Stranger Things' Matthew Modine on making sure Millie Bobby Brown wasn't 'destroyed' like other child stars

As Stranger Things' sinister Papa, Matthew Modine's character might not have been protecting Eleven in the right way - but in real life, the actor says he felt a huge responsibility to keep his young co-star Millie Bobby Brown safe.

Modine starred as the lab overseer and keeper of Eleven in the Netflix series, where in the most recent season he was shot while pursuing her in the desert as she tried to escape his experiments.

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He appears on The Jonathan Ross Show on Saturday, where he shares the protective instinct he felt for all of the young cast, including Brown who was just 11 when she first appeared in the starring role for the Netflix series.

Modine, 63, says of what he felt about working with Brown, now 18, when she was so young: "Wanting to be protective of her. How the business changed, when you saw me in Birdy (his first starring role in 1984) to today… if a movie was successful in 20 or 30 countries around the world, that would be an enormous success.

"Netflix is in over 190 territories around the world. So what Millie was subject to… global. What she was exposed to - and what all the children on this show were exposed to - was a kind of fame and popularity and notoriety that ever existed in the entertainment industry."

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Modine adds that he wanted to make sure that the young cast, which involves a large group of schoolchildren who have grown up on screen including Noah Schnapp, Finn Wolfhard, Caleb McLaughlin and Gaten Matarazzo, did not find their fame destructive.

He says: "Over the course of my career, the young actors and actresses whose lives were destroyed by that kind of fame and money and everything. It can be very destructive and disorienting.

"I just wanted to do everything I could to make sure she was safe and she understood that a career is a rollercoaster, that there’s ups and downs to it."

Also appearing on this weekend's show are Craig David, Oti Mabuse, Katherine Ryan, Josh Jones and Wet Leg.

The Jonathan Ross Show airs on Saturday at 10.10pm on ITV.

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