The energy around Hollywood is palpable. As I drive westward down Sunset Boulevard, I’m confronted by a plethora of billboards announcing Stranger Things’ much-anticipated third season (streaming on Netflix July 4) that rise out of the horizon like permanent fixtures on the landscape. We’re less than a week away until the new season airs, and despite the long day of doing press for the show that she’s just had, Sadie Sink greets me with an air of untainted excitement.

As we settle into the unusually calm lobby cafe of a prominent West Hollywood hotel, I can’t help but allow myself to be mesmerized by her big blue eyes, which, by the way, hardly dim throughout the course of our conversation. Sink gushes as she speaks. While describing the custom green Stranger Things sneakers she wore during our shoot—”those were so sick”—I happened to peer down below the table to find her not in the beat-up sneakers she dons on screen, but instead in a pair of blush-hued Gucci platforms that must have been no less than four inches high. The irony wasn’t lost on me. Although her character Max identifies squarely as a tomboy, Sink is content not to be tied down by any singular aesthetic. “I don’t think I’m defined by one style,” she boasts. “I’m not just edgy and I’m not just into a tomboy look and I’m not just girly. I do what I want, and if I like something, I’ll wear it.”