Millie Bobby Brown's 'Stranger Things' papa is officiating her wedding to Jake Bongiovi
- Matthew Modine said he will officiate Millie Bobby Brown and Jake Bongiovi's wedding.
- The couple announced their engagement in April 2023.
Millie Bobby Brown's upcoming wedding to her fiancé Jake Bongiovi will be officiated not by a religious "father" but by her on-screen one — Matthew Modine, aka "Papa," or Martin Brenner from "Stranger Things."
Modine said during an Access Hollywood interview that he'll facilitate the ceremony between Brown and Bongiovi.
"I have one of those licenses to get people married, and Millie thought it'd be great, and then Jake said it'd be a great idea, so I wrote the wedding vows," Modine said. "And they loved what I wrote for them to join hands and become husband and wife."
This isn't Modine's first rodeo: The actor officiated one other wedding during the pandemic at an outdoor ceremony in upstate New York.
"It's such a beautiful thing to be able to join two people in holy matrimony," he said. "I've been married 44 years. It's amazing when it works."
Brown and Bongiovi were first romantically linked in 2021 and publicized their engagement in April 2023. While Brown has occasionally spoken about the wedding-planning process since then, she told WWD in August that she intended to keep things mostly private.
In "Stranger Things," Modine plays Brenner, the scientist who partially raised Brown's character Eleven in the Hawkins laboratory. While Eleven occasionally refers to him as "Papa," their relationship is fraught — mostly because Brenner keeps trying to experiment on her and develop her into a weapon.
That meant the pair spent many of their most difficult scenes together during filming, telling each other, "I love you," before they had to film sequences where they were at odds. Modine told Vulture that when Brown was younger — she began filming "Stranger Things" at age 11 — he wanted to give her the space to "succeed" in her role.
That desire to support Brown also extended to off-screen life. Modine said on "The Jonathan Ross Show" in 2022 that he felt "protective" of Brown when it came to her exploding fame.
"I just wanted to do everything I could to make sure she was safe and she understood that a career is a roller coaster, that there's ups and downs to it," he said.