Finn Wolfhard loved working with Willem Dafoe on their new movie, The Legend of Ochi — but he initially couldn’t separate the actor from one of his most iconic roles.
“For the first few days, it was hard not to see Norman Osborn,” Wolfhard, 22, tells PEOPLE in an exclusive interview, referring to Dafoe’s portrayal of the fan-favorite Spider-Man villain.
Dafoe, 69, portrayed Osborne, the founder and CEO of Oscorp Technologies and the father of Harry Osborn, who also becomes the Green Goblin, in 2002’s Spider-Man, opposite Tobey Maguire as the titular superhero.
He reprised the role years later for 2021’s Spider-Man: No Way Home, which saw Maguire, 49, also reprise his Spider-Man/Peter Parker role, opposite Tom Holland doing the same — as well as Andrew Garfield.
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Wolfhard and Dafoe now star in The Legend of Ochi — an A24 film that follows a young girl (Helena Zengel) who goes on an adventure to return a young forest creature, which she had been taught to fear, to its family.
Continuing to reflect on his time working with Dafoe, Wolfhard says there was “definitely” one thing that stood out about the actor — “his voice.”
“Whenever I would hear his voice, I’d be like, ‘Oh, my God! He’s real,’ ” he explains with a laugh. “He’s in every movie of all time, and his voice is so iconic, and his acting is so legendary.”
The Stranger Things star adds that working with the Oscar nominee “never really wore off, honestly.”
Wolfhard tells PEOPLE he was also able to get some sage career advice from the accomplished actor.
“I had a lot of great conversations with him, and I asked him about what it was like as a theater actor in New York in the ’70s and ’80s. It was really cool to pick his brain about that stuff,” he says.
Wolfhard — whose directional debut, Hell of a Summer, is also currently in theaters — continues, “I really got to watch him, and through watching him, I feel like I learned a lot about acting and the craft of acting. … He’s just always been someone who I think just is in it for the art of it.”
The Legend of Ochi is in theaters now.
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