What's next for Sadie Sink? Stranger Things star talks the new phase of her career, mystery Marve...

The breakthrough performer and newly minted Tony nominee is building the next phase of her career. What's next for Sadie Sink? Stranger Things star talks the new phase of her career, mystery Marvel role included The breakthrough performer and newly minted Tony nominee is building the next phase of her career. By Nick Romano :maxbytes(150000):stripicc()/NicholasRomanoauthorphotoadc9b60763e34711935cbf7b3d768d24.jpg) Nick Romano is a senior editor at with 15 years of journalism experience covering entertainment. His work previously appeared in Vanity Fair, Vulture, IGN, and more.

The breakthrough performer and newly minted Tony nominee is building the next phase of her career.

What's next for Sadie Sink? Stranger Things star talks the new phase of her career, mystery Marvel role included

The breakthrough performer and newly minted Tony nominee is building the next phase of her career.

By Nick Romano

Nick Romano is a senior editor at ** with 15 years of journalism experience covering entertainment. His work previously appeared in *Vanity Fair*, Vulture, IGN, and more.

EW's editorial guidelines

November 24, 2025 3:10 p.m. ET

Sadie Sink charts the next phase of her career after 'Stranger Things'. Credit:

Hubert Vestil/SXSW Conference & Festivals via Getty

- After the career-launching *Stranger Things*, Sadie Sink talks about what's next as a newly minted Tony nominee and Marvel movie star.

- Sink says the Jean Grey casting rumors predate her talks with Marvel, hoping to soon put the theories to rest around her role.

- On ending *Stranger Things*: "I don't know if I was devastated on the final day of filming, but now I feel like there's more that's coming."

For Sadie Sink, *Stranger Things 5* press is both the most difficult task and the absolute easiest. The reason for both is that she can't talk about her character.

Max Mayfield, the breakthrough red-headed fan-favorite of the Hawkins crowd, was left unresponsive in a coma at the end of season 4. Any potential teases, other than the obvious — which is that the series creators, Matt and Ross Duffer, do indeed have a plan for her — could risk tipping off the overly speculative fanbase to season 5 (premiering Volume 1 on Nov. 26).

So Sink errs on the side of caution. "For the most part, I think people trust me to keep my mouth shut," she tells **. "Press is pretty boring if you can't talk about the episodes — for me, at least. She's in a coma. That's all I can say."

The actress, 23, did in fact sit down with EW to talk all about what happened to Max, but more on that at the appropriate time. For now, we discuss everything else, which is considerable.

Scheduling this interview alone was a weeks-long process due to the nature of her current schedule. But on a Wednesday evening in late October, she's on a rare break in London. Sitting on a wine-colored couch in a simple grey tank top, she's in the U.K. to film a mystery role in Marvel movie *Spider-Man: Brand New Day*. Since this interview, there have been a few more developments.

Sadie Sink as Max and Caleb McLaughlin as Lucas on 'Stranger Things 5'.

Courtesy of Netflix

Sink joined Lorde on stage when the Kiwi songstress invited her to dance together to "Green Light" during a recent O2 Arena show in London. Much like what Kate Bush's "Running Up That Hill" was to *Stranger Things 4*, the Lorde song played a key moment in *John Proctor Is the Villain*, the *Crucible*-inspired Broadway play that earned Sink, a longtime theater kid at heart, her first ever Tony nomination. She's also now returning to live theater, this time in London's West End, to play Shakespeare's tragic lovesick Juliet opposite Noah Jupe as Romeo.

*Stranger Things* was her breakthrough moment as an actress, but with the show coming to an end, she's actively shaping this next phase of her career. "The end of the series, yeah, it's bittersweet," she admits, "but I'm just excited to see what comes next and grow more and fail and succeed. But yeah, it's sad to say goodbye, for sure."

'Stranger Things 5' cast won't screen series finale: 'They're not gonna show any of us'

'Stranger Things 5' cast on filming biggest season yet for a year straight: 'It's a marathon'

The Texan native became a worldwide sensation when her performance as the skateboarding, Kate Bush-loving tough girl from California popped for audiences on Netflix's global streaming hit. Season 4, with her now-famous "Running Up That Hill" moment, was really when Sink felt the conversation around her shifting.

She doesn't always have social media on her phone, but she remembers seeing a stray article here and there about her Emmys chances that particular awards season. She would often hear that Bush song playing in Ubers at a time when she was also getting attention for starring in Taylor Swift's "All Too Well" short film.

"I really always felt like the new kid," she reflects. "Doing press for season 2, people knew who the boys were, but nobody knew who I was yet. That was kind of nice, to be sheltered by that for a little bit. It also carried on into the later seasons where I still very much felt like, 'I don't know if people like my character, if I'm a welcomed addition to the show.' Now it's season 5 and it's all I've known, so I don't really feel like the new kid anymore."

Sadie Sink's 'Running Up That Hill' moment in 'Stranger Things' season 4.

Saying goodbye to the show is proving to be a different experience for Sink than some of her cast mates. She acknowledges how the series, which she joined at the age of 14, catapulted everyone in the cast into the public limelight. Most have since gone off to film other projects, giving them a taste of what their post-*Stranger Things* work lives could look like. Yet, Sink is someone who started acting at the age of 7, first through community theater before finding herself on the Broadway stage at 10 in the title part of an *Annie* revival.

Before *Stranger Things*, she popped up on film and TV as the young daughter of a Baltimore arms dealer for *The Americans*, a teen bully for *Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt*, and Liev Schreiber's onscreen daughter for *Chuck*. Then once *Stranger Things* began, she made three *Fear Street* horror movies for Netflix, followed by a string of other small-budget films (*The Glass Castle*, *Eli*, *Dear Zoe*, *The Whale*, *O'Dessa*).

"As far as working, that's just always been a part of my life," Sink explains. "I'm grateful that I still love it. It also scares me sometimes a little bit where I'm like, 'Why am I not tired of this?' But I guess that's a good sign that there still feels like there's so much that I can explore."

Sink never received any kind of "classical" training. Her career continues to double as her acting school. She learns on the go. "There's never been a time where I've stopped or gone to study or even considered doing anything else," she continues. "It's always been like, I know this is what I wanna do. So experiences like *John Proctor Is the Villain* and what I hope to chase after in the future are really important because it feels like an education."

Even now she considers *John Proctor* a "big swing." There was a 10-year gap between when she took the stage as a child actor and when she joined the ensemble of this modern-day play about a group of high school girls in rural Georgia grappling with their own Me Too movement. "I didn't know how I was gonna respond to it as an adult," she says of theater. "It's basically like doing it for the first time."

Sadie Sink as Shelby in Broadway's 'John Proctor Is the Villain'.

Julieta Cervantes

Looking back on that experience feels like a blur to her now. All the performances, she describes, blend together in her mind. But having performed the drama multiple times a week for a three-month run, from April to July, "I do feel a little bit invincible," Sink says. "At least during it, I was like, 'I can do anything, if I'm doing this right now.'"

That feeling serves her well now on a Marvel movie set. Sink joins a cast that features Tom Holland as Peter Parker, Zendaya as MJ, Jon Bernthal as the Frank Castle, and more in *Spider-Man: Brand New Day*, the latest entry in the MCU and the continuation of Spidey's story after 2021's *Spider-Man: No Way Home*.

There's a lot of noise surrounding Sink's character. Marvel has not officially confirmed who she's playing and is going to great lengths to hide her. The paparazzi lurking around set have snapped photos of the actress in a head-to-toe puffer jacket that covers her costume from prying eyes. The MCU, Sink says, is way more secretive than *Stranger Things*.

"Tom can wave at the fans because people know who he is, but then you get a glimpse of me and I'm like a penguin," Sink says, laughing at the image. "That'll be the situation for a bit, it seems."

Conversations began with Marvel while she was filming season 5 of *Stranger Things*, so "not as far back as you would think," she says. The biggest theory out there from the comic book-loving crowds is that Sink will play the new Jean Grey, the telekinetic and telepathic member of the X-Men, after Famke Janssen and Sophie Turner. "That was happening before I even knew that I would be working on this project," Sink clarifies of that specific speculation. "I was like, 'Wait! What are people talking about?'"

Tom Holland smiles for the cameras while filming 'Spider-Man: Brand New Day'.

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There now seems to be a new rumor every week. Among the power rankings of all the fan theories, Punisher sidekick Rachel Cole-Alves is high up there. However, all the guesses involve characters with red hair. "A lot of people forget that hair color can change, but, yeah, I understand all of the theories," Sink comments.

Thanks to *Stranger Things*, she's used to a passionate fanbase. For her own sanity, though, she has since stopped paying attention to all of the online chatter around the role, given how quickly the rumor mill churns out a new theory. And just like when it comes to Max Mayfield, the star has experience playing coy.

"People will just have to wait and see," Sink says. "I'm excited for all of it to maybe be put to rest."

*Romeo & Juliet* doesn't quite have the same level of fan fervor as *Spider-Man*, but Sink is just as excited for the other irons in the fire, including ones that have not been announced yet. When asked about what those other gigs potentially might entail, she answers, "That could mean so many things."

Sadie Sink at the 'Stranger Things' season 3 premiere in 2019 with her costars. Jean Baptiste Lacroix/WireImage

From a practical standpoint, Sink will miss the stability of *Stranger Things*. Actors are, after all, freelancers. There'd be a break in between seasons of the Duffers' show to squeeze in other projects like *The Whale* or *O'Dessa*, but the cast would always have the paycheck guarantee of making more episodes. Now that the scenario has changed, Sink hopes to use this down time (relatively speaking) to really mull what she wants to do.

Having a balance between screen and stage is top of mind for her, but she also acknowledges the connection to music many of her roles seem to have. (*Stranger Things* and Kate Bush, *John Proctor* and Lorde, the Taylor Swift short film, her singing-centric role in O'Dessa, etc.) "I get a lot of inspiration from music for characters. It's kind of like an access point," she says. "As a musical person, it's nice to mesh those two."

For as much as she's looking to the future, Sink is still leaving some mental real estate open, just in case she needs to more deeply acknowledge the passing of *Stranger Things*. She's been getting a lot of those kinds of reflective questions these days while doing press for season 5.

"Honestly, I don't know if I was devastated on the final day of filming, but now I feel like there's more that's coming," Sink explains. "We're approaching the press period and the other huge part of the show, which is the fact that we have to share it with a lot of people. So closing out that chapter, I think, is gonna bring on some more emotions that maybe I'm not expecting."**

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Source: Sci-Fi

Published: November 26, 2025 at 05:38AM on Source: MARIO MAG

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