Winona Ryder reveals the tragic inspiration behind her Stranger Things portrayal
A hometown tragedy in her early career helped to shape her role as Joyce Byers
With the final series of Stranger Things now in full swing, Winona Ryder has once again taken center stage as concerned mom Joyce Byers and recently recalled a very poignant inspiration for her portrayal on screen.
Speaking to Interview to promote the new series, Ryder, 54, was asked about her inspiration for playing a concerned parent searching for a child in supernatural settings.
"I had this experience when I was in my early twenties: there was a girl from the town that I grew up in. Her name was Polly Klaas and she was kidnapped. I knew her family," Ryder shared.
"She was missing for two months, and very tragically, she had been killed. I was doing whatever I could to help this family, to keep it in the news. When you’re around that kind of tangible grief, it’s otherworldly."
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She continued: "She wanted to be an actress and her favorite book was Little Women, so that was a big reason I did that movie and dedicated it to her."
Ryder famously starred in the 1994 Hollywood adaptation of the literary classic just one year after Klaas went missing.
The actress and the young girl shared a hometown, with Ryder even joining the campaign to try and find her, offering up a $200,000 reward for any information that could help to bring her home.
The disappearance clearly resonated with Ryder and was something that made her initially cautious about taking on the role of Joyce, whose son Will goes missing in the first season.
"I was actually really freaked out with Stranger Things, because I wanted them to know how f***ing serious that is, and that you can’t use disappearances as a tool to advance — it feels very personal," she said.
"I also talked to Polly’s dad, and a lot of my performance in that first season was connected to him. I worked really, really hard that first season, and then the show took off in a way that I have certainly never been a part of. I remember having a moment that was really liberating and relieving, when I realized the show was no longer about me."
Shooting the show also proved to be challenging for Ryder, particularly in the early seasons, as she recalled: "When you’re trying to keep that perspective and maintain that level of intense anxiety and anger, it’s so hard to do on something that shoots like that. In the first season I had to be so emotional that I was just a wreck that whole time."
She also found herself being increasingly protective of her young co-stars, such as Noah Schnapp and Millie Bobby Brown, who were only just starting out in the industry.
Ryder said: "I was watching these kids at this tender age getting enormous attention that would be overwhelming for anybody, and feeling really protective and concerned, because I went through it. But it wasn’t similar at all, because technology and social media have completely changed everything."
Topics: Stranger Things, Netflix, True crime
Phoebe Tonks