David Harbor on ‘Stranger Things 5’, Hopper’s Evolution

During the first 16 years of David Harbour’s acting career, he built a successful resume of Broadway theater (in productions such as ‘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 number 7 on a call sheet for, say, a Denzel Washington action movie, and also being the lead actor in plays at the Public Theater in New York,” he says. “It was a beautiful life, a wonderful life, a one-bedroom life in the East Village.”

Then, at age 41, Harbor was cast in “Stranger Things” as Hawkins, Indiana, police chief Jim Hopper — the only adult male lead (opposite Winona Ryder’s Joyce Byers) in a show made up almost entirely of young people. His life was never the same again. The show immediately became a global blockbuster on Netflix, catapulting Harbor to top status within weeks. During the five-season Netflix blockbuster series, Harbor also headlined a reboot of “Hellboy” in 2019, played an awesome Santa Claus 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 production wrapped on the final season of “Stranger Things” in 2024, Harbor has already shot a new limited series for HBO, the dark comedy “DTF St. Louis” starring 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 of the latter, to discuss the ending of “Stranger Things” and the show’s creators, Matt and Ross Duffer, for the magazine’s Oct. 15 cover story. (The interview predates reports that co-star Millie Bobby Brown filed a harassment complaint against Harbor ahead of the filming of Season 5, as well as the announcement and subsequent release of his ex-wife Lily Allen’s new album, “West End Girl.”)

Harbor 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 developed over the five seasons.

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 today?

No. You would know better than me about the business models of how something like Netflix works. But when we started the show, it was the fall of 2015 and the model for the Netflix original series was like “House of Cards” and “Orange is the New Black.” I thought it would be kind of a sci-fi show, which some people would really enjoy, while others, you know, wouldn’t be their cup of tea. But I never imagined the universal appeal of the kind of zeitgeist it has become.

What has ‘Stranger Things’ done for your career and for your life?

A lot of people know me now, and it has given me a certain fan base. So career-wise, it’s just opened a huge number of doors. I mean, I’m interested now in what happens after “Stranger Things,” in terms of walking through those doors. I have a new HBO show coming out in January, me and Jason Bateman, and all that other stuff in the pipeline right now, so that’s more of my focus right now.

When you asked me that question seven years ago? It just tore apart the whole idea 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 for, say, a Denzel Washington action movie, and also being the leads in plays at the Public Theater in New York. It was a beautiful life, a wonderful life, a one-bedroom life in the East Village, and Stranger Things changed that whole life in many ways. The one thing that hasn’t changed is my intention, and I think my intention has always been to tell beautiful, strange stories that open people’s minds. That was the same before ‘Stranger Things’ and after ‘Stranger Things’, but everything else has changed.

Why do you think the show has been a huge hit for so long? What do you think is the core of its appeal?

You probably know that better than I do. What would you say it is?

I’ve asked a lot of people that question, and one thing that people have really pointed out is that, because of the breadth of the ensemble, there’s a character that pretty much everyone can relate to — and it’s a story about people fighting back as outsiders.

Well, the outsiders fighting back have changed over the years. I did notice that as the seasons go by, it’s more interested in empathy. Vecna ​​has become very important, just as the monster itself is becoming more and more human, and we need to understand the monster and have feelings for it. Whereas in season 1 it was really dirty outsiders taking down a company, right? It was an interesting transition in terms of what they’re focused on, how you flesh out that story.

I think at its best it hits all the beats of character and story at the same pace, which is hard for a script to do. Usually scripts focus on character or plot. ‘Stranger Things’ will do both at the same time 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 take the archetypes or the tropes – or the words and the letters, let’s say, and create new sentences out of them. Hopper is Han Solo, is Indiana Jones, is Gandalf the Grey. There are archetype styles that just live in our subconscious cinematic lexicon and we love them. She simply reinvents “Stranger Things” with Eleven, Hopper, Max. He’s not afraid to play those really strong power chords.

What was the experience like being directed by the Duffer brothers when the show first started?

When we started, I think they were a lot greener, and the stakes were a lot lower. We were the forgotten show that first season. I don’t even know how much money they spent on the show, but it wasn’t much, and we didn’t have any executives there. Nobody was watching what we were doing. I think in a lot of ways they looked to me and Winona to help them more with the bigger dialogue scenes. I mean, not that they didn’t have brilliant stuff every day, but I remember it being a bit freer.

How has this developed over the past ten years?

As their aesthetic became more what they wanted, they started to get a lot more specific about camera movement and shots, 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 became more precise. They have always been very generous to me. They always really appreciated me as an artist, really appreciated what I brought to the character, and wanted me to guide him a little bit. Over the years before each season, we talked about the direction we wanted to take Hopper.

You know, the problem with TV is that for ten seasons you’re always Gilligan on the island, wearing the red shirt and the bucket hat. I’m bored and I wanted Hopper to be different. I wanted to show different colors of him: the guy from season 1, the very protective, overbearing father from season 2, the detective from season 3 ‘Magnum PI’ from the 80s, the skinny, brash, resurrected warrior from season 4, and this season 5 – I don’t know what he is this season. But we worked very well together on where to take him. They’re super smart guys and they really know how to tell a story.

Finally, as one of the few adults with significant experience on the show, I wanted to ask what it was like to become such a phenomenon from the inside out?

It’s going to be hard for me to really talk openly about this because of what people do these days when you try to discuss something that I think is very three-dimensional and very complex.

You win something and you lose something. You know, Hopper doesn’t smoke on the show anymore. That is a direct result of popularity. As your audience grows so large, you try to continue to appeal to the greatness of that audience, and a large audience needs soft edges. That’s an interesting conundrum that you face in pop music, pop culture, and all kinds of popular entertainment. So for me, the freedoms of that first season, when we were just figuring it out and no one was expecting anything, as opposed to the pressures we faced in the fifth season, I would prefer the freedoms of that first season. And yet, me Love the attention, and me Love to reach the widest possible audience, and me Love Move the most people with what you do.

This is just something that entertainment struggles with. I think the long and the short of it is just that you win something – obviously, obviously – 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 from us.

This interview has been edited and condensed.