Stranger Things’ young Joyce actress responds to rumours that her character is AI

Stranger Things season five has only just landed on Netflix. Alongside all the Vecna drama, Hawkins chaos and Byers family trauma, one very unexpected question has taken over the internet: Who on earth is playing teenage Joyce Byers?

Credit: Netflix

In episode four, we get a short but pivotal flashback set in 1959, where Joyce, then still known as Joyce Maldonado, is putting on a school production of Oklahoma! at Hawkins High. The scene ties directly into the canon stage play Stranger Things: The First Shadow, which also centers on a young Henry Creel. It’s all very lore-heavy, but people immediately clocked how unbelievably accurate young Joyce looks.

Like… so accurate that people assumed Netflix must have digitally de-aged Winona Ryder herself. Especially since the season kicked off by de-ageing Noah Schnapp for a young Will Byers sequence, it seemed like the logical explanation.

Well, the truth is in, and it’s way less high-tech.

Teenage Joyce is played by actress Birdy, who has now had to personally debunk the rumours that she is an AI-generated Winona clone. Posting a still from the show alongside a behind-the-scenes photo on Instagram, she wrote simply: “Not AI Winona.” Case closed.

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A post shared by birdy (@b.iirdy)

To be fair, Birdy is a pretty uncanny match for the Winona Ryder of the Beetlejuice era (minus the haunted emo energy). She’s also popped up in Chicago Fire and indie shorts Twin Flame and Escort, but Stranger Things is absolutely her biggest role to date. In another BTS post, she said she’s “so incredibly grateful to be a part of season five”.

So, no deepfake magic or Hollywood de-ageing wizardry. Just a real actress who looks so much like Winona Ryder that the internet decided she must be computer-generated.

Featured image credit: Netflix, Instagram/@b.iirdy

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