Over the first 16 years of David Harbour’s acting career, he built a successful resume of Broadway theater (in productions like “The Invention of Love,” “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf” and “The Coast of Utopia”) and supporting roles in TV (“Pan Am,” “The Newsroom”) and film (“Quantum of Solace,” “State of Play,” “The Equalizer”).
“I really enjoyed being No. 7 on a call sheet of, like, a Denzel Washington action movie, and also being leads in plays at the Public Theater in New York,” he says. “It was a lovely life, a fantastic life, a one-bedroom-rental-in-the-East-Village life.”
Then, at 41, Harbour was cast in “Stranger Things” as Hawkins, Indiana, police chief Jim Hopper — the only adult male lead (opposite Winona Ryder’s Joyce Byers) on a show populated almost entirely with young people. His life has never been the same. The show became an immediate global blockbuster on Netflix, catapulting Harbour to top-of-the-call-sheet status in a matter of weeks. Over its five-season run of the Netflix blockbuster series, Harbour has also headlined a reboot of “Hellboy” in 2019, played a kick-ass Santa in 2022’s “Violent Night,” and joined the Marvel Cinematic Universe as the Red Guardian in 2021’s “Black Widow,” 2025’s “Thunderbolts*” and 2026’s “Avengers: Doomsday.”
Since finishing production on the final season of “Stranger Things” in 2024, Harbour has already shot a new limited series for HBO, the dark comedy “DTF St. Louis” with Jason Bateman and Linda Cardellini, and a sequel to “Violent Night,” both expected in 2026. In late September, he spoke with Variety while in production on the latter, to discuss the end of “Stranger Things” and the creators of the show, Matt and Ross Duffer, for the magazine’s Oct. 15 cover story. (The interview predates the report that co-star Millie Bobby Brown filed a harassment complaint against Harbour prior to shooting Season 5, as well as the announcement and then release of his ex-wife Lily Allen’s new album, “West End Girl.”)
Harbour shared the impact “Stranger Things” has had on his life; how the show’s massive success has changed it, for better and for worse; and how his character has evolved over its five seasons.
Ross Duffer and David Harbour on the set of “Stranger Things 5,” with Matt Duffer, Millie Bobby Brown and Winona Ryder in the background
Atsushi Nishijima/Netflix
You’ve said before that, going into Season 1, you saw Hopper as a make-or-break role for you. Did you understand then that the show had the potential to become what it is now?
No. You would know better than I in terms of the business models of how something like Netflix operates. But when we started the show, it was the fall of 2015, and the model for Netflix original series was like “House of Cards” and “Orange is the New Black.” I figured it would be kind of a sci-fi show, which some people would really enjoy, others, you know, it wouldn’t be their thing. But the universal appeal on the sort of zeitgeist that it has become, I never imagined.
What has “Stranger Things” done for your career and for your life?
A lot of people know me now, and it gave me a fan base of a certain type. So, career wise, it just opened a tremendous amount of doors. I mean, I’m interested now in what happens after “Stranger Things,” in terms of walking through those doors. I have this new HBO show coming out in January, me and Jason Bateman, and all this other stuff in the pipe now, so that’s more where my focus is on right now.
Whereas, had you asked me that question seven years ago? It just ripped apart the whole conception of what I would be. I got to a certain point in my life when I was 35 — I really enjoyed being number seven on a call sheet of, like, a Denzel Washington action movie, and also being leads in plays at the Public Theater in New York. It was a lovely life, a fantastic life, a one-bedroom-rental-in-the-East-Village life, and “Stranger Things” changed that entire life in many ways. The one thing that it hasn’t changed is my intent, and I think my intent has always been to tell beautiful, weird stories that open people up. That’s been the same pre-“Stranger Things” and after “Stranger Things,” but everything else has changed.
Why do you think the show has endured for so long as a massive hit? What do you think is at the core of its appeal?
You probably know that better than I do. What would you say it is?
I’ve been asking that question of a lot of people, and one thing that people have really pointed to is that, because of the breadth of the ensemble, there’s a character that basically everyone can identify with — and it’s a story about people who are outsiders fighting back.
Well, the outsiders fighting back has shifted over the years. I did find that as seasons go on, it’s more interested in empathy. Vecna has become very important, like the monster himself is becoming more human, and we’re supposed to understand and have feelings for the monster. Whereas in Season 1, it was really scrappy outsiders who were taking down a corporation, right? It has been an interesting transition in terms of what they’re focused on, how you elaborate that story.
I think, at its best, it really hits all the beats of character and story moving forward at the same pace, which is a difficult thing for a script to do. Usually, scripts focus on character or they focus on plot. “Stranger Things” will do both of them simultaneously in a very sophisticated way. The other thing is, we love “Star Wars,” right? We love “Lord of the Rings.” I think what “Stranger Things” is trying to do is, instead of rebooting “Star Wars” or “Lord of the Rings,” they’re taking the archetypes or the tropes — or the words and the letters, let’s say, and creating new sentences out of them. Hopper is Han Solo, is Indiana Jones, is Gandalf the Gray. There are these archetype tropes that just live in our subconscious cinematic lexicon and we love them. “Stranger Things” just reinvents them with Eleven, Hopper, Max. It’s not afraid to play those really strong power chords.
What is the experience like of being directed by the Duffer brothers when the show started?
When we started, I think they were much greener, and the show also had much less at stake. We were the forgotten show that first season. I don’t even know how much money they spent on the show, but it was not a lot, and we didn’t have any executives down there. Nobody was looking at what we’re doing. I think that they looked to me and Winona in a lot of ways to help them more with the bigger dialogue heavy scenes. I mean, not that they didn’t have brilliant stuff every day, but I remember it being a little more freewheeling.
How has that evolved over the last decade?
As their aesthetic got more what they wanted it to be, they started getting a lot more specific about camera moves and shots and structure and cuts and things like that. As the show grew in popularity, and as the money grew and the stakes grew, I think we got more precise. They’ve always been very generous with me. They’ve always really appreciated me as performer, really appreciated what I brought to the character, and wanted me to sort of guide him. Over the years before each season, we would talk about the kind of direction that we wanted Hopper to go to.
You know, the problem with TV is that you’re always Gilligan on the island in the red shirt and the bucket hat for 10 seasons. I get bored and I wanted Hopper to be different. I wanted to show different colors of him: the Season 1 guy to the Season 2 very protective, overbearing father, to the Season 3 “Magnum PI” ’80s detective, to the Season 4 gaunt, brutal, resurrected warrior, to this Season 5 — I don’t know what he is this season. But we were very collaborative on where we could take him. They’re super bright guys, and they really know how to tell a story.
Finally, as one of the only adults with a lot of experience on the show, I wanted to ask what it’s been like to be on the inside of it becoming such a phenomenon?
It’s going to be hard for me to really speak openly about any of this, because of what people do nowadays when you try to discuss something that I feel is very three dimensional and very complex.
You gain something and you lose something. You know, Hopper doesn’t smoke in the show anymore. That is a direct result of popularity. Because your audience does get so large, you are trying to continue to appeal to the largeness of that audience, and large audiences require soft edges. Which is an interesting conundrum that you deal with in pop music and pop culture and all sorts of popular entertainment. So, for me, the freedoms of that first season, when we were just carving it out and no one expected anything, as opposed to the pressures that we were under on the fifth season, you know, I would prefer the freedoms of that first season. And yet, I love the attention, and I love capturing the widest audience possible, and I love moving the most people with what you’re doing.
This is just something that entertainment struggles with. I guess the long and the short of it is just that you gain something — obviously, clearly — and you also remember and miss those days when we were all naive and had all the freedom in the world because no one expected anything of us.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
