David Harbour on 'Stranger Things' season 4, Hopper's return - Los Angeles Times
Advertisement
Share via

Follow us wherever you get your podcasts:

“Stranger Things” has brought Hopper back for Season 4, and nobody’s gladder than David Harbour, who wants to peel back the layers of the character and reveal “the hero that you’ve always wanted him to be” (as long as he survives this season, that is). In this episode of “The Envelope,” Harbour shares his thoughts on portraying a cop in the midst of national police brutality conversations, the upsides of finding fame later in his career, and how acting has helped him manage his mental health.

Mark Olsen: Yvonne, it’s great as always to be talking to you.

Yvonne Villarreal: Oh my gosh, Mark, it’s so good to see you. Because I have to say, I was going to message you the other day because I was watching “Something’s Gotta Give” for like the millionth time. And you know how I feel about Nancy Meyers’ kitchens, and I just wanted to text you my envy. But I was trying to respect your weekend, because a little birdie told me that you have been using some time to catch up on TV.

Advertisement

Olsen: Well, first of all, phone lines are open for Nancy Meyers texts, anytime, anywhere, so don’t worry about that. But yes, I have been busy. I’ve been, you know, this week I’m stepping into your world a bit to talk to actor David Harbour, best known as Chief Jim Hopper on the mega popular Netflix series “Stranger Things.” The show just came back for its much anticipated fourth season and opens with his character in a Russian prison camp.

Villarreal: Oh, my God, we have to talk about this hiatus, though. Like, it’s been, what, three years? I was watching some clips of the kids doing interviews for the new season. And I was just, like, my mind cannot compute this. But, you know, it’s always fun talking to David because he shares such fun stories from the set, like, did you enjoy speaking with him?

Olsen: You know, I really did. He’s one of those people that just, he puts you at ease right away, you kind of like go to very real places very quickly. And so I was kind of surprised by how sort of candid and unguarded a conversation it was. David and I talked about what it’s been like to see “Stranger Things” grow into such a phenomenon, how that’s impacted his own career and mental health journey, and even what it’s been like for him navigating fame that he’s found, you know, kind of late in his life and career. And, of course, we talked about the parallels between what’s been happening to the character of Jim Hopper, and his character of Red Guardian, the character that David plays in the Marvel movie “Black Widow.” But first, we sort of started with the collective sigh of relief that I think fans have felt to see Hopper simply back onscreen at all this season.

Olsen: Welcome to the show, David! So, at the end of Season 3, it was unclear if you were going to make it out alive. And I wonder what it was like for you to see some of the reactions to the possibility of your character’s death. I mean, did it kind of feel like you were at your own funeral?

David Harbour: I mean, yes, I was very happy with how moved people were. I mean, that was the intention. It still is the intention because, you know, some people, I think the younger viewers, write me on Instagram little notes saying like, “Oh. I was weeping for you and you’re still alive. I wasted these tears,” and it’s like you didn’t actually waste the tears. I mean, his sacrifice, whether it was, you know, fully consummated or not, was still a beautiful sacrifice. And the fact that he loves his daughter and the fact that he couldn’t express those emotions in real time that come with the letter afterwards, that’s all. Still very beautiful stuff. Your tears were worth it.

[Clip from “Stranger Things”: HOPPER: Everybody out! (shoots in the air) Hey … you ready to end this?]

[Clip from “Stranger Things”: JOYCE: (sobs) MURRAY BAUMAN: Jim? Where’s Jim?]

Olsen: The show is really rooted in its like ensemble cast. And so in the new season, you know, you spend much of it that we’ve seen so far isolated in this prison camp. Was it strange for you to be separated from the rest of the main cast like that?

Advertisement
David Harbour

Harbour: Yes. I mean, this season, and especially the first seven episodes, is his dark night of the Soul, where he is abandoned, alone in a, you know, violent, scary place. And he’s not going to make it at one point. And we’ve seen Hopper amidst all the seasons, amidst all the tragedy that he’s dealt with or all the craziness he’s dealt with. He’s had a certain joie de vivre or a certain, you know, Harrison Ford sort of like carefree-ness to all of it. And I think here is a season where we don’t see as much of that. I mean, I really wanted you to see a different layer of him. The layer without skin, you know, who really is the beaten man. And there’s no sort of ironic joy in it. There’s no Harrison Ford anymore. It’s just been stripped away from this brutal environment.

Olsen: It’s interesting to hear you talk about him as a kind of Harrison Ford character. Like he’s slowly, like, evolved into this more heroic figure. And was it a challenge to then strip all that away and have him be this sort of beaten-down prisoner?

Harbour: Yeah, in a sense, it was a very vulnerable season for me. I think he had to reawaken this deadened piece of him, this warrior piece of him, and therefore had to go through this like, you know, almost like a snake sheds its skin and leaves behind something. And in that moment of shedding its skin, it is vulnerable. I mean, the skin is more supple and, you know, easily attacked or attackable or something, but that ultimately it becomes stronger through that. And I think to fight this final evil, to truly cleanse the thing we’re seeing, you know, who’s going to survive Hawkins? And who survives this Upside Down evil as we begin to explore it more and give you more ideas of what it is. And so one of the things about Hopper was that he was with this guilt. I feel like he was unable to survive and he had to go to a dark place and sort of exorcized these demons to a certain degree, or grapple with his curse. He is a cursed man, and he himself feels like he is the curse. So to truly defeat the Upside Down monster and truly survive Hawkins or be the hero they need him to be, he has to, like, cleanse that.

Olsen: And, you know, before you got the role of Hopper, you had had other roles where you played a cop. You were often, you know, supporting roles. Did those influence you when you came to this part? Like how did sort of, like, those previous roles that you’d had help you sort of on the road to to Hopper?

Harbour: I mean, I guess I’m just a tall, kind of lantern-jawed white guy. So I think the cop and the lawyer’s going to fit my central casting idea of me. But one of the most interesting things about Hopper, and I think one of the things that helped me the most and continues to help me is I was never cast as romantic leads and I was often not cast as the good guy. I was often the bad guy. Because I have this sort of menacing brow and I think like, you know, a certain freedom in my acting from having lived a certain life, that psychotics experience the same type of freedom of, you know, not normally needing to adhere totally to the law of the land because you have less to lose. And so what helped me in that, in playing Hopper, was that I didn’t try to play him like a romantic lead, which he is.

Advertisement

[Clip from “Stranger Things”: HOPPER: How’s your chianti? WAITER: Our chianti is quite good, medium bodied with just a hint of cherry HOPPER: Great! Women love cherries, huh. All right, we’ll have that. Two glasses, please, one for me and one for the lady.]

HARBOUR: I think that a lot of other people playing a romantic lead would try to soften those edges. And one of the things I really liked about Hopper is he’s a broken man. And when you’re broken you’re not so nice.

[Clip from “Stranger Things”: FLO: Good of you to show. HOPPER: Oh, hey, morning, Flo. Morning, everybody. COP 1: Hey, chief. COP 2: Damn, you look like hell, Chief. HOPPER: Oh yeah? COP 2: Yeah. HOPPER: Well, I look better than your wife did when I left her this morning.]

Harbour: And you’re not so romantic or admirable, and I think as he gets heroic, it makes the journey that much more beautiful. And in fact, the only thing that stimulates his search for Will is his own ego. Someone starts lying to him in the beginning of the first season and that’s what awakens that he doesn’t want to look for Will, he doesn’t give a crap about Well. And I think that playing psychotics and playing villains allowed me to really understand that aspect of him. He’s selfish, And one of the greatest things for me was watching people kind of live-tweet along with it and saying at the end of Episode 2, “What’s up with everybody liking this Hopper guy? He’s a jerk and he’s dumb and he’s bad at his job,” and you’re like, great. That’s what I want you to feel at the end of Episode 2, so that as you go into 5 and you see him breaking into the lab, I want you to be going like, wait a minute, wait a minute, and you be surprised. And then by the end you’re rooting for him to do CPR on Will and actually save not only Will, but his own sanity.

Olsen: You know, in the time that you’ve been playing that role there’s kind of been this evolution in like the sort of cultural conversation around policing, like the way, you know, the public response to police has really changed. Has that affected how you approach the role or even how the Duffers are writing him? Like, do you guys feel like you’ve been thinking about that conversation around policing in regards to the role?

Harbour: Yeah, I mean, case in point, he’s not a cop this year. He’s a prisoner. So, I do think that these tropes are alive and that they exist within the world of the ‘80s. And we’re very interested in preserving the historical nature of the world and also continuing to examine it in subtle ways. We’re always going to be “Stranger Things.” We’re always going to be a fantastical world. But you’ve got to understand that we have more story to tell. And we are, you know, telling that story. I think that that’s one of the great things and it’s one of the great things is of the gestalt of the series as a whole, is you’ll see, you know, you’ll see through five seasons what these people become or what is. And I think one of the most interesting things about Hopper this season, while it doesn’t relate directly to, you know, any transgressions he’s had as a cop. It’s more the fact that he is in prison. He is suffering through something different. He is experiencing a different side of a violent world. And he’s also reckoning with a lot of guilt and a lot of change in terms of how he wants to live his life. I do think there are subtle, you know, reverberations of what we’re experienced in the culture in terms of what we want to see.

So, you know, it is something where I’m very in support of the BLM movement and a lot of the social change that we have to reexamine in our culture. I just want to make sure that we do not overemphasize the importance of representation, that we more overemphasize the importance of resources. Like I certainly would like other jobs to have as big requirements. I think that a lot of times stuff is placed on artists at the expense of other aspects of society that would be much more beneficial to the movements themselves. Courts, banks, you know, other institutions. But in that way too, I think that we have to be careful with what we choose our art to be and whether or not it should be representative of a truth that then could be heroic. Or do we just want heroism? I think it’s something that our society, our culture is grappling with right now. Like, do we want to see people just continue to make the right choices if they’re heroes or do we want these flawed heroes? And I want to be a responsible storyteller in that way, but I still want to be able to play very much like flawed heroes and not be dismissed immediately just because there’s a larger story to tell.

Olsen: Hmm. And how has your relationship to the character changed or evolved over the course of the seasons, the years that you’ve been doing it now?

Advertisement

Harbour: I mean, as I say, like I sort of want to explore the different layers of the onion with him. And there was, you know, the first layer that season is almost complete in its journey in the sense of Hopper goes from being a dead man who needs to die because of the guilt and shame he feels about not being able to catch his own daughter’s murderer to once he resurrects Will. He finds himself and he finds his purpose and he really is reawakened. So in a sense that season exists in this little bubble of that’s going to be some of the whole arc, but that is the arc of that first season. So going into the second season, there was his relationship to possibly a resurrected daughter and his chance again. And that became all about control. Like, you know, you get something again and you know how precious it was and how you lost it. And so all you want to do is hold on to it and you squeeze it to death.

[Clip from “Stranger Things”: HOPPER: You want to go trick or treating? You know the rules. ELEVEN: Yes, but... HOPPER: So you know the answer. ELEVEN: But they wouldn’t see me. HOPPER: I don’t care. I don’t care, all right? You go out there, ghost or not, it’s a risk. We don’t take risks, all right? They’re stupid. And... ELEVEN: We’re not stupid. HOPPER: Exactly.]

Harbour: And then in Season 3, it became about his relationship to becoming a man again in the sense of, like, a nuclear family. I mean, Hopper’s always headed toward the nuclear family idea from this very, very angry selfish bachelor to he really does want a family.

[Clip from “Stranger Things”: HOPPER: I miss playing board games every night, making triple-decker Eggo extravaganzas at sunrise, watching westerns together before me we doze off, and I know you’re getting older…]

Harbour: So the third season was a lot about him and Joyce, I mean, it was a lot about what is it like to have a wife and what is it like to appreciate a relationship with a woman? And we see his failures at that. But ultimately, his, you know, sacrifice is larger than all of that because he does love in a deep way that he doesn’t know how to express. So hopefully going forward, what we want to see from him is to peel that layer back, to see the true nature of the trauma that he has experienced. And then through that, to have some healing. I mean, it’s almost like he’s in psychotherapy throughout these four seasons and then hopefully we’ll see the fully formed superego emerge in Season 5 — if he makes it that far — to be the man who can be the hero that you’ve always wanted him to be.

Olsen: There’s such a great will-they-won’t-they energy between Hopper and the character of Joyce, played by Winona Ryder.

[Clip from “Stranger Things”: JOYCE: Wait, a date, you never said anything about a date. HOPPER: I know. I didn’t say anything about a date, I just wanted to clear it up in case there was any confusion on your part. JOYCE: There’s not. HOPPER: Great. It’s just two friends getting together for a nice dinner. I mean, we’ve earned it, haven’t we? ]

Advertisement

Olsen: And I’ve heard you mention the fact that when you were a teenager — and you and I are about the same age so I know these feelings well — that you had like a sort of a teen crush on Winona Ryder. How do you play it cool with that?

Harbour: Yeah, you don’t in the beginning. I mean it was difficult in the beginning. I think the first night we got together with the Duffers, it was me and her, the Duffers. We had dinner and I just like sat sort of talking with her for like six hours, and just like, yeah, it’s just a really special moment for me. But the great thing and also the unnerving thing about meeting famous people that you have crushes on — that people occasionally have with me, myself, I’ve experienced it — is you realize they’re human beings. And that’s both a beautiful thing and an awful thing because you want them to be this thing and then you’re like, Oh no, that’s a person who just does a job very well.

And so it’s an interesting thing. You start to, you know, you have all those moments with her and then also you start to work with her and you realize, oh, yeah, you’re a person. Like I’m a person. And some of that stuff drops away. And then you realize also that you just really interested in acting and you want to just create a really beautiful scene with her. So you’re just, you know, trying to work together on building this thing.

Olsen: Mm hmm. Hopper has developed this really fatherly dynamic with Eleven on the show. And I’m wondering what that’s been like for you sort of offscreen with Millie Bobby Brown, because, you know, what the kids on the show and Millie in particular have gone through is just remarkable. And I don’t know what it’s been like to sort of watch, you know, that up close over the course of the show. Like, do you have a similar dynamic with Millie sort of offscreen like you do onscreen?

Harbour: Umm. It’s not as close offscreen. That relationship is very, very — and she’s dependent on him in a way that Millie has a lot more people around her that she’s dependent on. And I’m not that person for myself. It’s been, it’s sort of mirrored throughout the seasons. I think I, I feel all the feelings that Hopper, you know, feels in a sense. And then I have to struggle with the control idea and I have to struggle with my own savior complex. Like I see what these kids have to deal with and, look, whatever. I mean, there’s a lot of people that go through, I guess a lot worse stuff. But mentally and psychologically, I think getting extremely famous and being so doted on at 11 years old is really hard for the psyche to reconcile with. I’m lucky because it didn’t happen to me til I was 40. So I know what it’s like to go to the mall. I know what it’s like to be bullied and humiliated. People not think I’m great. I know what it’s like to have to find friends, not to have people come to me. I don’t know that they’ll ever have that feeling.

Olsen: And I hope you don’t mind me asking about this, but during the time that you’ve been on the show, you yourself became a stepfather. And I’m just so curious, like while you’re exploring these sort of paternal feelings in the character, you’re maybe going through some of those things in your own life. Like what has that been like for you?

Advertisement

Harbour: Yeah, I mean, you know, I’ve often heard actors describe this sort of kismet thing and I, I myself feel it is, like, and I do think it’s just, whether you call it a soul or whether you call it like biofeedback or whatever it is, like we as instruments, like, resonate certain qualities. And those qualities allow us to play certain roles. So the resonating qualities that I’ve been putting out there have almost mirrored Hopper’s to a great degree, and then as I move forward, they almost precede me a bit. So, you know, like I’ve been playing Hopper, who kind of adopts this young child. And then even in “Black Widow,” I played a guy who sort of raised two adopted daughters, didn’t do a great job of it. And then I met my wife and now I’m actually raising two stepchildren. So I don’t know if it’s the horse leading the cart or the cart leading the horse. But I do find that my artistic life and my real life are definitely interconnected. I’m also playing a hyper-violent Santa at the end of this year, so I don’t know how that’s going to manifest around Christmas, but we’ll see.

Olsen: You’ve been acting for a long time, but you didn’t break into the mainstream until “Stranger Things.” I’m curious about what that earlier part of your career was like. Did it feel like a struggle?

Harbour: I mean, it’s funny, like I personally did not think I was as much of a failure as I perhaps opined now or that I, you know — I actually was for example, I was, you know, maintaining the rent in the East Village on a 400-square-foot apartment. My electricity was not being turned off. I had food to eat. I would occasionally make an off-Broadway salary of $245 a week, which was difficult. But occasionally you’d get like a “Law and Order” episode and they’d pay you like $10,000 and you’d be like, “Oh, I could pay my rent for three months.” And I had like a soap opera recurring sometimes. And then you’d go to weddings or whatever and people would be like, “What do you do?” And say, “Well, I’m an actor.” And they’d go, “Oh, I hope, you know, I hope it works out for you. You know, good luck because you’re 35 and you’re like, people don’t know who you are. We’ve never seen you in anything, you know, what have I seen you in?” “Well, do you see plays?” For me, it was a great life and I say this to, like, young people too. When I talk to them, I’m like, “You can not be a household name and you can make a great living and really be do something artistic with this life. And and it can be very rewarding and fulfilling.”

And then “Stranger Things” came out and I was like, wow, I’m going to be on a talk show. I’m going to be on the cover of magazines. Like, this show is something that is a zeitgeisty lottery ticket thing. But the fame thing I only got when I let it go.

Olsen: And you’ve been really open in talking about your struggles with mental health. I’ve heard you say a number of times that acting has really helped you with that and helps you with your bipolar diagnosis in particular. Can I ask how that is? Like, what is it about acting that helps you in that way?

Harbour: I think it hurts and it helps. I think it’s one and the same. I mean, I’m not so crazy about the medical models’ rigid definitions of what’s going on. And I have found that for me, I’ve been through the chemical wringer for a lot of my life and I really found that talk therapy, true psychoanalysis, it has been liberating in a way that medications haven’t. I know that may not be everyone’s experience, but I do feel like it’s an atypical experience from what you hear. And it’s something that I, I wanted to talk about and share. And what was liberating to me was the idea that I’m not broken and that in fact I’m just a human being with sensitivities who actually likes to scream and yell sometimes.

Advertisement

And when I say “scream and yell,” it can be very quiet, but it means to express the horrors of consciousness. The the truly horrific idea that we, you know, walk around and, like, live our lives amidst, you know, catastrophe and climate change and death and all, you know, that we still are walking around, like going to the bagel shop, getting a bagel. That idea is so incomprehensible to my nervous system that I feel like if I talk about it every day, if I yell and scream about it every day, I’m sane. And when I don’t, I’m, I have problems. And I’ve had problems for the last 18 years until I got into talk therapy, which has allowed me some respite. But even before that, whenever I would work, I wouldn’t have episodes. It was only in the periods when I didn’t work.

Olsen: And during that earlier part of your career when you maybe weren’t getting the kind of parts that you wanted, that seems like when you really sort of were throwing yourself into theater a lot. And I’m wondering for you, like, is there a balance between working in TV and film and working in theater? Like is theater something that you really want to be able to go back to?

Harbour: Yeah, in fact, I’m doing a play in London this summer. Here’s the pitch, everybody. Me and Bill Pullman are doing a play in the West End, a new Theresa Rebeck play called “Mad House,” which actually is a lot about mental illness as well. So, you know, I get to talk a lot about that. And it’s a lot about family and love and, you know, but it’s something where I haven’t been on stage in seven years and I’ve been dying to get back and also terrified. I’m convinced I’m not going to be able to learn my lines, though. Just like when I got into this business it was always the thing. People were like, “How do you learn all those lines?” And I was always like, “That’s the easiest part.” The acting of it is tough. And now as an older man, I’m like, “Oh yeah, how am I going to remember those lines?” But I am really excited to get back to it. I feel like they’re both different things and I like both of them. Film and TV has a lot more money behind it, and it’s a lot more just you and the director, director carving out a story, whereas with theater you set the frame, and you and the ensemble set the frame. So it’s much more of an actor’s medium and you all have to work together. In that way it feels I’ve always sort of equated to, like, theater feels like a marriage. You’ve got to do it every day. You got to find new stuff, you got to like work with people and then film and TV feels like, you know, like a sexy, great date that you’re going on where it’s like all kind of exciting and everybody’s like, everything’s fresh and new and you just show up and go. And so I like both those things.

Olsen: Do you feel like your relationship to fame has changed? Like, was there a time when it was something you kind of didn’t want? And it’s funny that you say, like, it came to you when you sort of gave it up.

Harbour: Yes. I mean, to be honest, you know, as I say, like, I was very happy with what I was doing. But there was this bug, and I would work with actors. Like, I did a lot of plays, the public theater, right, like Shakespeare in the Park and stuff. And you’d work with actors like I worked with like Oliver Platt, Kristen Johnston, Chris Lloyd, like all of these famous actors, you know, and they all would tell me the same thing. They’d say, like, it’s not great. Fame is not great. And I was like, shut up.

Like, I would be like, “Shut up, you. It is great. You just like telling me that because I’m like some journeyman actor.” And I always wanted to taste it. I always wanted to experience it because that thing of, like, you walk down the street and you’d be walking with them and people would come up to them. They’d want their autograph. And I always wanted to taste that, then I got it. And now I really get what they’re saying. I mean, I like the opportunity to do all kinds of stuff. I like the, certainly the fact that I can provide for my family in a secure way now. I never had that. That’s really nice. But the actual day-to-day interaction, I would be happy to give up.

Advertisement

Olsen: Mm.. And your wife, Lily Allen, is a very well-known musician in the U.K., and I can’t help but ask. I’ve always been so curious. Like British famous seems like something very specific and different from the kind of fame ecosystem and media culture in the U.S. What has it been like for you as a person, somewhat newly famous in the U.S. to then be also dealing with this whole other fame ecosystem in the U.K.?

Harbour: Yeah, it is very, very different. You know, she was very famous too at the height of the — before social media. I mean, she’s the queen of MySpace. So it was really in these, you know, paparazzi days where I feel like that, although it exists, certainly, it’s not as enormously ridiculous because everybody has cellphones and everybody’s doing social media. So she really did live in that world of like Amy Winehouse and, you know, Princess Diana to a certain degree of like these British paparazzi, where really there’s a relentless invasiveness to that. So I think her experience of fame has been very different. And also, she’s a woman, very strong-minded woman. And I think women experience fame a lot differently than men. The other thing that’s funny is like we do get very funny competitive about, you know, who gets recognized for what still, here in America, which is fun. Like in general, if you walk past a middle school you’re going to want to cover me in a shroud because I will be harassed by the 13-year-olds. If you walk by a gaggle of middle schoolers, I will be bigger than the Beatles. But generally, she gets people coming up to her that are like very sophisticated, hip, cool women in their like 30s and 40s or men in their 30s or 40s, like really respectful, really cool, and mine are just like a bunch of kids going like, “Whoa, Hopper!”

Olsen: And if I can just ask you a couple things about Red Guardian.

[Clip from “Black Widow”: RED GUARDIAN: Captain America! INMATES: America. RED GUARDIAN: Finally the Red Guardian’s time has come! I grab hold of his shield, and face to face it’s a test of strength. Oh ... oh no … oh! (laughs)]

Olsen: One thing I heard you say is that just the timing of “Stranger Things” and Red Guardian, like you knew that you were going to have the sort of Russian prison scenes in “Stranger Things” when you were shooting Red Guardian. So you were sort of secretly taking pictures and like telling the Duffers, like, what the Russian prison in “Black Widow” was going to be. That sounds like a huge breach of Marvel protocol.

Harbour: Yeah, I know. Don’t tell Kevin Feige. I don’t think he listens to his podcast, but if he does, I’m sorry, Kevin. I — yeah, I totally was. No, I mean, we had to come up because I knew that the internet would be ablaze with this, “Oh, David Harbour’s in a Russian prison, Hopper’s in a Russian prison.” They do that thing that everybody does now. And so I was like, we have to at least try to make these things as different as possible. And so it was funny. Like, I had the beard and the long hair, to be honest. I started growing that for “Stranger Things.” And then we got Red Guardian and I was like, “I’m going to use the beard and the hair for this.” And then so as I was doing that, I was talking to the Duffers and I was like, we need to like rethink his look because even if you see there’s a little Easter egg where there’s a guy in prison in Will’s drawing and, and it’s next to, like, a knight or something, and it’s, it’s Hopper in prison, but he’s got a long beard, he’s got long hair. It’s a little tiny, quick, the camera moves past it. But yes, I was doing that because I really knew that people would pick up on it and they’d give us all kinds of crap for it. So I really wanted them to have big distinction. And the Duffers were totally game to like play around with all those aesthetics. So yeah. Yeah. Sorry, Kevin.

Olsen: And now, before I let you go, David, I’m not trying to ask this as a gotcha question. I genuinely tried to look this up and couldn’t figure it out. Are you coming back as Red Guardian? Are you playing that part again?

Harbour: [Laughs] Wow. You got me in trouble with Kevin Feige by telling the world that I took pictures of the “Black Widow” set and was texting them to the Duffer brothers. And now you’re going to have me confess whether or not I’m coming back. I have no information on that, sir. [Laughs] I mean, the only thing I’ve — the only thing I know is that I’d love to do it again, but that is a larger conversation for Marvel wherever they’re going. I mean, he does survive the events of “Black Widow,” and it is a character that I would love to revisit. But, you know, we shall see.

Advertisement

Olsen: Well, David Harbour, thank you so much for taking so much time to talk with us today.

Harbour: Thank you.

The Team

The Envelope is a Los Angeles Times production in association with Neon Hum media. It is hosted by Mark Olsen and Yvonne Villarreal; produced by Hannah Harris Green and Navani Otero; edited by Heba Elorbany with help from Lauren Raab. sound design and mixing by Scott Somerville; theme music by Mike Heflin. Neon Hum’s production manager is Samantha Allison, and their executive producer is Shara Morris.

Special thanks to Matt Brennan, Jazmin Aguilera, Shani Hilton, Elena Howe, Kayla Bell, Patricia Gardiner, Dylan Harris, Brandon Sides, James Liggins, Sophie Chap, Darius Darakshan, Lauren Rocha, William Dobson, Amy Wong and Chris Price.
Advertisement