Natalia Dyer Finds Her Own Way

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Natalia Dyer is in a car on the way to the airport on the way to Italy for a not-quite-work, not-quite-pleasure trip that will take her away from the excitement and rush of the Stranger Things 3 press circuit. Presumably this phone call is the last of it, but with a show this beloved and picked-apart, who knows how far away any cast member can really get? “I love the show,” she says. “We all really like each other and we all genuinely want to be working with each other.” Still, even though Stranger Things has been a foundational experience for Dyer, “there are so many different projects out there in the world, so many different opportunities.”

On the Netflix hit, Dyer plays Nancy Wheeler, a core member of the young cast that uncovers and fights back the unknown in the fictional town of Hawkins, Indiana. For the past three years, the show has been a home and a kind of finishing school for her and the ensemble, launching them all into new opportunities outside of the show. Millie Bobby Brown has collaborated with the Moncler Genius Project and was named the youngest-ever UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador, while Finn Wolfhard is the new face of Saint Laurent and fronts a rock band called Calpurnia. “My first instinct is that I’m just really proud of [the younger cast members],” Dyer says. “I think it’s maybe that sense of family. You want them to be successful and do great things. They’re an awesome cast and they deserve it, but they’re growing up and it’s a little scary. They’re growing up so fast.”

For Dyer, who has collected credits in this year’s Sundance hit Velvet Buzzsaw opposite Jake Gyllenhaal and the upcoming Seventies drama Tuscaloosa, acting has always been the focus. “I think I stumbled into an acting class in a summer camp situation,” she recalls. “I have a very supportive mom and she urged me to audition for a local theater. I was excited but at that time, at eight years old, it was never a ‘career decision.’ I just loved it. I loved the people and the rehearsals and I loved the energy of being on stage. It was like another world.”

Now, at twenty-four years old, Dyer is an upperclassman both on and off set. The same curiosity which drove her to the stage—and later to enroll at the Nashville School of the Arts and NYU’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study—fuels her curiosity in growing as a person and a performer. “I can see myself going in many different directions,” she says, “telling a bunch of different stories and working with different people.” Theater still has a seductive draw for her, but at this point, it’s about finding the right thing, not just anything.

As semi-charmed as Dyer’s path seems—plum roles at the center of successful shows are not exactly easy to come by—her pluck and optimism only were hard-learned after a string of rejections. “There’s so much mystery [to it],” she says of the struggle with which every actor is familiar. “You have to look at yourself and say, ‘What am I doing wrong?’ It can be constructive and a fine thing to help yourself grow, but it can be a minefield for an actor. You have to really want that occasional, beautiful yes in all the nos.”

That beautiful yes came in the form of Nancy on Stranger Things. Over three seasons, she has grown from an untested mean girl to an ensemble leader and show star. For Dyer, there was an immediate connection. “When I first read [the script], she struck me as an awkward but normal girl,” she recalls. “In season one, I was really drawn to her. I thought, ‘I know this girl, she has a lot of purpose but she doesn’t know herself yet.’” Two seasons later, she’s grown into something quite different from how she started out. “I think that’s about being able to be with a character for so long and see so many years of their life,” Dyer says. “You get to explore them and there’s an aspect of being able to explore yourself as well.”

What grounds Nancy, however, is the nuanced tension between the natural insecurity of any teenager finding her place in the world and the character’s ice-in-veins self-belief when it comes to standing her ground. “She cares so much about what other people think,” Dyer says. “She couldn’t find herself because she was trying too hard.” Her transformation to creature-slaying team-leader has been universally cheered thanks to the honesty and authenticity Dyer brings to the character, despite the heightened reality of the show. “She’s growing up and she’s growing into herself,” the actor says. “I love reading the scripts. She’s a badass, essentially.”

Dyer’s flight to Italy is a bit of a break but also sounds like a chance to reconnect with her passions and pick what’s next. (She is signed for Stranger Things 4 and plans to stick around for a while, though you never know. “It’s not impossible, you know? It’s no Game of Thrones, but when you’re dealing with sci-fi, people die,” she says. “If I do [die], I hope I have a really gratifying death.”)

The show’s popularity thrust Dyer and the cast into the spotlight, including the added pressure of interacting with a social world that demands their time and their privacy. “All of us younger members were launched into this sense of being known and it’s not jarring, but it’s unexpected,” Dyer says. “Nowadays there’s an expectation to be involved in the branding and social media world and I’m a pretty quiet person who doesn’t always feel the need to share everything with everybody all the time.”

Part of that includes her real-life relationship with on-screen love interest Charlie Heaton (he plays Jonathan, the introverted older brother of Will, who vanishes in the first episode) and her exact plans for what’s next. Thanks to mentorship from veterans like Winona Ryder (Joyce, the eccentric but devoted mother to Jonathan and Will) and David Harbour (brusque police chief Jim Hopper) and a fair amount of trial and error, Dyer is finding a balance that is actually that: balanced. “I think you have to be aware of yourself and your needs and your personal life and check in with yourself,” she elaborates. “It can be beautiful and with any art form, there’s no black and white, there’s just so much gray.”

The gray space, the place of nuance and tension, is often where the most interesting work is produced. Where other performers might grab at anything bolted down, Dyer is steady in the storm, both calm and curious in the face of her enormous opportunity. “I feel like I haven’t quite found that one thing yet,” she says, “but that’s part of being an actor, the unknown. It’s hard to see what’s coming next and plan, but that’s ok. I feel like I’m right where I want to be, in a way.”

Stranger Things 3 is now streaming on Netflix. See this full story and many more in print by ordering your copy of the Fall 2019 issue here.