Between his roles in Black Widow and Stranger Things, David Harbour is having a real dad moment, but the actor says portraying a father on-screen influences his fatherhood off-screen — and what fans can expect to see in the fourth season of his Netflix series.
The actor, who portrays Jim Hopper, Stranger Things’ gruff but endearing Hawkins sheriff and Eleven’s adoptive father, was the latest guest on the That Scene With Dan Patrick podcast. During the 30-minute conversation, Harbour teased his character’s fourth-season journey while expressing that he “struggles” a little bit with being typecast as a father.
“One of the interesting things about Hopper this season — although you do see a lot of that fatherly stuff is — I did want to take him back into the warrior realm because there’s something as you get to be the dad role where, you know, it’s a bit like the dad gene,” the actor said. “You start to become less of a viable presence in the world. They’re more like, ‘Oh, dad’ — like someone who people are humiliated by, and like, I’m not quite ready for that. I still want to be, like, a presence.”
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The actor also reflected on his character’s season three arc and explained how time as both “the most profound thing in our lives” and “the villain that we’re constantly fighting against” influenced some of Hopper’s choices as a new father.
“Throughout the season, we see him eating potato chips on the couch, yelling at children — just being a nasty guy, even to Joyce and all these people that love him and that he loves,” Harbour said. “And you don’t quite really understand what it’s about until you really get to the core of it that he arrives at, which is that I’m so tired of things changing. He had such a beautiful idyllic life with this young daughter of his, and then things dramatically changed, and he’s so terrified of change now.”
When asked about one of the final sequences in the show’s last season, which features Eleven reading the emotional letter left for her by Hopper, Harbour revealed that because the show shoots “a lot in order,” he didn’t get to see actress Millie Bobby Brown film it. In fact, he “hadn’t seen her for months at the end of the shoot” and watched it along with everyone else but found it “beautiful.” Harbour went on to describe his relationship with the young actress as “special.”
“Millie and I have always had sort of a special relationship because I knew her when she was so young. I knew her before any of this big fame hit,” he explained. “I have a real protective feeling for her. I have a real, like, worry. I worry about her and the fame and all that she has to struggle with. And I’ve just always felt this kind of deep fatherly affection for her.”
That experience with Brown “definitely” helped prepare him for fatherhood when it comes to his wife Lily Allen’s two daughters from a previous relationship, the actor said.
“I’m very much a New York sort of city rat. I liked my freedom, my independence. And then it was really this part that did change a lot of that perspective. The show sort of opened my heart in a lot of different ways, and one of the ways that it did was it started to make me realize how thin my existence was without a family,” he said. “The fact that this guy was maturing into a father was something clearly that my subconscious was crying out to do, and I think it’s partially why things are successful. [It’s] because there’s some unique alchemy between the performer and the role.”
Hopper’s “deep need for family” was shared by Harbour, he said, though he “wasn’t even aware of it.” “The role allowed me to do that in my real life. It’s kind of like — it was a nice test run.”
