Linda Hamilton Nearly Retired Until STRANGER THINGS Pulled Her Back In
After decades of kicking ass on screen, Linda Hamilton was ready to hang it up. The legendary Terminator star, whose career spans everything from Beauty and the Beast to Resident Alien, was seriously considering stepping away from acting, until Stranger Things came knocking.
During a red-carpet interview with Variety ahead of the Stranger Things Season 5 premiere, Hamilton revealed that retirement was actually on her mind before Netflix’s hit series came her way.
“I had started to talk to my agent actually right before this about retirement,” Hamilton recalled. “I was having a terrible hip issue for a few years and I was like, ‘I can’t guarantee that I’m going to be at my best, and if I can’t do that, then I don’t want to be in front of [the] camera.’”
It’s hard to imagine pop culture without Hamilton’s badass screen presence, but fate had other plans. Just a few months after that conversation with her agent, she got the kind of call that changes everything.
“They called [my agent] about Stranger Things and said, ‘Is Linda available?’ And he went, ‘Yes.’ He didn’t even check with me; he just went, ‘Yes.’
“Then there was the Zoom meeting with the Duffer brothers, who could not have been kinder … [they said], ‘We want you,’ and that was exciting.”
That excitement was enough to pull Hamilton back into the game, and honestly, who could blame her? The Duffers have crafted one of the most beloved genre shows of the past decade, and now they’ve added one of sci-fi’s most iconic figures to their final season.
Hamilton joins Stranger Things as Dr. Kay, a brilliant but ruthless government agent on the hunt for Eleven and her friends. We don’t know much about how her character fits into the larger story of the Upside Down, but if Hamilton’s history tells us anything, Dr. Kay isn’t someone you want to cross.
The highly anticipated fifth and final season of Stranger Things debuts in three waves: the first batch of episodes arrives November 26, followed by more on December 25 and December 31.
Looks like Hamilton’s “I’ll be back” moment came courtesy of Hawkins, Indiana.