Stranger Things ups the '80s factor even further with a Busey, The Princess Bride's Cary Elwes

Now that [REDACTED] is out of the picture, Stranger Things is replenishing its stunt-casting coffers with two new Hawkins residents, as Variety reports. First, there’s British actor Cary Elwes, a.k.a. the dashing Westley from ‘80s slumber-party classic The Princess Bride. Elwes has been cast as the mayor of Hawkins, Mayor Kline, described in promotional materials for the show as “handsome, slick, and sleazy … Your classic ’80s politician, more concerned with his own image than with the people of the small town he governs.” Perhaps a rec center that needs to be shut down?

Also joining the cast is Jake Busey, who’s really more of a ‘90s guy, to be fair. But he’s also the offspring of ‘80s action madman Gary Busey, which is close enough. Busey will play Bruce, a reporter for The Hawkins Post who is just now catching on to the fact that weird shit is going down in his town and is described as having “questionable morals and a sick sense of humor.”

The casting was announced at Netflix’s “See What’s Next” event, held yesterday in Rome. There, chief content officer Ted Sarandos bragged that Stranger Things got “20 times more tweets than all of the films released at the U.S. box office the week it was released” before awkwardly pivoting to the streaming service’s new European originals, including a show based on the German hit The Wave, a British series on the invention of modern football (the non-American kind) from Downton Abbey’s Julian Fellowes, and Netflix’s first original series from the Netherlands.