Netflix(LOS ANGELES) — Natalia Dyer plays Finn Wolfhard’s on-screen big sister Nancy on Stranger Things, but that doesn’t stop her from acting as the protective older sister for the series’ younger stars once the cameras stop rolling.

In a new interview with The Independent, Dyer, 25, opened up about why she feels a need to protect her teenage costars.

When the first season dropped on Netflix in 2016, most of the younger cast were entering their early teen or preteen years and, at the time, were relatively unknown actors.

“No one had any idea how successful the show would be,” noted Dyer, in reference to how Stranger Things exploded into popularity and catapulted the entire cast into a new tier of stardom. 

“There was no preparation — there couldn’t have been, even if we’d known,” Dyer said of how everyone’s lives changed basically overnight. “It was a surprising and overwhelming shock.”

However, once the cast settled to their new norm, Dyer said she noticed one thing that really had her worried — how the show’s fanbase and the media was treating her younger costars as adults.

“I generally feel like, to me, it’s oversexualizing them,” The Yes, God, Yes actress pointed out. “I feel protective over the younger kids even though they’re not kids anymore, they’re teens.”

She says the kids were sexualized very early on, such as Millie Bobby Brown (Eleven) being highlighted by W magazine for making TV “sexier than ever” when she was just 13 or when Wolfhard (Mike) went public about the explicit messages older fans were sending him when he was 14-years-old.

“I just feel like, leave people alone – unless you’re talking about their work or what they want to talk about,” Dyer declared. “Just let people be the people that they are, without any judgement.”

By Megan Stone
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