Stranger Things star Gaten Matarazzo says that working on Paramount+’s Honor Society was a far cry from his years playing Dustin Henderson on the Netflix show. Honor Society follows Honor Rose, a high school student hellbent on getting into Harvard no matter the cost. When her plan to get a recommendation letter from her guidance counselor proves to be harder than she thought, Honor’s mission to eliminate the competition eventually finds her falling for Michael Dipnicky (Matarazzo), one of the other students being considered for a letter.

Before Stranger Things, Matarazzo began his acting career on the Broadway stage in Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. He went on to join the cast of the Les Misérables 25th Anniversary Tour as Gavroche before landing his first role on the small screen in a single episode of NBC’s The Blacklist in 2015. The following year, Matarazzo exploded into the public eye as Dustin in Stranger Things when the series premiered to critical acclaim and instantly became a worldwide phenomenon. While Stranger Things season 4 has since become the second most-watched series ever on Netflix, Honor Society marks Matarazzo's first live-action feature film.

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In an exclusive interview with Screen Rant, Matarazzo opens up about the unique challenges that came with playing Michael in Honor Society. While Stranger Things allows him to flex his comedy chops for a show that’s consistently dark and serious, working on Honor Society was quite the opposite. Read Matarazzo’s full comparison of Dustin and Michael below: 

Exclusive: “What's interesting is that Dustin is a much more comedically-driven character in a project that's not really driven by its comedy. And I think Michael [in Honor Society] is a character that's not necessarily driven so much by his knack for comedic timing in a movie that is driven through comedy ... That was a really different vibe, trying to match those tones up. Because you're trying to dial something back when the surrounding people around you are bringing the comedy forward. I'm used to doing [the opposite] on Stranger Things, so that was really interesting. But it was a lot of fun.”

Gaten Matarazzo in Honor Society

Matarazzo takes Dustin in entertaining new directions with each season of Stranger Things, and there are multiple instances in which he can have viewers both laughing and crying in the span of a few minutes. However, as the actor himself explains, Honor Society has pushed Matarazzo to develop a different kind of comedic approach. For an actor with so few credits to his name at the time of his major breakthrough, Matarazzo more than holds his own each time he takes the screen. From the actor's comments, it seems that perhaps his positive experience with Honor Society may encourage him to take on more varied projects and stretch his talent in new, exciting directions.

Matarazzo would hardly be the first Stranger Things vet to use the show as a launchpad. Millie Bobby Brown expanded into the Godzilla franchise, starred alongside Henry Cavill in Enola Holmes, and has multiple projects slated for release in the near future. Finn Wolfhard managed to capitalize on the show’s success even further, landing leading roles in IT, IT Chapter Two, Ghostbusters: Afterlife, and the recently-announced Hell of a Summer, which will also act as the 19-year-old’s directorial debut. If Honor Society is any indicator that audiences will start to see Matarazzo more often, they’re sure to be in for a treat.

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