What can you possibly say in your own defence, when your estranged wife has torched your reputation by telling the world that you cheated on her repeatedly, painfully and shamelessly?
The actor David Harbour, 50, who plays ex police chief Jim Hopper in Stranger Things, has spent the past few weeks conducting a tricky global press tour in the service of the fifth and final series of the Netflix mega-hit sci fi drama.
He’s been cheerful and warm, and has even cuddled co-star Millie Bobby Brown on the red carpet in LA (even though she reportedly previously sent in a written complaint about his ‘bullying’ behaviour.)
But, until now, the issue of his character, as described in the album West End Girl by ex-wife Lily Allen, 40, has remained an elephant in the room.
Hitherto, he’s said nothing about anything which might have happened beyond the fictional town of Hawkins, where Stranger Things is set.
And yet he now appears finally to have broached, at least tangentially, the questions everyone wants answers to. How on earth it came to pass that he allegedly pressured Allen into an open relationship, only to violate the ‘rules’ which they had set. And what it feels like to be outed as a ‘sex addict’, after Allen claimed to have found a trove of sex toys and love letters at his bachelor apartment in New York.
Allen revealed all of that and more in her album West End Girl which went straight to the top of the albums chart when it was released on October 24th.
Speaking about the characters played by himself and Millie Bobby Brown, Harbour says: ‘You know, there are two people that are both lost, that are both heroic, sometimes beyond their capabilities, that both have such big, broad, deep hearts.’
He then reflects: ‘They are both deeply flawed in how they express themselves and make tons of mistakes. That is right up my alley. I love playing characters like that. I love human beings like that. I love humanity.’
In that assessment, of someone who messes up and is flawed, obviously we must include Harbour. Expressing yourself by sleeping with women who are not your wife would certainly count as a flaw.
David Harbour, 50, has spent the past few weeks conducting a tricky global press tour in the service of the fifth and final series of the Netflix mega-hit sci fi drama – in the wake of his split from ex-wife Lily Allen, 40
Speaking about the characters played by himself and Millie Bobby Brown (pictured together), Harbour says: They are both deeply flawed in how they express themselves and make tons of mistakes. That is right up my alley… I love human beings like that. I love humanity’
However, you wonder: will owning up to being ‘deeply flawed’ be enough to save him from the judgment of the world?
Quite possibly not – especially as it appears he spent time as recently as this September with Natalie Tippett, the costume designer who allegedly served as one of the models for ‘Madeline’, the woman Allen says is to blame for the whole mess.
On the song Madeline, Allen sings: ‘We had an arrangement. Be discreet and don’t be blatant. There had to be payment. It had to be with strangers. But you’re not a stranger, Madeline.’
As revealed in the Mail on Sunday, Harbour and Tippett appear to have coincided at the Thermea Spa Village in Winnipeg, Canada, while he was filming the movie Violent Night 2 in September this year.
Ms Tippett posted pictures of herself there while Harbour was known to be in production with the film nearby. Nine days later, Allen dropped her album.
Tippett, who is 34, lives in New Orleans with her two year old daughter. She’s believed to have met Harbour while working on his 2023 film We Have A Ghost. He and Allen announced their split in February this year but actually broke up in December 2024.
It was a short marriage. Harbour had met Allen on celebrity dating app Raya in 2019 and they married a year later, in Vegas.
In her album, Allen suggests he first ‘went astray’ in the summer of 2021. She claims he later asked for an open marriage and she reluctantly agreed.
It’s far from Allen’s first romantic disaster and the romance always seemed unlikely, joining as it did two people who both had their share of demons.
Allen is a rather vulnerable woman scarred by rejections from her hell-raising actor father Keith and she hit a low when her marriage to first husband Sam Cooper failed. She, too, has been candid about her mental health struggles, and issues with sobriety.
After she and Harbour split, she told Vogue she ‘wanted to die’, but after a period in a trauma recovery centre, she is now on anti-depressants, has found a ‘sobriety sponsor’ and has been going to daily meetings, plus having therapy.
Harbour gave up drinking alcohol aged 24, and was subsequently diagnosed with bipolar disorder. He’s spoken candidly about being institutionalised and contemplating suicide.
And he reveals he was thinking about suicide – and reading Hamlet – in the run up to making the final series of Stranger Things in Atlanta, Georgia.
The filming of this series of Stranger Things coincided almost exactly with the end of his marriage to Allen.
Speaking exclusively in Los Angeles, he says: ‘Here’s where I get pretentious. I do think Stranger Things has parallels to Hamlet in a sense. I did read a lot of Hamlet when I was doing this, and I think that Hamlet starts out in the play, you know, incapable of being able to confront this ghost of his father.
‘And then he gets to this point where it’s, you know, the famous phrase, To be, or not to be, that is the question. Like, do I act? Do I lie down? Do I kill myself? Do I whatever?
In that assessment, of someone who messes up and is flawed, obviously we must include Harbour. Expressing yourself by sleeping with women who are not your wife would certainly count as a flaw
Harbour plays Jim Hooper in Stranger Things while Brown plays Eleven (pictured)
However, you wonder: will owning up to being ‘deeply flawed’ be enough to save him from the judgment of the world?
‘And he fumbles through his way, violently through this, till he gets back from England, and he realises that there is special providence in the fall of the sparrow. “If it be now, ‘tis not to come. If it be not to come, it will be now. If it be not now, yet it will come. The readiness is all.”
‘So I think what Hopper does come to in a real way, is this vulnerable sense of, you are not in control of this situation. You are not in control of this universe.
‘There is a vulnerability to that, and a new vulnerability that is the acceptance that the universe will be what the universe will be. And that you can only play your role for this life in that.’
He adds that finishing making the show after ten years meant saying some significant and emotional goodbyes, not least to Brown who was only 11 years old when they first met.
In the series, Hopper is grieving the death of his daughter from cancer, but then develops a father-child bond with Eleven, Brown’s character, after she escapes a laboratory where her special powers are being tested.
In reality, the actress was said to have submitted a written complaint about ‘bullying’ behaviour by Harbour, which was resolved.
He has not commented on allegations of a complaint, but Stranger Things director and executive producer Shawn Levy implied that the issues had been ironed out when he said: ‘You have to create a respectful workplace where everyone feels comfortable and safe, and so we did everything to build that environment. And we’re proud of the fact that we did so.’
Harbour hints at issues with Bobby Brown when he says that he initially wasn’t going to show up for the last day of filming with the ‘kids’ – but then relented.
He says: ‘My last day happened. And then there was the real last day, which is basically like the kids. And you know, I mean, it’s complicated. It’s ten years of like knowing these people. And like it’s bittersweet and there’s a lot of emotion.
‘So there was a time where I was like, I’m not gonna go. I don’t have to go. And then I just like drove over there and I sat in the back and I watched them play this scene, just crying.
It was a short marriage. Harbour had met Allen on celebrity dating app Raya in 2019 and they married a year later, in Vegas
In her album, Allen suggests he first ‘went astray’ in the summer of 2021. She claims he later asked for an open marriage and she reluctantly agreed
After she and Harbour split, she told Vogue she ‘wanted to die’, but after a period in a trauma recovery centre, she is now on anti-depressants, has found a ‘sobriety sponsor’ and has been going to daily meetings, plus having therapy
‘And we released some confetti and some balloons, and I had this incredibly cathartic moment of watching these young stars and these young actors who I’ve known so deeply for so many years become men and women. And just this sense of like pride and joy and love for them, for what they’ve accomplished, for who they’ve been in the world amidst all this chaos and for what we’ve accomplished together.
‘It really was right at the end. I waited, I pushed it, I pushed it, I pushed it and then right at the end I showed up and I was like, ‘Waaah!’
Reflecting on her time with Harbour, Brown agrees their characters had a complex bond which she called ‘a deeply flawed but rich relationship’.
‘When people come up to me and talk about Eleven, it’s always pretty much within the same sentence that they say they love the dynamic between Hopper and El. And I think it’s really inspiring. Because what person has a relationship with any of their parental figures that’s absolutely perfect?’
She adds: ‘We’re all, in our own way, outcasts. And I think like if you see or meet any of us, you’ll know how strange we are in our own way.
‘I think that’s what speaks so well to the ensemble, as individuals and us as actors.
‘I think that is also what makes our show so great, is that people and audiences can feel connected to that flawed person…’
She admits that during the show she has changed – from the 15 year old who shaved her head to the globally famous young woman she has become, married to Jake Bongiovi, son of Jon Bon Jovi, and now a mother via a surrogate.
She says: ‘This has been my anchor. I did everything, I graduated on the show, I learned how to be a friend. You’re in an ensemble of 40 people’s main characters, so it’s like the most unbelievable experience.
‘It’s like this fast track of being one, an adult, but two, a good friend, a good scene partner. And yeah, definitely, it makes you grow up of course, because naturally you are in the light…
‘Also well, I’m a mother, I’m also married, so it’s changed me a whole bunch.’
Millie Bobby Brown has left Stranger Things as a successful grown woman with a husband and family. The irony won’t be lost on her screen partner that he has left the show having lost just that.
