ICYMI, New York Comic-Con was held over the weekend, and as the huge event tends to do, it brought a long list of big-name celebs with it.
Over four days, audiences were treated to interviews with the likes of John Krasinski (who was chatting Jack Ryan), Ryan Reynolds (there to discuss Free Guy) and even your old pal, Sean Astin of Stranger Things.
Now, I know this might come as a shock to a lot of people, but Astin was not actually attending Comic-Con to discuss Bob Newby and the Upside-Down.
In fact, Sean Astin was not at the event for Stranger Things at all. The actor who brought Joyce’s sweet, dear boyfie to life in season two of the Netflix hit was in New York for a Lord Of The Rings reunion panel.
I know! Astin? A part of another pop culture zeitgeist? Yes, friends. It’s true. The 48-year-old actor played a character known as Samwise Gamgee in The Lord of The Rings trilogy and appeared at the Con alongside Billy Boyd who played Pippin in the series of films.
Credit: New Line Cinema
Okay, I’ll drop the sarcasm now.
The pair sat with SYFY for a reunion interview about the iconic movies in which they discussed nearly freezing their toes off while wearing hobbit feet, and the po-tay-toes remix that took over the Internet a few years back. Astin even performed a little rendition.
Haven’t heard the ‘Boil ‘Em’ tune? Have a listen below. Just be prepared to have it stuck in your head for the next 64 years.
Anyway.
In the last few minutes of the ‘Hobbits Reunited!’ interview, Astin recounted a story from his time on (you guessed it) Stranger Things.
“So, one of my favourite moments in Stranger Things that I got to do… Bob is, you know, brought by the kids in the middle of the night to this dead pumpkin patch and gets a shovel with Joyce and goes down into this pit -this hole. And now, all of a sudden, he’s in the map that the little boy drew.
“Bob doesn’t question it. Bob just rolls with it, man. And we get over there and the Sheriff… is being smothered by these living snake vines. So, we cut him out. We cut the vines – the snakey things or whatever. And he [the Sheriff] stands up. And as he stands up, as he’s dusting himself off – and Joyce is very upset – he says: ‘Hey Bob’. And I say, ‘Hey Jim’.
“…I thought that was really funny.”
I mean, how could the discussion *not* move this way, right?
Boyd also took his chance to take a swing at Stranger Things chat during the interview. Just as the discussion was wrapping up, he turned to Astin and said:
“You know the worst thing in Stranger Things?”
“When Bob could’ve run away from that monster and he just stopped. Why didn’t he just keep running?”
The question was followed by like 20 seconds of awkward silence.
Astin then replied:
“Alright. ‘Bob stops running, period’. Turn the page. It doesn’t go well. ‘Joyce enters. Sees Bob. Stops cold’. It’s not going well… ‘Demagorgan demadogs crash through the door’. At this point I just put the script down.”
Rough though it may be… you’ve got to admit: Boyd did have a point.
Credit: New Line Cinema