Stranger Things 4 Star Maya Hawke Was Terrified to Film During the Pandemic

After a significant delay due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, we’re officially one step closer to Stranger Things Season 4 being released, with an ominous new teaser hitting the Internet on Wednesday. The beloved Netflix series was among the many shows hit with production shutdowns during the height of the pandemic, before resuming last year. In a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter, series star Maya Hawke, who has played Robin since Season 3, spoke about the surreal process of filming during that time, and revealed that she was “very afraid” of the process before receiving her vaccine.

“I went and waited outside the vaccination clinics, hoping there would be one of the ones they were going to throw away in a spare. And eventually there was,” Hawke revealed. “So I got a vaccine about a month ago, and it took until then for it to feel totally comfortable. Everyone was working so hard to be so safe and to wear masks and to protect each other and to quarantine and to do checks. And all of that was great, but it’s such an exposed job. You’re on set and fluid has to come out of your face. You’ve got to cry, scream and spit, and no matter what you want, you can’t wear a mask doing that. You can’t wear a mask on camera telling a story about the ’80s. So I was very afraid. I was super intense about my quarantining and making sure I was safe and doing my testing and all of that stuff. But I wasn’t afraid for myself. I was just afraid of being on set, doing a scene with screaming and having a piece of my spit go flying. If I somehow had picked up the wrong thing at the grocery store — and I had some particle in me — I was afraid that I would kill somebody. I was just really scared. It’s still up for grabs about whether or not you can still give people COVID when you’re vaccinated, and so I’m still legitimately intense about my quarantining. But that noise in my head of, “ah!” has softened since I’ve been vaccinated.”

While plot details remain a mystery when it comes to Stranger Things Season 4, other members of the series’ cast and crew have been candid about the pandemic’s effect on the new episodes — and not entirely in a negative way.

“I’ll just say the pandemic definitely massively delayed shooting and therefore the launch of our current Season Four, date still TBD,” producer Shawn Levy shared with Collider late last year. “But it impacted very positively by allowing the Duffer brothers, for the first time ever, to write the entire season before we shoot it and to have time to rewrite in a way that they rarely had before so the quality of these screenplays are exceptional, maybe better than ever.”

Season 4 of Stranger Things is expected to debut exclusively on Netflix.