Geena Davis Says TV Show ‘The Boroughs' Is Redefining Retirement

The Duffer Brothers gave voice to a group of young outcasts with Stranger Things, and now they have set their sights on a group of retirees in their new Netflix series The Boroughs. (Do not worry, monsters still lurk in the shadows. It is the Duffer Brothers, after all.)

I recently spoke with Geena Davis, who stars as Renee Joyce in the show alongside Alfred Molina, Alfre Woodard, Bill Pullman and others, and she had a lot to say about what the show is actually about underneath all the genre chaos. For Davis, the appeal was never really the monsters. It was the woman she got to play. "Renee feels free to be herself, and she is herself," Davis told me on The Parting Shot podcast. "For me, the journey to becoming my real self has taken a long time, and Renee has found that."

When you think about it, a sci-fi story set in a retirement community is actually kind of genius from a demographic perspective. By 2030, the last of the baby boomers will hit 65, with Gen Xers quickly following them into retirement, many into communities like the one depicted in The Boroughs. (Maybe with fewer monsters.) That is an enormous portion of the population redefining what it means to be a senior citizen, and that redefinition extends to the places they are moving into. The casual association between a retirement home and a nursing home is fading fast. These communities now market themselves to active seniors, people who are not slowing down so much as shifting gears.

Davis understands that distinction better than most, and she pushes back on the idea that aging changes who you fundamentally are. "You get to a certain age, and you don't feel different," she told me. "It's not like you're actually different. It's still you."

Renee embodies that completely: Getting older has not changed what she wants or how she goes after it, and the show makes no apologies for that. Davis doesn't either. "This show has the steamiest scenes I've ever done," she said, laughing. "I'm 70, so, you know, it was about time." (It was here that I had to remind her about her iconic sex scene with Brad Pitt in Thelma & Louise, to which replied, "Hang on. That scene! How could I forget?")

That is the quiet thesis underneath all the Duffer Brothers' signature genre mayhem. The monsters are fun, and there are plenty of them, but what The Boroughs is really asking is a simpler and more interesting question: What happens when a generation that refused to be defined by anyone else's expectations finally has the time to prove it?

Davis is as good an argument as any for what this generation looks like at its best, and a reminder to everyone coming up behind her that aging does not have to mean retreating. She spent her 40s taking up archery and nearly qualified for the Olympics, and turned a frustrating career lull into a landmark study on gender representation in Hollywood-and received an honorary Oscar for the effort. Renee may be fictional, but the template is real. The Boroughs is making the case that retirement is not a closing chapter. Davis has been making that case her whole life.

H. Alan Scott is a Newsweek senior editor and host of The Parting Shot podcast. Follow them everywhere @HAlanScott

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This story was originally published June 17, 2026 at 5:00 AM.