Season 5 of the hit Netflix series “Stranger Things” is underway, with the next batch of episodes slated to release on Christmas Day. So far, a new character with Chicago roots has become a fan favorite.
Derek Turnbow, the lovable bully-turned-hero, is portrayed by 13-year-old Arlington Heights resident Jake Connelly.
“It’s just kind of the stuff of dreams for me,” he said in a recent in-studio interview at WBEZ. I really enjoy that people are actually wanting to see me and meet me.”
Connelly’s newfound stardom has landed him not just on Netflix, but also on television with a recent appearance on “The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon.”
But his path to fame was a bit unexpected: It came through a friend of his mother’s who directs Feldco window commercials.
“He asked me to be in one,” Connelly said. The commercials led to the teen signing with a talent agency, which led to an audition for “Stranger Things.”
Connelly said he didn’t expect to actually get the part. Once he did, he had to keep it a secret from friends and classmates for about a year and a half. When the time came to actually shoot the season, the youngster traveled to Atlanta where the series is filmed on location.
“We were gone for the entire year,” he said of heading down south with his mom to film. “We had to leave my brother and dad behind. So that was pretty tough. But we got to visit almost every month.”
Asked how he kept the secret for so long, he chuckles and says, “I did have a little bit of a coping mechanism for that. I actually told anybody who was asking too many questions that I was going to be on a mayonnaise documentary.”
Heading into the filming, he said he didn’t have any heavy preparation. Instead, he played it cool.
“I just kind of winged it. We went over our lines and did as much as we could, because there’s not much that you can do to prepare for something that you’ve never seen before. And I think just going in head first and being able to adjust to anything that comes your way is a really good tool.”
He did admit that being on the “Stranger Things” set — with its reported $50 million production budget for Season 5 — was a little different than what he was used to.
“It’s much different than a Feldco windows commercial,” the teen star joked. “It’s just so many things and so many people all working together. It’s like a perfectly well-oiled machine. Everybody makes their mark on everything.”
In one particular scene from the early batch of Season 5 episodes, Connelly’s character battles demogorgons, those predatory creatures in the show that haunt the cast and appear very scary on screen.
“I actually used to think that everything would be like CGI or a green screen,” he said. “But really, the amount of practical effects that went into making that huge last scene at the end of Episode 4, there were people flying on wires and people actually getting set on fire. Real explosions. It was so amazing.”
Connelly’s character starts as a bully and uses foul language. In true teenage fashion, he admits swearing in front of his mother without penalty is a perk. But the character’s arc shifts throughout the season, a complexity that has pushed him as an actor.
“It’s kind of hard to be able to play a character, and then you’re just gonna have to totally do a polar opposite flip,” he said. “But I have to say that as long as you got the preparation for it and just being able to go over your lines many times, you know, and my mom was a very big help in that, being my scene partner.”
Mike Davis is a theater reporter who covers stages across Chicago.