F  L  A  U  N  T

In role play game Dungeons & Dragons, there is only a 5% chance of rolling a natural twenty. On the rare chance that that twenty-sided icosahedron lands on said natural twenty, you complete whatever task you were attempting with utter skill. Complete success. Not a misstep in sight. Looking at Sadie Sink’s life from a bird’s eye view, you would think her die landed on that lucky two-zero. At just 19-years-old, she has all eyes on her. Millions of people around the globe watched her and her castmates fight off demogorans and mind flayers (cue the D&D reference) on Netflix’s wildly popular Stranger Things. Others watched her pour her heart and soul into Broadway performances. But Sadie Sink’s success can’t merely be summarized with metaphors as simple as rolling dice and getting lucky—there’s a lot more to it. 

“I’ve pictured myself acting my entire life,” she says from her New Jersey home, happy to be back for a little while after a long shooting schedule in Atlanta. Less than a year is left before her teenage years are over and she enters her twenties. She’s poised. She seems to have an old, kind soul yet plays a rebellious 14-year-old on-screen. It’s quite the juxtaposition, but one that showcases her abilities as a performer. She’s an actor, a good one, and what she pictured for herself continues to manifest. 

Sink remembers being eight-years-old and tagging alongside her brother to his audition for The Secret Garden, pleading with her mother to let her audition even though she wasn’t old enough. “I was in the car ride with my brother and my mom on the way to the audition,” she recounts, “and I was begging my mom, ‘Please let me audition. I want to do it.’ She’s like, ‘Sadie, you’re too young. You can’t. You don’t even have a monologue or song to do. You can’t audition.’” 

Never ever tell an ambitious eight-year-old that they can’t do something—it only makes them want to do it more. Except in this story, the eight-year-old isn’t being told they can’t have a cookie that they will later mischievously snatch from the jar when no one is watching—breaking the age rules for an audition seems a bit of a trickier task. “I pulled up a monologue from the back of my head from The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, or some play like that,” she continues, and describes how her mother petitioned the casting team with this information, and they agreed to let her give it a shot. “Then I did. Then I ended up getting in. That was kind of like my first real role in a show.”

It’s always said, ‘‘if you want something, go get it.’’ What do most seven-year-olds from Texas want? I couldn’t tell you. Maybe a Happy Meal? What I can tell you is what seven-year-old Sink wanted. She wanted to be on Broadway. To be under the harsh stage light in New York City, acting in front of live audiences. Giving a performance that can’t be experienced any other way. “I had felt like I made it,” she tells me, as she talks about being asked to be a swing in Annie while tagging along with her brother for a show he was doing at the time. “It was my first Broadway show. It was like a dream come true. At the time it was all I really wanted.” 

Oftentimes, when we’re young, we look to our peers for what to do next. We look towards our elders for what we should ‘‘want.’’ But none of Sink’s predecessors were actors, so where did her desire to be on stage originate? How did Broadway become what she would always want? Well, where else is there to turn for guidance on future goals and aspirations than the internet. “Nobody in my family was a performer,” she beams, “but then me and my brother—when we were around seven or eight—just kind of had this crazy obsession with musical theatre. We would spend all day in the backroom on the computer watching Broadway bootlegs on YouTube.”

There’s a sense of freedom in being young that you don’t realize until years down the road. No fear of what others think of you. You’re not yet plagued by inevitable social pressures. You are undeniably the truest version of yourself. These might have been the ingredients for Sink’s cementing herself in the public eye. “I always look back on the years where I was going to auditions all the time and performing in front of so many people,” she says, “and I’m kind of amazed with how, when you’re younger, you don’t really get as nervous as you would now. You’re less self-conscious. When you’re a kid, you don’t really care. It’s just what you have to do. Now the idea of getting on a stage and performing live in front of so many people is very, very scary to me, but I would love to one day go back.”

So what would that version of Sadie Sink who never got nervous and performed in musicals think of Stranger Things Sadie Sink? What would she think of where she is now? How would she feel knowing she would act with Helen Mirren in The Audience on Broadway in 2015, or alongside Brie Larson and Woody Harrelson in the 2017 film, The Glass Castle? “I don’t think I ever imagined that it would get to this level this fast,” she considers. “I think my younger self would be very proud that I stuck with it. I think I should be very, very proud.” 

She has every right to be proud. Case in point: in 2017, she went from binging on Stranger Things to starring in it. “I had watched season one in two or three days or something crazy like that,” she recalls. “Then about a week after I finished the show, the audition came in. I just remember thinking: ‘This is my role. This is what I’m meant to do. I have to go after this.’” After a couple of callbacks and sessions with the casting director, Sink did a screen test with stars of the show and fellow Broadway kids, Gaten Matarazzo and Caleb Mclaughlin. We don’t need to spend much time considering how the screen test went. Before she knew it, she was joining this ensemble of teens who were becoming household names. 

“It is crazy,” she remarks on the groundbreaking popularity of the show. “As we were filming season two, I was watching all of the kids just blow up even more. I remember they won the SAG Award while we were in production for season two. The entire cast going away for the weekend to go to the SAG Awards, and then watching them win, it was just kind of a surreal moment for me to think, ‘Wow, that’s what I’m doing right now. I am a part of that.’” With the fourth season of Stranger Things soon to drop, we can only expect more nominations and wins for Sink and the rest of the cast. “Some of my favorite memories are from this season,” she says, careful not to spill too much on the highly anticipated next installment. 

Stranger Things isn’t the only project coming up that Sink is staying hushed about. Recently, she wrapped production on a film that’s sure to show us how multifaceted she is. “It’s one of the first times I really got to work on a character and develop a character in ways that you don’t always have time for with other projects. So I’m very appreciative of that.” Atop this secretive project, Sink is popping up on the homepage of Netflix once again with the new scream-inducing film trilogy, Fear Street, which borrows from the famous RL Stine young adult novels. For Sink, the upcoming premiere means in-person screenings and Prada fittings, and for her fans, it of course means more hours of someone they’re growing up with. 

It wasn’t a lucky roll of the dice that got Sadie Sink to where she is now, and luck isn’t what will keep her career flourishing for years to come. It’s her dedication to the art that will continue to set her apart from others as she breaks away from adolescence—and that she’s charming and compassionate can’t hurt either. 

Photographer: Scrill Davis
Stylist: Darryl Glover at The Wall Group
Hair: Dyana
Makeup: Kayleen McAdams at A-frame Agency
Styling Assistant: Christina Roberts
Market Editor: Valerie Butler
Videographer: Joey Hagerman
Written by: Audra McClain