Thinking back on the last two years of his life full of album releases, filming schedules and tour dates, Finn Wolfhard requires squint-inducing concentration to keep it all straight.
“Jesus, a lot has happened,” he says, looking surprised. That’s an understatement.
In that time, the 23-year-old not only finished filming the Netflix hit show “Stranger Things,” which catapulted him to global stardom, and promoted the final season upon its premiere. He also released his feature film directorial debut (“Hell of a Summer,” co-directed with Billy Bryk, which hit theaters in April 2025). Then, he starred in another movie (A24’s creature feature “The Legend of Ochi”), directed a posthumous George Harrison stop-motion music video, wrote, recorded and put out his first solo album (“Happy Birthday”), and embarked on a 22-date tour before recording a new album.
On a video call from his family home in Vancouver, Canada, where he lives with his parents and older brother, he’s chatting about the release of that record, the eclectic, guitar-driven “Fire From the Hip,” which dropped Friday.
“I think it’s a nice day?” he offers when I ask what’s happening in Vancouver. “I don’t know. I’ve been in my basement studio all day, so I don’t … I think it’s nice.”
He’s been down in the basement doing press calls like this, he explains, undoubtedly a familiar routine after so many years in the limelight. He wears a baseball cap and an oversize brown sweater, tugging on the sleeves while he ponders.
Even if Wolfhard is exhausted by the press marathon, he doesn’t show it. He’s excited for the chance to be known on his own terms. He never fails to express gratitude for the projects that afforded him recognition and opportunity, but he’s ready to “take control of the narrative.”
“I spent my whole childhood standing on marks that other people told me to stand on and saying lines that other people told me to say,” he says. “Why wouldn’t I want to make my own stuff?”
Being in control also means being the face of the operation. Before “Happy Birthday” and “Fire From the Hip,” Wolfhard released a total of two records and an EP, plus a whole bunch of singles, with his previous bands, Calpurnia and the Aubreys. Being in a band was a natural fit for Wolfhard, who thrives in an ensemble where he can “hide behind the band name.”
Touring last year was his first time seeing his own name on the marquee.
“It’s just straight up me, and if I suck, I suck,” he laughs. “It’s not like I can be like, ‘Oh, man, we’re having disagreements in the band.’ It’s like, no, that’s you. So there was a little more pressure early on.”
Finn Wolfhard released “Fire From the Hip” on Friday.
(Victoria Stevens)
Stepping into the spotlight required Wolfhard, who admits he shies away from conflict, to own both the pressure and the power of being the one audiences came to hear.
When he got sick and had to cancel a show in Portland, Ore., he remembers feeling crushingly sad “letting down” his fans and bandmates — who, of course, assured him it was outside of his control and urged him not to be so hard on himself.
Wolfhard introduced many of the songs that ended up becoming “Fire From the Hip” to his bandmates while they were still on tour, and he says playing them live “cultivated the spirit” of the eventual recordings. Despite his collaborative ethos, there was a moment during the process where he had to learn how to put his foot down in real time.
“I remember suggesting something and people being like, ‘Ah, I don’t know if I want to do that.’ And I was like, ‘No, you don’t get to do that to me. It’s my record,’” he remembers. “It was very innocent — I don’t think there was much ego on either side. But I think I maybe set up too collaborative of an experience that day.”
“I think I sometimes make it feel like a democracy, which it is in a lot of ways,” he adds. “But also, in the end, it is up to me.”
That thought is echoed in the album’s cover art, an image of two miniature Finn Wolfhards facing off, donning colonial garb and brandishing weapons. It’s meant to represent dueling impulses inside of him, he explains.
Wolfhard, a true-blue music nerd, has been described online as an archetypical example of the “child of a Gen X cool dad,” in the same vein as Olivia Rodrigo. (His dad, a former screenwriter turned lawyer and Indigenous rights researcher, does sound cool, but it was his mom who first introduced him to the Beatles. His parents apparently met over a Stone Roses record.)
That sensibility is evident in his musical influences — “I wanted everything [on drums] to sound like the first two Wilco records,” he says — and in his approach to recording. “Happy Birthday” was recorded almost entirely on four-track cassette tapes, while “Fire From the Hip” uses 24-track reel-to-reel.
The album runs the gamut from its cheeky, surf-rock opener “I’ll Let You Finish” (yes, that is a reference to Kanye West’s infamous speech at the 2009 VMAs) to more ’90s alt-inspired tunes to a surprising dose of straightforward country-folk.
Lyrically, Wolfhard divides his songs into two categories: the “very personal” and the story songs written around books he was reading (“Knockemstiff” by Donald Ray Pollock) or quotes that made him laugh. The personal themes he explores are exactly what you would expect from an early-20s rocker raised in the public eye — namely, relationship expectations and existential fears about the future.
On the nostalgic piano ballad “Good Morning,” he imagines what it might be like to settle down somewhere “with a dog and a wife.”
“I haven’t lived that part of my life yet,” he says now. “So I can really easily get lost in thinking about what that looks like.”
When it comes to sharing his music, especially the more vulnerable tracks, Wolfhard knows his “Stranger Things” fame is the elephant in the room. Anything he sings can and might be used against him in the court of public opinion.
“I could either kind of say nothing and be totally private, because it is scary knowing that everything I say, at least one person will take it a certain way that I wouldn’t want them to. But I just don’t have the control,” he says.
“So if I don’t have the control, then there’s nothing really that I can do, other than try to be as truthful and passionate and well-meaning as I possibly can, you know?”
The double-edged sword of fandom hasn’t stopped Wolfhard or his musically-inclined “Stranger Things” co-stars from pursuing this path. Fellow Hawkins alums Joe Keery (who releases music under the moniker Djo) and Maya Hawke are indie darlings in their own right, and Wolfhard has previously referred to Keery as a mentor. None of them face the unique challenge of relatability in quite the same way, however.
“I’m aware that my specific problems are maybe not as relatable because of how specific of a life I have,” he said. “The only thing I can hope for is that some other person out there listens to it and relates to the same things that I do.”
Sometimes an air of wistfulness accompanies these admissions. When asked about how he feels about Los Angeles, he tells me that it’s complicated: “I think if I wasn’t a young actor, it would be a very different situation.” His favorite parts of the city are its repertory cinemas and lush neighborhoods like Mount Washington, where his godfather resides, because they look the most like Vancouver.
That said, he’s not through with Hollywood. He’ll be back in L.A. for an Oct. 13 show at the Fonda Theatre, and acting and directing are still on the agenda. He would like his next film project — other than the Matt Johnson and Bong Joon Ho projects he’s already committed to, of course — to be something more “personal.”
For now, though, the focus is music. Wolfhard launches a new tour this month, and he’s most looking forward to “doing dumb s—” with his friends.
He tells a quick story to illustrate: When he and the band last toured in Glasgow, Scotland, he was trying to leave the venue without being noticed. (“I have a hard time dealing with fan interaction,” he says.)
“We kind of made it into this joke thing, knowing it wouldn’t work, where me and Rand, my guitarist, were like, ‘let’s switch clothes.’ Rand pretended to be me and I pretended to be Rand,” he says. Miraculously, it worked up until the “very last second” before they stepped on the bus.
“I couldn’t help myself,” he says: He instinctively made eye contact with someone in the crowd. “They did a double take, like, ‘Wait, what?’”
It sounds like a scene straight out of “A Hard Day’s Night” — or maybe inspiration for his next film.
“I’m pretty in my head about things and want them to be a certain way,” he says. “The thing that I have to remind myself all the time is that, like, dude, you’re with your friends, you’re playing music — it’s the best.”
Actor Finn Wolfhard has revealed that the ending of Stranger Things, which he had been part of his life for a decade, was ‘depressing’ as he struggled to find himself again
Finn Wolfhard has opened up about Stranger Things ending(Image: Variety via Getty Images)
Finn Wolfhard has revealed he felt “really lost” after the ending of Stranger Things. The Canadian actor, 23, became an international star playing Mike Wheeler in the sci-fi drama on Netflix.
Asked in a new interview if he felt liberated, he said: “For sure, yeah. At first I felt really lost, because that’s your life for so long and so many of the crew and cast were so integral to the person that you are and to your identity.”
He went on to tell The Guardian: “You almost have a kind of withdrawal for a little while. Then you realise all those relationships, all those friendships, they’re around forever.”
Although Finn and his co-stars, including Millie Bobby Brown, knew the programme would be drawing to a close after the fifth series, it took time for the cast and crew to process it.
Finn said: “Every year it was like, OK, I know I’m going to be in Atlanta filming this thing with the same people for the next however long. It was like my school in a really odd way. Everyone was having a great time, hanging out … All the cast lived in the same neighbourhood. We would go to each other’s houses all the time.
“The vibe [during the last season] was almost like, ‘Oh, we’ll back next year’, but once we got about halfway through, everyone started to realise like, ‘Oh, This is it.’ And then everyone just really valued the time we all had together for that last half.”
While he says that the show ended at the right time, he added: “It was pretty depressing for everyone when it ended … but it feels absolutely right that we’ve ended at the time that we did.”
In the past, Finn has spoken about how he wasn’t prepared for such global fame as a child, admitting that if he had the chance to turn back the clock, he would “put himself in therapy”.
Speaking to People magazine, the actor said: “I don’t think I’d ever go back and do something over, but maybe I would go back to when the show first came out and blew up, and I would directly put myself into therapy.
“But it was so crazy and overnight, that there was not really any time to think about that.” He went on to state that he would “probably” make a mistake in other ways, in childhood, adding that life is about “trial and error”.
Finn has also spoken publicly about suffering from panic attacks and struggling with anxiety from around the age of 15. Despite his struggles, Finn said he didn’t speak to anyone about the issues because of his “whirlwind career”.
He said in the past: “Everyone was like, ‘Look at him, he’s fine. He’s having the best time.’ But in reality, I was probably also developing and things were happening in my brain and anxieties were forming and things that I didn’t realize that I had to bury because of how I had to feel at work.”
Finn Russell will not feature in Scotland’s opening Nations Championship match of the summer series but could feature against South Africa, says head coach Gregor Townsend, who welcomes back Jonny Gray.
Fly-half Russell, 33, has not fully recovered from the calf injury that kept him out of the latter part of Bath’s domestic campaign and was not considered for the match at Estadio Mario Alberto Kempes in Cordoba on Saturday (20:10 BST). The Scots face the Springboks in Pretoria on 11 July then Fiji at Murrayfield on 18 July.
Tom Jordan starts at 10 in Russell’s absence, with Fergus Burke among the replacements.
Gray returns against the Pumas, having missed this year’s Six Nations, while fellow lock Scott Cummings, 29, and prop Pierre Schoeman, 32, will win their 50th caps.
“Great for [Jonny Gray] to be back in the squad,” said Townsend. “Since his move to Perpignan, he’s played very well so his form’s been rewarded with this opportunity. It’s nice obviously nice that him and Scott Cummings are playing together.
“Jonny was at Glasgow when Scott came through as an 18-year-old. It will be great to see them both back int he second row again.”
Overall, the XV in Cordoba shows eight personnel changes to the team that finished the Six Nations with defeat to Ireland in Dublin in mid-March.
Full-back Kyle Rowe, centre Rory Hutchinson, wing Jamie Dobie, fly-half Tom Jordan, hooker George Turner, prop Elliot Millar-Mills and Cummings are the players joining Gray in coming in to the side.
Kyle Steyn moves from left to right wing to accommodate Dobie. Prop Zander Fagerson and wing Darcy Graham, who started in Dublin, drop to the bench.
Gregor Hiddleston could make his Scotland debut off the bench.
“We’ll have to gel quickly,” Townsend said.
“It’s our first game since we played in Dublin. We’ve got a lot of evidence in the Six Nations and November that when we get our game in place in attack and defence, we can cause problems to any team in world rugby and do more than that, convert opportunities.
“I believe that our squad now is much deeper and we use that bench to continue what the starters are doing or actually raise the energy.”
