- Stranger Things: Tales From 85 does not feature actors from its parent show
- Milly Bobby Brown and company do not voice their characters in the animated spin-off
- Tales from 85‘s creator has tried to explain why they haven’t returned
Stranger Things: Tales From 85‘s showrunner has explained why the main show’s cast did not return for its animated interquel.
In an exclusive chat with TechRadar, Eric Robles claimed that it “would have sounded really weird” if the likes of Millie Bobby Brown and Finn Wolfhard had come back to voice their respective characters from Stranger Things.
To dissect what Robles means, we must first look at Tales from 85‘s placement in the supernatural horror franchise’s timeline.
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For those who don’t know, the upcoming animated series is set between seasons 2 and 3 of the main show. Eleven, Mike, Lucas, Dustin, Will and Max are as such between 13 and 14 years old.
In Roble’s mind, now that Brown, Wolfhard and the rest of the Netflix TV Original’s young cast are in their 20s, asking them to voice their characters in Tales from 85 would not have made sense. Robles suggested that having “an adult voice in a small child’s body” would break viewers’ immersion because they would find it strange that, for example, the 22-year-old Brown would voice a teenage eleven.
“Imagine you have a 20-year-old actor and an animated pre-teen character,” Robles told me. “Now put that actor’s voice on a design of the 13-year-old. You’re going to have a deeper voice on a little kid, which would have sounded really weird because you have an adult voice on a little kid’s body. So when you start doing that math, you’re like, ‘Oh, right, that doesn’t make sense.’
“The other part of it is the talent we got for this show,” Robles added of those replacing Brown et al. in Tales from 85. “They brought such pure kid energy to every line they read.
“There’s something that happens to us as we get older, in that we lose this sense of joy and silliness of just being a kid, and I think that’s what our cast brought to the table. When you hear them pretending to run for their lives in the recording booth, they’re smiling and laughing and having a great time because they have the first time playing these new characters to enjoy.”
On the surface, I certainly see the logic in Robles’ argument. The problem I have though is that it starts to fall apart when you dig a little deeper.
While researching the show prior to my interview with its creator, I learned this Tales from 85‘s voice cast is actually not that much younger than the stars that populate its parent show.
For example, Ben Plessala, who plays Will in Tales from 85is only about two years younger than Noah Schanpp, who portrayed the same character in the main show. In addition, there is only a four-year age difference between Jolie Hoang-Rappaport and Sadie Sink, who inhabits the role of Max in Tales from 85 and Stranger Things respectively. Meanwhile, Odessa A’zion, who voices Nikki Baxter, a brand new character created especially for Tales from 85is 25 years old.
Okay, there are more notable age differences between other cast members – Lucas Sinclair voice actor Elisha Williams is seven years younger than Stranger Things star Caleb McLaughlin, for example. Still, if a young adult like A’zion was hired to play a teenager in this Netflix animated series, the world’s top streaming service could surely have asked the likes of Brown and Wolfhard — who, mind you, are younger than A’zion — to return for Tales from 85?
Putting on my theory hat, the decision not to bring them back comes down to two things: One, Netflix would have had to pay far more money to hire Brown than Brooklyn Davey Norstedt, who voices Eleven in Tales from 85and/or two, maybe the main show’s cast couldn’t or wouldn’t come back.
Will we ever find out the answer? I would be surprised if we did. Either way, with Robles already planning on multiple seasons of Tales from 85we better get used to hearing different people play some of the franchise’s most iconic characters.
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