It’s a rainy summer afternoon and Joseph Quinn is giving me a tour of the plants on his balcony. “I’ve been away for a month, so they’re all very cross with me,” the 30-year-old says, looking concerned. “I need to give them my love.” Sadly, something tells me the actor, who broke out as Stranger Things’s long-haired, guitar-shredding Eddie Munson—a role which caught the eye of superstar rapper Doja Cat, whom he is now reportedly dating—won’t have much time to devote to gardening in the coming months. Fresh from fleeing blood-thirsty aliens in A Quiet Place: Day One, he’s about to transform into the Human Torch for Marvel’s The Fantastic Four alongside Pedro Pascal and Vanessa Kirby. “The group chat is popping off,” he says, grinning. “I think it’s gonna be a giggle.”
But before that blockbuster hits screens, there’s the small matter of Gladiator II this autumn, in which Quinn takes the part of the cruel Emperor Geta as Denzel Washington and Paul Mescal—and Pedro Pascal, again—fight for power, in and out of the arena. “It’s fucking nuts,” the Londoner admits of stepping onto Ridley Scott’s re-creation of ancient Rome in Malta. “I was very aware of the fact that films like this just don’t get made anymore. Pedro is hilarious—he kept morale up—and Paul set the precedent by working incredibly hard. It was thrilling trying to keep up with all of them.”
Quinn grew up on sets, jumping between “both sides of Clapham Common,” south London, with his mother (who worked in TV production) and cinematographer stepdad living to the south of the park, and his director father on the northern end. After graduating from the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, he spent the first stage of his career “wearing a lot of ruffs and waistcoats” in a string of period dramas before Stranger Things turned his life upside-down. A Dior fragrance campaign swiftly followed, as well as a flurry of front row and red carpet appearances, for which he loves “Gucci, Valentino, Loewe, Acne Studios, and Our Legacy.”
It’s also given him space to “be a little more selective.” Up next, he’ll appear in the Iraq-set Warfare with Will Poulter, Charles Melton, Cosmo Jarvis, and Kit Connor, and then there’s Bret Easton Ellis’s “very Easton Ellis-y” directorial debut, the horror movie Relapse. Beyond that, Quinn says he wants to “tell stories that are confrontational, challenge people, and don’t patronize the audience. That’s where film is at its most powerful.”
