Netflix(LOS ANGELES) — In a tweet on Wednesday, Netflix claimed that 64 million households viewed the third season of Stranger Things in its first four weeks on the streaming service, its best numbers to date.

Unlike Nielsen viewer numbers, Netflix’s audience measurements and their methods aren’t available for independent verification, but that being said, the show is unquestionably a phenomenon — one that took co-star Matthew Modine by surprise, he tells ABC Audio.

The actor played Dr. Brenner, otherwise known as Papa, who performed horrific experiments on Millie Bobby Brown’s “11” — and who apparently met his end at the claws of another horrible creation.

“I was in Italy and and that’s where I started to experience with people, you know, Italians yelling at me, ‘Papa!’ And I thought, ‘How did they know my son and my daughter call me Papa?’ Because we were there when that when the first season one broke. And it was — I’d never experienced anything like that, and I mean, I’ve got a career that spans almost 40 years.” 

Stranger Things, which is set in the 80s, follows a group of kids — played by Finn Wolfhard, Gaten Matarazzo, Caleb McLaughlin and  Brown — who encounter supernatural events in their seemingly ordinary town of Hawkins, Indiana.

Modine says of the young cast, “I only I can compare it to…The Beatles or something, you know, that wherever they go, there are screaming rabid fans…that come to see them.” 

Netflix has announced that the hit series has been renewed for a fourth season.

Modine will be seen next in the based-on-real-life drama Miss Virginia, starring Orange Is the New Black Emmy-winner Uzo Aduba, coming to theaters and streaming Friday.

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