Dacre Montgomery on being bullied, Duran Duran, mullets and his dark Stranger Things journey

Aussie Stranger Things star Dacre Montgomery says playing a bully in Netflix’s sci-fi hit made him look at his own past as a bullied, overweight schoolkid in a new light.

Rising Australian star Dacre Montgomery has revealed that being bullied as an overweight schoolkid in Perth helped him prepare for his role in one of the world’s hottest TV shows.

Montgomery was introduced into season two of Netflix’s Stranger Things as the thuggish Billy Hargrove and returns front and centre in a major role for the eagerly anticipated new season, which airs on July 4.

And he said playing a bully in the global sci-fi hit made him look at his own experiences being pushed around as a child in a new way.

“What I realised through shooting this was seeing the insecurity of the people who bullied me,” he said in Melbourne yesterday at the beginning of a global promo campaign for the show.

Australian actor Dacre Montgomery as Billy Hargrove in Season 3 of Stranger Things.

“You don’t think of that stuff when you are a kid.

“You’re like ‘this person is the epitome of bad’ but there is always something going on, on the other side of the lens.”

Montgomery also said that he now has to spend five hours in the make-up chair to attach Billy’s epic mullet and other effects to recreate the 1980s setting and fantastical effects.

“The mullet is longer this season,” he said with a laugh. “It feels longer and bigger and wavier — and is very much part of the process.

Australian actor Dacre Montgomery as Billy Hargrove in season three of Stranger Things.

“It’s a long time to get into but it’s definitely part of that world and that character.”

But he said that the look was so convincing — as was his audition tape in which he danced in a G-string to Duran Duran’s Hungry Like the Wolf — that he got a care package from the pop legends.

“Duran Duran sent me a G-string because that’s what I was wearing in my tape and a bunch of their merchandise, T-shirts and whatever,” he said.

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“My stepdad, who is in a covers band that plays some of their songs, just lost it.

“They had written a note and my stepdad has that in his office. That impressed him more than the show or my whole acting career.”

Montgomery, who shares most of his scenes this season with 15-year-old sensation Millie Bobby Brown, warned that he would go to some grim places this season in his villainous role, but there’s light at the end of the tunnel.

“It goes as dark as anyone could possibly have imagined and more and then it brings you back up to the surface and gives you that little twinkle of something that you wanted the whole season,” he said.