Fresh from Stranger Things and Hamnet, the pair are surprised to find themselves playing Shakespeare’s star-crossed lovers in the West End. They talk chemistry, dating apps – and what they’ve taught director Robert Icke
Sink – who is 23 and better known as Max Mayfield in Stranger Things, a role that has brought her global fame – begins to say she never saw herself doing Shakespeare. Then she stops and clarifies: never, certainly, as early as this. But her first meeting with Icke convinced her: “I just had this gut feeling. ‘I do this, and I do it right now.’” Icke remembers the conversation. “I said, ‘Look, one of the things that you could do now that will escape you in five years is Juliet. It’s an amazing part, and so few people get to play it, because you have to play it young for it to make any sense.’” As for Icke’s motivation: well, he and the play have unfinished business.
After meeting Sink and Jupe – whose films include A Quiet Place and Honey Boy – he sensed this was that time. Their five weeks of rehearsal have been, in their own words, an education. “It’s been cool thinking back to the chemistry read that we did. We’ve obviously grown so much since then,” says Sink. Playing Romeo in the West End will be Jupe’s stage debut and he is boyishly enthusiastic about it. “In films we never get to speak that much,” he admits. “This is marrying your voice and the words to your heart and that’s something I’ve not really had experience of. But when you get it, when the two connect, it feels as if you’re flying.”