Stranger Things’: Winona Ryder Cried Almost ‘Every Day’ While on Set Simone TornMORE ARTICLES

Winona Ryder recalls her emotionally taxing experience while working on season 1 of Stranger Things. This is primarily due to the fact that she plays a grieving mother who is trying to find her missing son. Despite everyone claiming her child is dead, Joyce Byers refuses to believe this, and holds on to the supernatural possibility that he’s still alive.
After communicating with her youngest boy via a bundle of Christmas lights, she embarks upon a journey to find him. Yet playing the frenetic role of Joyce Byers caused the star to cry “almost every day” while on set.
Winona Ryder can relate to her on-screen son
Ryder can relate to her fictitious son, Will, due to her own experiences in school. On Stranger Things, Will is the target of bullying because he’s considered “different.” Ryder herself has frequently discussed how rough her schooling days were due to her own set of tormentors.
Because she was different from everybody else at school, people would call her derogatory names, throw food at her, shove her against the lockers, and at one point, even beat her up. It got so bad that she had to get stitches.
This was all because she embraced her eccentric persona, and the straight-laced people at school couldn’t accept it. And after starring in Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice, she assumed her school peers would finally see her as “cool” because it was such a popular movie.
But unfortunately, being cast as the death-obsessed Lydia only had the opposite effect. Instead, she got bullied even more. “They called me a witch,” she admits.