'Stranger Things' cast reflect on all things '80s, talk potential Season 2

BEVERLY HILLS, California -- Playing a kid in the '80s may be fun, but there's certainly a learning curve when it comes to prepping for the part.

Just ask the young cast members on Stranger Things, Netflix's new, buzzy sci-fi series set in the 1980s.

"I had no idea what a record player was," Millie Brown, the 12-year-old actress who plays Eleven said during the streaming service's Television Critics Association panel Wednesday afternoon.

That was just one of the many adorable quips from the trio of young actors -- Brown, Caleb McLaughlin (Lucas) and Gaten Matarazzo (Dustin) -- during the TCA presentation.

The show, created by brothers Matt and Ross Duffer, takes place in a small town of Indiana in 1983, just after a 12-year-old boy named Will goes missing. His friends, as well as his mom Joyce (played by Winona Ryder), spend much of the eight-episode series trying to find him. In the process, they encounter top-secret government experiments, terrifying supernatural forces and one very strange little girl.

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

Matarazzo and McLaughlin chimed in to share their favorite parts about traveling back in time for the roles.

All three said they appreciated the ability to live like a kid before the Internet existed.

That way of life was familiar for the Duff brothers, who grew up playing fantasy games like Dungeons & Dragons in their hometown of Durham, North Carolina.

When a journalist prefaced a question with "kids these days grow up so fast," Ross Duffer quickly said: "I know, I hate it."

"We were kind of the last generation to grow up pre-Internet," Duffer later added, noting that the lack of Internet helped fuel the brothers creativity and passion for filmmaking.

The simple things kids do in the show -- from playing games in the basement to riding their bikes around town -- led to many nostalgic reactions to the series.

All of the cast members said they have loved seeing viewers responses to the show. There has been a ton of chatter on the Internet, ranging from a hashtag dedicated to the character Barb as well as odes to the show's music.

Certain songs and the way the show is shot "must trigger emotions and memories in people," Ryder told Mashable in an interview following the panel.

As for a second season? Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos told reporters "we want it [the show] to breath a little bit."

But the Duffer brothers have plans mapped out already.

"We want it to feel like a big movie," Ross Duffer said. "But then there's a bigger mythology behind what happened. There's a lot of dangling threads at the end. It's open ended in a way that we could explore it if Netflix wanted to continue.”