- Stranger Things: Tales From 85 doesn't feature actors from its parent show
- Milly Bobby Brown and company don't 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 didn't return for its animated interquel.
In an exclusive chat with TechRadar, Eric Robles claimed it "would've sounded really strange" 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 first have to look at Tales From 85's placement on the supernatural horror franchise's timeline.
For those who don't know, the forthcoming animated series is set between seasons 2 and 3 of the primary show. As such, Eleven, Mike, Lucas, Dustin, Will, and Max are between 13 and 14 years old.
In Robles' 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 wouldn't have made sense. Making his case, Robles suggested having "an adult voice in a little kid's body" would break viewers' immersion because they'd find it odd that, say, the 22-year-old Brown would be voicing a teenage Eleven.
"Imagine you have a 20-something-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've sounded really strange 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 who replace Brown et al. in Tales From 85. "They brought such pure kid energy to every line that they read.
"There's something that happens to us as we get older in that we lose this 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, laughing, and having a great time, because they have that new sense of enjoyment in playing these characters for the first time."
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 ahead of my interview with its creator, I learned that Tales From 85's voice cast isn't actually that much younger than the stars who populate its parent program.
For example, Ben Plessala, who plays Will in Tales From 85, is only around two years younger than Noah Schanpp, who portrayed the same character in the main show. Additionally, there's only a four-year age gap between Jolie Hoang-Rappaport and Sadie Sink, who inhabit 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 specifically for Tales From 85, is 25 years old.
Okay, there are more notable age gaps between other cast members — Lucas Sinclair voice actor Elisha Williams is seven years younger than Stranger Things star Caleb McLaughlin, for instance. Even so, if a young adult like A'zion was hired to play a teen in this Netflix animated series, surely the world's best streaming service could have asked the likes of Brown and Wolfhard — who, don't forget, are younger than A'zion — to return for Tales From 85?
Putting my theory hat on, the decision not to bring them back comes down to two things: one, Netflix would have had to pay way more money to hire Brown than Brooklyn Davey Norstedt, who voices Eleven in Tales From 85, and/or two, maybe the main show's cast couldn't or didn't want to come back.
Will we ever find out the answer? I'd be amazed if we did. Regardless, with Robles already planning for multiple seasons of Tales From 85, we better get used to hearing different people play some of the franchise's most iconic individuals.
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