Winona Ryder unaware of Netflix in 'Stranger Things' first meeting

Winona Ryder questioned, "What is Netflix?" in her initial conversation regarding her appearance in Stranger Things.

Executive producer and series director Shawn Levy discussed Ryder's meeting regarding the project on the Happy Sad Confused podcast. He recalled how Ryder had asked her managers to clarify exactly what Netflix was.

“She opened by asking, ‘What is Netflix? What is streaming? Is it like TV but different?’” Levy explained. “That was the starting point…Winona took a little onboarding to explain this emerging form of storytelling called Netflix and streaming.”

Ryder was subsequently cast as Joyce Byers in the series, and he is scheduled to return in the upcoming year to film the fifth and final season.

Levy continued, saying that season five will be "epic in its cinematic scope," in another part of the interview.

He continued: “But it’s very much ‘Stranger Things’. I have to credit the Duffer Brothers. You read the outlines sometimes and it’s massive, but then you read the scripts and you remember again and again that their instinct for anchoring the epic in the intimate, and for anchoring the darkness of genre in the warmth of these characters, it’s so innate to them. Season five gets bigger in scale but doesn’t forget who or what it is.”

The show will end after the fifth season.