Kids of the ’80s know Paul Reiser best from his NBC sitcom. Crazy for Youor his roles in 80s movies like Extraterrestrials and Beverly Hills Police (a role he is reprising in A detective on the loose in Beverly Hills: Axel F. (coming to Netflix this week).
But if you ask anyone born after 1995, they’ll probably say they know Reiser as Dr. Sam Owens, the friendly suit-wearing guy from Hawkins Lab on Netflix’s cultural juggernaut, Strange things.
“It’s a futile task to try to pretend that you’re not what you are,” Reiser told Jugo Mobile in a recent Zoom interview, when asked how he feels about this new generation of fans. That said, he does get a little annoyed tiny A bit when your friends come to your comedy shows and tell you that their 20-something kids ask you, “Wait, the doctor in Strange things Are you going to try to be funny?
Reiser said with a laugh: “It’s like saying, ‘Would you explain to your child that this is what I do?’”
But the 68-year-old comedian is taking this new phase of his career in stride. “It’s been nice,” he said. “I’ve actually seen the audience grow.”
In the most recent Strange things In Season 4, which aired in 2022, Reiser shared most of his screen time with Millie Bobby Brown and Mathew Modine. Together, the three worked to restore Eleven (Brown)’s supernatural abilities, though Dr. Owens took a much more human approach than Modine’s character, Brenner (or “Papa”). Brenner died at the end of Season 4, but Dr. Owens apparently survived and may very well return. Reiser remained tight-lipped when asked if he was filming Season 5, which had been delayed due to the strikes, and is Now back in production.
“I am not at liberty to speak about it, because they would kill me,” he said. “I am not going to shoot today, that is clear. But that remains to be seen.”
Season 5 will be the show’s last. Reiser is happy to have been a part of the series, but he’s not sad to say goodbye. “From the beginning, the brothers said it would be five years,” he said. “So it’s not sad, it makes sense. The artistic vision was: We know what we want to do for five years. And that’s a lot. Especially going into Seasons 2 and 3, which were movies. They were big-budget movies for every episode. Doing 10, 15 of them? That’s 15 movies! It deserves to come full circle and move on.”
She added with a wry smile, “The kids are 42 and 43, so it’s harder to get them to dress up for Halloween at this point. It’s extraordinary. I keep seeing things pop up on Instagram… Millie is married. Caleb [McLaughlin] and Finnish [Wolfhard]They are taking photos of models. Look at these guys! They are men!
All joking aside, Reiser recalls feeling insecure when he joined the cast in season two in 2017. “I was kind of the new kid on the block. Where do you sit at lunch, you know? But the guys were all so sweet and they still are. They’re still nice, young people, even with this ridiculous amount of success and visibility. I tip my hat to them.”