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Stranger Things’ Caleb McLaughlin and Sadie Sink Take A Friendship Test | Glamour

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Two Broadway kids who found each other again in Hawkins, Indiana put their friendship on the record for Glamour.

Caleb McLaughlin and Sadie Sink sat down with Glamour on July 9, 2019, days after Netflix dropped Stranger Things Season 3 on July 4, to run through a rapid-fire friendship test. The two actors, who play Lucas Sinclair and Max Mayfield on the show, traded compliments, mirrored each other’s movements in sync challenges, and fielded trivia about each other’s habits and quirks. Along the way, they revisited a backstory that predates Hawkins entirely — one rooted in New York’s Broadway scene.

• McLaughlin and Sink first met years before Stranger Things, when McLaughlin was starring as Young Simba in The Lion King on Broadway and Sink was appearing in the 2012 revival of Annie.
• The pair reunited on set once cast in Stranger Things Season 2, turning a childhood theater-world connection into a working partnership in Hawkins.
• The Glamour segment tests their real-life bond through compliment rounds, physical sync challenges, and personal trivia about each other’s on-set habits.

A Friendship That Predates Hawkins

Long before Lucas and Max were riding BMX bikes through Hawkins, McLaughlin and Sink were working the same New York theater circuit as kids. McLaughlin had top billing as Young Simba in The Lion King, one of Broadway’s longest-running productions, while Sink was part of the 2012 revival cast of Annie. That overlap in the Broadway kid-actor pipeline meant the two had crossed paths well before either one auditioned for a Netflix show about a town overrun by monsters from the Upside Down.

It’s the kind of pre-fame connection that tends to surprise fans who only know two actors from their scenes together on a hit show — a dynamic other unlikely pairs of celebrities have shared long before their names were linked publicly. For McLaughlin and Sink, getting cast together in Season 2 wasn’t the start of a friendship — it was a reunion.

Inside the Friendship Test

The Glamour format put the co-stars through a series of games designed to measure exactly how well they actually know each other, beyond the script. That included a round where they had to deliver genuine compliments back and forth, and a mirroring exercise where each had to copy the other’s physical movements in sync — a test of instinct and timing built on years of working scenes together.

The video also worked in trivia about personal habits and on-set quirks, the small stuff that only comes from spending real time together between takes. It’s the kind of behind-the-scenes detail that separates a genuine friendship from a press-tour performance, and it’s a big part of why the segment resonated with fans already invested in the Lucas-and-Max dynamic on screen.

They met on Broadway years before Hawkins — McLaughlin as Young Simba in The Lion King, Sink in the 2012 revival of Annie — and didn’t reconnect until Stranger Things Season 2 put them in the same cast.

Timing Around Season 3

Glamour published the video on July 9, 2019, just five days after Season 3 hit Netflix on July 4 — timing squarely aimed at fans still working through the new season and hungry for more of the cast’s off-screen chemistry. It’s a familiar promotional beat for the show’s stars, whose real friendships have become as much a part of the Stranger Things conversation as any plotline, a pattern that plays out differently than the pairs featured in stories about co-stars whose bonds didn’t survive the spotlight.

McLaughlin called Sink his best friend during the test, and nothing in the segment suggested that was for the cameras — the two have been showing up for each other at premieres and on social media since Season 2 wrapped. With Season 3 already streaming and Hawkins’ fate left wide open at the finale, expect more joint press stops from these two before the promotional cycle winds down.