When we first met Joe Keery’s character in Stranger Things season one, Steve Harrington was Nancy Wheeler’s boyfriend — a popular kid in school with perfectly strewn windblown hair. Season two, however, introduces fan to a new and improved character. “He’s growing up and becoming a little less absorbed,” the actor said in an interview with Vulture. “He’s learning that in order to do what’s best for the ones you really love, you have to put yourself in the backseat. And that’s an important lesson for any age.”
In addition to being more mature, it turns out Season Two Steve has longer, even more luscious hair (if that was even possible) and…extremely tight jeans? And though the actor maintains he isn’t doing anything special to his locks, he does confirm what viewers at home are wondering: Are his jeans tighter this season or what?
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“Yes. I will say, yes,” Keery tells Vulture when asked if running around in extremely fitted denim ever gets uncomfortable. “It felt like Bruce Springsteen jeans or something like that. I don’t know if you could tell, but the entire railroad track scene, I’m bunching at the crotch extremely. They’re like Dennis Quaid in Breaking Away sort of jeans. But you know, I think it’s the style for the time period. It was pretty funny. They weren’t super uncomfortable. It definitely could have been worse. I could have been wearing something horrible.”
The 25-year-old isn’t complaining, though: He likes the way Steve dresses, and that might just be because it's a bit like how Keery actually styles himself: “For the most part, the costume that I wore this year I was super into, especially for all of the action stuff. It actually wasn’t as tight as they looked. And I wear pretty tight jeans in real life."
But as anyone with a penchant for vintage Levis 501 knows, they just don’t make jeans like they used too. “But the fact that they’re Wranglers, like actually really tight, it’s not that elastic sort of jean you have nowadays. It’s like you’re in a glove.”