ‘Do I throw a little kick? I don’t know.’ I was like, ‘Could it be a kick?’ and everyone was like, ‘Millie, you’ve gone insane, It’s been 10 years. Don’t kick.’ And I’m like, ‘But what if it is?’ They’re like, ‘Stop pitching it, it’s not working.’ So, yeah, you’re not wrong. You start to go a little bit insane.

Of all the issues I could have imagined when working on one role for a long time, something like how to make repetitive actions different and interesting certainly wasn’t one of them. However, Eleven’s use of her powers in the series is so iconic that it’s pretty easy to understand that Brown wanted to bring some new flair to it in the last season. Just considering all of her scenes in the final Season 5 trailer, but with that kick she was trying to add, I think maybe everyone was correct to dissuade her.

Obviously, I’m saying this without having seen Eleven at her full, Force-like level of telekinetic ability, so it’s not impossible that we’ll all think differently about it in a few days. Either way, I do hope that we get at least one amazing scene where El can kick Vecna’s viny ass one last time.

Adrienne Jones
Senior Content Creator

Covering The Witcher, Outlander, Virgin River, Sweet Magnolias and a slew of other streaming shows, Adrienne Jones is a Senior Content Producer at CinemaBlend, and started in the fall of 2015. In addition to writing and editing stories on a variety of different topics, she also spends her work days trying to find new ways to write about the many romantic entanglements that fictional characters find themselves in on TV shows. She graduated from Mizzou with a degree in Photojournalism. 

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