Charlie Heaton Says Son Has ‘Just Started Getting into’ ‘Stranger Things’ (Exclusive)

Charlie Heaton‘s son has a new TV obsession.

While speaking with PEOPLE at the Industry season 4 premiere at the Regal Union Square on Thursday, Jan. 8, the Stranger Things actor, 31, shared that his son Archie is “just getting into” his hit Netflix show.

“He has just started getting into it,” the doting dad tells PEOPLE. “He got to come to set last year and that was really cool.”

The actor and his former Comanechi bandmate, Akiko Matsuura, welcomed their son Archie in 2014, per GQ. Heaton and Matsuura eventually went their separate ways.

For many Stranger Things fans, watching the show has meant watching its young cast grow up on-screen. But for Heaton — who has played Jonathan since the series first premiered in 2016 — that evolution has happened off-screen as well, shaped in large part by fatherhood, as he told Wonderland Magazine ahead of the season 5 premiere.

He gave a rare glimpse into being a dad to Archie while speaking with the outlet in November 2025.

“Being a young father, you have to grow up very fast,” he told the outlet. “You have to also learn ethical priorities, too, and you’ve got to look after somebody.”

“That’s a big thing,” Heaton noted. “You want to give them good experiences and a lot of love and the hard part obviously is distance. But that’s part of the sacrifice.”

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For the past 11 years of Archie’s life, Heaton has managed to keep his son out of the spotlight. He hasn’t shared any photos of Archie on his social media or details about his life.

The actor has famously been private about his personal life, including both parenthood and romantic relationships. In fact, Heaton and his current girlfriend, Natalia Dyer, kept their real-life romance a secret for several months.

“We didn’t really know what the relationship was,” Heaton told GQ in February 2020 of keeping their romance private at the time. “The caginess, anyway, might have been unnecessary.”