
Callum Turner and Monica Barbaro at the One Night Only premiere on Monday.
Roy Rochlin/Getty Images for Universal Pictures
After five seasons across nearly 10 years, “Stranger Things” reached its grand finale in 2025 as the monster-hunting, D&D-loving party took on the show’s big bad, Vecna, for one last time.
Making Vecna a credible, terrifying threat took a lot of teamwork, with actor Jamie Campbell Bower, prosthetics designer Barrie Gower and casting director Carmen Cuba putting their heads together on how to create a finale-worthy villain.
“It really was just such an incredibly amazing, collaborative team effort that I personally feel so grateful and lucky to have been able to be a part of,” Bower told TheWrap in a new installment of “How I Did It,” presented by Netflix.
Cuba first found Bower during the casting process for Season 4, introducing audiences to the “five-star general” of “Stranger Things” and the Upside Down. She had a few parameters for the role: Cuba needed someone tall, an actor who could play multiple characters at once and make them feel distinctly terrifying.
“I knew it was two characters at that point. I don’t think we knew the third character yet. We saw a lot of actors doing both things. For his role, we saw like 177 people,” Cuba told TheWrap. “We talked about the voice pretty early, right away, because, as you can tell, he’s a very thoughtful actor, and so he was thinking very intensely about it from the beginning.”
Cuba also needed someone willing to sit in the makeup chair for a long period of time. Gower, who joined the series with Bower during Season 4, upped the prosthetics game for “Stranger Things 5,” giving Vecna a new look reflective of the time he’s spent licking his wounds in the Upside Down (and the newly-discovered Abyss). The Duffer Brothers described the upgrade, Gower said, as “Vecna on steroids.”
“I remember our first day back on Season 5, it was putting Jamie into his full prosthetic makeup, and it was bizarre because it was exactly the same room with exactly the same people and with the same makeup. It was almost like riding a bike,” he told TheWrap. “I think there’s something really lovely about that familiarity.”
But Gower and his team needed to be careful not to overdo it with the makeup. Gower wanted to make sure that Bower’s acting didn’t get lost under too many prosthetics.
“We decided that the most important thing was going to be Jamie’s performance and that we could totally see all his delivery and his lines and his movement and his head and shoulders, so we did full practical makeup for Jamie’s head and shoulders, his right arm as well, because they were concerned he needed to be able to have a lot of dexterity with his right arm,” Gower said. “It was really important that we were able to let the actor have enough movement and portray what they need to through the prosthetics and have enough facial movement.”
“It was just an absolute gift, working with Jamie,” he added.
Bower was already experienced in playing multiple shades of the same character. In “Stranger Things 4,” the actor played both Vecna and Henry, a younger version of the show’s big bad before he was physically altered after being banished to the Abyss by Eleven. “Stranger Things 5” would bring Bower a third shade to this character: Mr. Whatsit, a friendly-seeming figure luring the children of Hawkins to a hidden world so he can use them in his quest to make worlds collide.
The addition of Mr. Whatsit brought Cuba something of a full-circle moment for “Stranger Things.” Nearly a decade after she found a slew of child actors (including Finn Wolfhard, Gaten Matarazzo, Caleb McLaughlin and Noah Schnapp) to lead the fantasy/sci-fi/horror series, Cuba needed to find a whole new crew of kids to make up the younger Hawkins crew.
“The ones who are right for it present themselves much sooner than sometimes adults. The Duffers really enjoy watching auditions, and they start shaping the character via auditions that they see and then sort of as we home in on the person that is the right fit for the part,” Cuba said. “Then they start writing to the character, which then makes it look like I did a spectacular job, because they really just ended up writing to the best of what the kids that we cast brought.”
Many of these additions to the “Stranger Things” world mostly shared the screen with one actor: Bower. The actor said being the lone adult in scenes filled with child actors was scary in its own right.
“Kids have this ability, this kind of innate ability, to be able to kind of see through lies, and when I stepped into Season 4, you know, nobody really knew who I was. They weren’t given the full story, they weren’t given the full scripts, and I felt like I knew more than anybody else, which is a good position to be in,” Bower said. “With Season 5, everyone was very aware of who I am, so making sure that that warmth and that that character that I built was able to remain in the face of the human lie detector test was very challenging for me. I spent a long time worrying about it for sure. However, they also brought this immense sense of light and levity to the process for me.”
“Stranger Things” Seasons 1-5 are now streaming on Netflix.
>
Ever since the official trailer dropped for the Callum Turner–Monica Barbaro rom-com One Night Only, quickly racking up millions of views on its way to its nearly 40 million total, internet commentators have had a lot of questions about the film’s central premise in which premarital sex is illegal apart from one 12-hour period a year.
How is this law enforced? Are people breaking the law? How did this legislation pass? What counts as “sex” under this new mandate? Are marriage (and divorce) rates skyrocketing? What about affairs?
Rest assured: Some of those questions are answered in the movie, and explanations are starting to trickle out online for those unconcerned about spoilers. Beyond that, One Night Only writer, Travis Braun, who saw his screenplay top the 2024 Black List, has answers, but they’re not all in the Will Gluck-directed Universal movie now in theaters.
“I set out to write a movie about the circus that is modern dating, and I thought how fun if we could set that all in one night, and I have answers to those questions, and some of them are in the movie,” Braun told The Hollywood Reporter at the One Night Only premiere earlier this week in New York.
Braun said he definitely thought about the specific rules of the film’s alternate reality, framed as three years on from the no-sex act being passed, but didn’t want to get too deep into the politics of the world of the movie.
“There’s a big mythology that I’ve built out and then as you develop a movie you start to pare down and you go: What does an audience really care about, and what are they showing up to see? For me the answer is always a love story, romance,” he told THR. “I hope they can come in and we’ll show them how this world functions, and then they can just enjoy the movie and have fun. The whole focus of this was love story and romance first, and the world-building obviously has to make sense and has to be there, but ultimately we weren’t interested in getting into the politics of it. We wanted to tell a story about these two incredible people trying to find love on this crazy night.”
Producer Jacqueline Monetta, who brought Braun’s script to Gluck, said they didn’t want moviegoers to have all of the answers.
“I had a million questions. I was like, ‘What does this mean? What does this world look like? How do people communicate? What’s different?’ And that’s I think what’s so smart about it,” she said of One Night Only‘s “big idea, high-concept” premise. “We don’t answer every question in the movie, purposefully, because we want those questions to be had on the car ride home. We want people to keep talking about it and really think about what would this mean for our world, what does it mean for our world now. But I think Will and I were really specific on what questions we wanted to answer.”
In a recent Reddit AMA, Gluck also detailed how he and his team approached the world building of the movie while not wanting it to be all about the mandate and offered prospective moviegoers hints for where to find the answers to their questions.
“We spent a lot of time talking about the rules of the world, and if you’ve seen the movie, or when you see the movie, you’ll see that the rules of the world and the world building are all in the background,” he said. “It’s on TVs, signage, in thrown-away lines, because we didn’t want to give the world short shrift, but we didn’t want the movie to be about that. It’s another way I want people to see this. If they see it more than once, they’ll pick up so many more rules of the world in the background. A lot of the questions that I’ve been getting after people have seen the movie are actually answered in the movie, which is by design because I want people maybe not to know them. So, yes, it was a tricky tightrope to have them there, but not for the movie to be about it.”
Turner meanwhile echoes Braun’s advice for curious prospective moviegoers: “Go see the film!”
“You’ll realize pretty quickly what the realm is that you’re working within and it’s a comedy,” Turner says of what inquisitive filmgoers will find. “There are no great political undertones, I don’t think. This is just a place where you can escape for an hour and a half, two hours and enjoy and laugh your head off.”
One Night Only is now in theaters.

Callum Turner and Monica Barbaro at the One Night Only premiere on Monday.
Roy Rochlin/Getty Images for Universal Pictures
>
Although the live-action remake of Moana hasn’t quite been able to catch a wave at the box office, Dwayne Johnson is proud of what they made.
The Golden Globe nominee said the Disney movie’s negative reviews, which currently sit at 32% on Rotten Tomatoes, are “just the way it goes” in the entertainment industry, and what “really mattered” was that “the culture really stood up” in the Polynesian-inspired tale.
“Our first two reviews came out. I’ll never forget it… They were amazing. I was like, wow,” he told People, noting the reviews then “went another way, as sometimes happens.”
“That’s just the way it goes because we’re in this business,” added Johnson.
A decade after he voiced the demigod Maui in Disney’s animated film Moana, Johnson reprised the role in the Thomas Kail-helmed live-action adaptation.

“The challenge was, okay, let’s remember, though, what’s going to be beyond this opening weekend. Let’s remember what’s happening right now and the noise that’s happening right now,” said Johnson. “If you love it, great. If you don’t, no problem.”
Following Moana‘s July 10 premiere, the movie has gone on to make $266M at the global box office. Disney CEO Josh D’Amaro addressed the low turnout in a letter to shareholders.
“Even when our franchise films don’t meet our box office expectations, as with The Mandalorian and Grogu and the live-action Moana, our investments in these core properties fuel other parts of our company,” said D’Amaro, noting that Moana is “expected to be a strong title on Disney+, building on the success of the original film, which is one of the most streamed movies of all time.”
>
Hunter Biden doesn’t have plans of running for office himself, but he still has some strong opinions when it comes to the presidency. In fact, President Joe Biden’s son just called President Donald Trump “the singular existential threat” to planet Earth.
During his wide-ranging interview with BBC Newsnight’s Paddy O’Connell on Friday, the 56-year-old artist opened up about receiving a pardon from his father during his last weeks in office back in December 2024 — and how Trump’s behavior may have impacted the decision.
“I am the most privileged person, as it relates to that, that there could possibly be. I was one of one, and I am eternally grateful for it,” Hunter shared. “I am eternally grateful for it because I think that Donald Trump has proven to be exactly who my dad thought he was going to be, as it relates to the revenge and retribution that he would seek on his political enemies.”
“Was it good for our Constitution? Was it good for the American people? Was it good for my dad’s legacy? No, on all counts,” he further admitted.
President Biden pardoned his son just weeks ahead of his sentencing on tax evasion and federal gun charges. At the time, Trump called the act “an abuse and miscarriage of justice.” A year and half later, Hunter remains equally unimpressed by his father’s successor (who was also, notably, his predecessor).
“I’m not going to stop talking about Donald Trump,” he concluded. “Donald Trump is the singular existential threat to this globe. Donald Trump is, literally, a greater threat than we have faced in any of our lifetimes.”
Elsewhere in his interview, Hunter fought tears while sharing a painful update on his father’s prostate cancer metastasizing to his bones: “My dad is, to this day, remains the center of our family. Not just because of who he is as the the public person, but completely because of who he is to each one of us. It’s really, really hard and it’s really sad to watch.”
>
Search For Canadian TV Actor Stewart McLean Now Homicide Investigation
These ’90s fashion trends are making a comeback in 2017
According to Dior Couture, this taboo fashion accessory is back
Model Jocelyn Chew’s Instagram is the best vacation you’ve ever had
Your comprehensive guide to this fall’s biggest trends
9 Celebrities who have spoken out about being photoshopped
Emily Ratajkowski channels back-to-school style
A photo diary of the nightlife scene from LA To Ibiza