Amybeth McNulty

The Casting Call for Eighteen Hundred

Amybeth McNulty was born in 2001 in Donegal, Ireland. She never attended a traditional school because her parents chose homeschooling. That freedom allowed her to spend her mornings reading and her afternoons at her community's local theater.

In 2016, she was chosen from among eighteen hundred candidates to star in Anne with an E. The producers weren't looking for a pretty face from an advertising catalog. They needed someone capable of delivering dense monologues at dizzying speed, with a gaze bordering on hyperactivity.

And the gamble paid off.

The series was filmed between 2017 and 2019 on location in Ontario and Prince Edward Island. McNulty played a late 19th-century orphan with an energy that clashed with the austere setting. But the success did not prevent CBC and Netflix from canceling the project after three seasons.

Breaking the Period Drama Mold

The series' abrupt ending in 2019 left the actress in professional limbo. She had millions of social media followers, but she risked being typecast in old-fashioned period drama. So she decided to look for projects with a radically different tone.

In 2021, she appeared in All My Puny Sorrows, a film based on Miriam Toews' novel that deals with themes such as assisted suicide. She played Nora. It was a supporting role, but enough to prove her range could thrive beyond the flower fields of Canada.

But the big strategic move came with a call from the Duffer Brothers.

In 2022, she joined the cast of the fourth season of Stranger Things to play Vickie. Her appearance was brief. But her character turned out to be crucial to Robin Buckley's storyline and secured her return for the finale of the platform's most-watched series.

Numbers and Upcoming Shoots

The British industry began to see her as a safe bet for mid-budget productions. In 2023 she shot The Last Rifleman alongside Pierce Brosnan. In the film, she plays a young woman who helps a war veteran on his journey to France.

It hasn't been a simple climb.

McNulty has turned down several generic horror scripts to avoid being stuck with the image of the young actress who only screams on camera. She prefers shoots where silence says more than explanatory dialogue. She makes her decisions from her home in London, far from the constant noise of California's studios.

Filming for the fifth and final season of Stranger Things officially began in January 2024, after delays caused by the Hollywood strikes. The actress's contract for these final episodes includes a base salary of $250,000 per episode.