By Carolyn Brown
For the Valley Advocate

Decades ago, Will Matthews was a kid at Amherst Regional High School who listened to Frank Sinatra, played the trombone and loved making his classmates laugh.

Now, he’s celebrating the release of his new Netflix show.

Alongside co-creator Jeffrey Addiss, the Amherst native serves as the co-showrunner for science-fiction series, “The Boroughs,” which premiered its eight-episode debut season on Netflix on Thursday, May 21. The show is produced by the Duffer Brothers, who are best known as the creators of science-fiction horror global hit, “Stranger Things.”

“I really loved growing up in Amherst, and I would still live there if they made more TV shows there,” Matthews said. “And I’m very proud of my hometown.”

“The Boroughs” stars Alfred Molina, Alfre Woodard, Geena Davis, Denis O’Hare, Clarke Peters and Bill Pullman. The show’s premise centers on a grieving newcomer to a retirement village who survives a monstrous encounter. To uncover the community’s dark secrets, he joins forces with a misfit crew of senior citizens who prove to be far tougher and more dangerous than they appear.

“Older people are fun, and it makes for great casting because they’re these huge talents who aren’t being used enough, and it’s fun to give them the ball and let them run with it,” Matthews said. “From a larger societal point of view, older people are often discounted, overlooked, undervalued, pushed to the side, and that’s a real loss for everybody involved.”

While “The Boroughs” and “Stranger Things” exist in entirely separate universes, Matthews anticipates that audiences will likely draw similarities between the two “spiritually, tonally, vibe-ly,” he said. Both series do have a similar theme, though: “unlikely heroes being overlooked by their society.”

“A big problem in monster movies, haunted house movies, is always, ‘We’ll just go tell the cops.’ And when your protagonists are 14, no one listens to kids. And we thought, ‘You know, no one listens to 70-year-olds’ — and, as it turns out, there are a lot of similarities about, ‘What am I going to do with the time I have left?’ ‘Who am I going to be when I grow up?’ ‘How can I possibly fight this monster? I’m just a person,’” Matthews said.

The plot of “The Boroughs,” he added, is “a different coming-of-age story. It’s still coming-of-age. It’s just a different age.”

Matthews and Addiss have built an impressive resume of high-profile prequels. They previously served as creators and showrunners for the Netflix series “The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance,” a prequel to the 1982 Jim Henson film. They also wrote the animated movie “The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim,” which expands upon Peter Jackson’s cinematic adaptations of the J.R.R. Tolkien fantasy epic.

It was the “Dark Crystal” series that caught the attention of the Duffer Brothers. In 2023, the superstar duo reached out to Matthews and Addiss, inviting them to connect and pitch new concepts.

“They said, ‘Well, whatever your next show is, we want to do it. And we thought, ‘Oh my God, that’s amazing — I guess we better think of a next show!’” Matthews laughed.

“We said, ‘We absolutely have an idea. Just give me a minute to clean it up,’” he continued. “And so we turned to each other and we said, ‘Alright, this is our big shot. With the Duffers behind you, you can actually get a show made — an original show. So let’s think of the craziest, most specific thing that we could only get done with them behind us.’”

They had the idea to combine two of their interests: namely, “Jeff loves monsters, and I love old people,” Matthews said. “We thought this was the most art-y, niche thing in the world that you could only get done with the Duffers, and then when we pitched it to Netflix, they were like, ‘Oh, thank God, it’s so commercial!’ And they bought it in the room.”

Matthews’ longtime friend Julie McNiven, a fellow Amherst native and Hollywood veteran with recurring roles on shows like “Mad Men” and “Supernatural,” knows firsthand how difficult it is to launch and original series.

“I think people outside of Hollywood don’t truly understand the absolute freaking miracle it is to get someone interested in your show, and then to get it greenlit, and then to get funding, and then to get producers onboard, and then to have a network not turn it down and the studio not turn it down, and then to actually go to pre-production,” she said. “There are so many shows that don’t make it up to the final shooting … [but making all of the above happen] feels like a miracle, because it kind of is a miracle.”

Still, McNiven said, she knew Matthews would achieve this level of professional success one day — a certainty shared by many of his oldest friends and family members.

Sarah Harrington, who met Matthews in seventh grade, said in an email that she “always knew Will was talented” and that he was “by far the funniest kid in class.” Heather Lattuca Ferrari, who has known Matthews since middle school, said in an email that he “was (and still is!) hilarious! Everyone knew he had a bright future ahead and a creative path.”

Colleen Kepner’s friendship with Matthews began at lunchtime in kindergarten, leading to years of performing in choral concerts and musicals and bonding over a shared love of the iconic science-fiction series, “The X Files.” For one specific class project, they wrote a show where Matthews played the Devil and sang “Friend Like Me” from Disney’s animated musical fantasy film, “Aladdin” — a performance Kepner recalled he “knocked out of the park, of course!”

“I never doubted that Will would be successful and have a long career in the arts,” she said. “I didn’t know what it would look like or just how big he would get, but there was never any question about him doing something different.”

Family members recall Matthews as a talented, driven youth. While still in high school, he spent summers at a music camp in Maine, took Advanced Placement classes and played trombone at Amherst College. He even placed second in a stand-up comedy contest at The Comedy Store in Los Angeles, securing his spot using an audition tape recorded in his family’s garage. Though early financial struggles forced him to work odd jobs, he never lost sight of his creative ambitions.

When asked for advice on achieving career success, Matthews replied, “You have to be genuine to yourself and to other people about what you really want to do, and then you have to find a way to do it at whatever level you can do it.”

“Putting up a play at a black box theater, doing standup at a club that no one goes to — those things can be demoralizing, and they can also be a lot of fun and very creative,” he continued. “I would encourage people to resist the myth of the suffering artist. I would say that it is possible to want more than what you currently have while enjoying what you currently have. Joy will not slow you down.”