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Jamie Campbell Bower turned Stranger Things: The First Shadow upside down on Friday, Dec. 19, with a surprise walk-on appearance no one saw coming.
The actor made a surprise cameo during the final moments of the play, reprising his role as Henry Creel — the character he introduced on the Netflix series.
PEOPLE was watching from the crowd for the surprise, which had Stranger Things fans at New York City’s Marquis Theatre applauding with glee. After approximately a minute and a half of cheers, he continued the scene. He was greeted with a standing ovation at curtain call.
“To have him tonight, to share this moment with you now and all of us on stage… it is such an honor,” Tony Award nominee Louis McCartney, who originated the role of Henry onstage in London and New York, said after the show. “Thank you so much for coming, man. You’re such an inspiration.”
“Henry Creel is the dynamite of The First Shadow. Without you, nothing is possible. This is not possible without you. Your love, your talent, your devotion — everything you put into this, all these years.”
Set in the 1950s, the stage show charts Henry’s troubled teenage years long before his transformation into the ’80s-set series’ ultimate villain, Vecna. Events explored in the play have direct ties to TV hit, which wraps up its fifth and final season on New Year’s Eve.
This is the first time an actor from Stranger Things has reprised their role in The First Shadow, which features younger version of Jim Hopper, Joyce Maldonado and Bob Newby, too (the roles played on screen by David Harbour, Winona Ryder and Sean Astin). It’s also the first time Bower, 37, has ever appeared on Broadway.
Before taking the stage, the English star opened up to PEOPLE about how his Broadway debut came to be.
PEOPLE also has exclusive photos of his rehearsal experience, captured by Evan Zimmerman.
The idea to do the play, Bower says, was first floated months earlier at the Stranger Things season 5 premiere in Los Angeles — and it caught him completely off guard.
“One of my colleagues came up to me and was like, ‘Oh, by the way, Louis is here,’ ” Bower recalls, referring to McCartney. “And I was like, ‘Oh, great. I haven’t seen him for ages! I love him. I can’t wait to see him.’ ”
That’s when the conversation took an unexpected turn. “She was like, ‘But before he says anything, let me just tell you they’d love you to do a walk-on in New York when you are there in December,’ ” he continues.
Bower didn’t hesitate. “Sure, why not? That sounds fun!”
Evan Zimmerman
Looking back, the actor suspects the idea had been percolating long before that night, noting that behind-the-scenes conversations were likely already underway. After all, he had previously been invited by the play’s Tony Award-winning co-director, Stephen Daldry, to step onstage while attending a performance of Stranger Things: The First Shadow in London.
“During the interval, I was having a moment outside with Sonia Friedman,” Bower recalls of the producer, whom he worked with on his West End debut in the musical adaptation of Bend It Like Beckham. “I had done a show with Sonia and we have a lot of love for each other. We were just catching up, and Stephen was like, ‘Oh, Jamie, why don’t you come on stage and take a bow with everyone in London at the end of the show?’ ”
At the time, Bower declined. “‘No, I can’t. I’ve done nothing,’ ” he remembers saying.
Still, he can’t help but wonder if that moment helped set the stage for what would later happen in New York. “Stephen could have been like, ‘He did fine then so let’s just bring him back again.’ But having worked with Sonia as well, I think that probably plays a part in it too.”
Evan Zimmerman
Bower first appeared as Henry Creel in Stranger Things season 4, which aired in 2022. The following year, The First Shadow premiered on London’s West End, with a book by series executive producer Kate Trefry and story by series creators Matt and Ross Duffer, playwright Jack Thorne and Trefry.
Watching the stage production and sharing the role with McCartney ultimately gave Bower new insight into the character’s emotional foundation, he tells PEOPLE.
“I had questions that I asked myself in isolation,” he says of his early days playing Henry onscreen. Rather than bringing those questions to the Duffer brothers, Bower worked through them privately. “That was just what you do when you are building a project. You want to fully understand who it is that you’re playing.”
Manuel Harlan
First Shadow, Trefry previously told PEOPLE, serves as “an origin story of Henry Creel.” The writer explained that the stage production sees Henry as “a sweet boy who’s in over his head,” and eventually becomes “someone who’s powerless and wants power.”
In the television series, Henry is known for becoming Hawkins Laboratory’s first child test subject, 001, after having used his powers to torture his family.
Seeing that journey dramatized live was unexpectedly affirming for Bower. He says he’s grateful that his own theories were made canon. “To have my questions answered in front of me without really verbalizing them was quite a shock in a good way,” Bower shares.
Evan Zimmerman
He’s also quick to praise McCartney, who earned one of the production’s six Tony nominations, for his portrayal of Henry.
“I studied him when I saw it,” Bower says. “I’ve seen it twice now and I feel like that final scene is the perfect lead-in to the season 4 entry for Henry Creel. Everything about his demeanor and his gait, and the way he holds himself in that particular scene, is so similar to how I did it [on screen].”
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With Stranger Things season 5 now underway — the first installment premiered Nov. 26, with two more episodes arriving Dec. 25 and Dec. 31 — Bower remains tight-lipped about what’s ahead. Still, he acknowledges the play’s significance to it.
“I did so much building surrounding Henry’s relationship with his parents and how that would’ve made him feel,” Bower says. “There’s a brief moment in the play where we see Virginia strike Henry across the face, and his father’s relationship to alcohol as well, which plays into an interesting relationship dynamic between him and Holly for season 5 given, call it a coincidence, Karen’s penchant for the consummation of liquor. I found that really interesting when we were coming to season 5 and figuring out ‘Why Holly?’ and ‘Why Holly first?’ ”
But that’s as far as Bower will take it, for now.
“There were other things that I’ll be able to shed more light on later on down the line, after Christmas,” he teases. “There were definitely moments, particularly in volume two and the last episode, that I felt like I could try new things based on what I’d seen [in the play]. But I can’t share too much about those.”
Tickets to Stranger Things: The First Shadow, co-directed by Justin Martin, are now on sale.
