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Talent: David Harbour
Photography, Creative Direction, and Production by: Mike Ruiz
Editor-in-Chief: Dimitri Vorontsov
Fashion Editor and Producer: Alison Hernon
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Studio / Location: Blonde + Co. NYC, New York

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Dimitri: Congratulations on the upcoming Stranger Things Season Four. We were left on a major cliffhanger with your character Jim Hopper. Did you know at the end of Season Three that you will be coming back?

David: No, I did. I knew the whole time. I’m a big fat liar. For as long as possible I had to maintain the fact that I didn’t know and so I would do some interviews and things like that. I would just lie blatantly about how I didn’t know the fate of my character because you want the audience to figure that stuff out for themselves, but I knew the whole time. There’s been a plan through this series that the Duffers know where it’s headed and we’ve discussed that ever since the first season. It’s not that that hasn’t changed. I don’t know all the intricate details, but I’ve known what this character is about and we’ve had conversations about the end of him or where he ends up at the end of the series.
I knew that this in a sense was a fake death, but it also was a bit of a resurrection. I’ve spoken a little bit about it being this idea of Lord of the Rings where Gandalf the Gray descends into hell with the Balrog and then becomes Gandalf the White as he returns. There was something about the trajectory that Hopper was on in the first three seasons that required him to die in a sense to the people that he loved so that he could be resurrected as the man that he needs to be going forward to fight this evil.
A lot of that death and how he exposed himself in that letter, and a lot of that death of this hard shell had to come off so that in Season Four we can start to see a new man emerge from the depths of this despair when he’s in Soviet Union, in the pit and he starts to emerge as a different man. That was always the plan going forward. I just lied for months and months. [laughter]

Dimitri: When you first received the call for this show back — Well, how many years ago now, it will be quite a few now?

David: Seven.

Dimitri: Did you have a feeling that it’s going to become such a massive production, or did you go, “Okay, well, that’s quite an interesting character.”

David: I guess I did when I read the pilot. I thought it was one of the best pilots I’d really ever read. I loved it so much. It really spoke to me. The character really spoke to me. This beaten-down detective at the time I had envisioned as a Nick Nolte or Gene Hackman and over the years become a Harrison Ford homage or Roman a Clef even, that I thought it was brilliant.
I also was very careful in my mind because a lot of times I thought something was brilliant and it tanks horribly or something that I thought was terrible and people just love it. I’ve been wrong often in my estimation of what the public would like, but this was one of the rare times and special times where I thought it was brilliant. When the show first came out, the first season, the world seemed to resonate with, “Yes, this is something we want, something we need to see right now.” That rarely happens in my career. It was such a validating wonderful moment.

Dimitri: Of course Kids get most of the attention, the Stranger things can’t move forward without your performance and Wynona’s too. You bring maturity and deep emotional connection with older audience. How do you feel about emotional connection in Stranger and purpose of your character in the show?

David: Yes, I did. I liked carrying that weight to a certain degree. The great thing about the kids, first of all, they just have natural abilities, all of them. Especially that first season. Of course, they don’t have much of a career or much training as an actor. They just had this natural ability, this natural– They really were like kids too. They couldn’t control their bodies. They were silly on set, a charm of them. I did think that the show needed some structure to the acting around it. I think that’s what Winona, myself, and Matthew Modine that first season really tried to bring was a bit–
When you have these innocent, beautiful creatures, you also need some complicated people who are showing you some more complicated stuff. Otherwise, it does become a kid’s show. I think the Duffers really didn’t want it to be a kid show. In the same way, I think ET, even though its primary character, protagonist, is Drew Barrymore at whatever nine years old or something. It still doesn’t feel like a kid’s movie, doesn’t feel like Spy Kids or something. It feels like a real adult can watch it, kids can watch it, anybody can watch it, feel something.
I think that the counterbalance of me and Winona who spent so much time in this industry and with acting in general and have a lot more craft, we’re able to ground it in a certain way. We know that we occupy that space in the show and I do really enjoy that. It’s fun to be that person on set, who was the elder statesman who was trying to shape things in perhaps a different way.

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Dimitri: We had Noah on the cover last summer. I asked a few questions that you and I would find absolutely normal but to him it was rather Strange to him. I asked him if he Can imagine living in the 80s? No phones, no internet. If you needed to know something you would go to the library. Is it exciting to live in the 80s era through the lens? What about you, David, do you get some feel-good nostalgia about 80s, looking back at certain things that we are missing these days? It just no longer exists, like Blockbuster, for example.

David: It’s fun to inhabit that world, I like period pieces in general because you’re able to — It’s like being an expatriate or something, when you look at a different world or different universe and learn your own relationship to that world. What you’ve lost or gained, and I feel like that is something that’s evocative. It was so interesting that people were nostalgic for that time.
There was a lot more freedom, I think, with no cell phones and no internet. There was a lot more freedom to just discover yourself. I think that’s what I myself really liked about reinbahiting that world. You don’t have this thing in your pocket that constantly demands your attention. You just wander out in the backyard or you just make dinner and you aren’t connected in a way that we are today. That was really nice.
The other thing is, my dad was the exact same or almost the exact same age as Hopper in a sense. He was born in 49 and when I was going through the ’80s, he was in his late 30’s, early 40’s. He was Hopper’s almost exact age. I remember my dad very clearly. It was one of the things that I wanted to pay deference to, is what his experience may have been as a man of that time and what he was dealing with.
I myself identified so much with the Will character, that’s who I would’ve been in that group. It’s who I would’ve, and it’s even age-wise, like where I would’ve been, I would’ve been the like little weirdo that was a bit of an outcast who want to play Dungeons & Dragons in the first season. Winona says that the kids call him gay and they don’t– He’s an outcast and not understood by his own world. I would’ve been that kid.
It was interesting to think of this father figure searching for Will, which reflected my dad and me to a certain degree. It allowed me to think about my dad’s experience in that time. It’s always something as an artist that the people closest to you where you can draw the most energy and inspiration from, the people you know, the best and the least. That was really interesting to me.

Dimitri: Did you mentor youngsters onset, while watching them grow up both in the show and real life, almost through the eyes of your father?

David: Yes, I did. I don’t really enjoy it. That’s a funny word. I feel the pressure and obligation, certainly. Also I’m as controlling as anybody too in terms of what I think is right. I’m learning how to be a better parent. It was a funny balance and something that we’ve played within the show, too. It’s like, Hopper has a deep love and a big heart in him, which I have, but he also has a bit of a he thinks he knows best and he gets very controlling.
Certainly, when Eleven and Mike don’t do what he wants him to do in the third season, he’s talking about killing Mike. He’s a bit of a crazy person when it comes to how he wants to control things. I think that I experienced some of those dilemmas as well. I think I know the road ahead for a lot of them, and then it is revealed to me that it is a different world in many different ways than the world that I grew up in, and also that their paths are ultimately going to be wildly unique and different from mine.
There was a balance of trying to mentor or trying to say what worked for me and then at the same time, really letting go. Really saying, like, “I love these kids and help them in any way that I can, but I have to allow them to make, not only this, have the successes that they have, but also allow them to make the mistakes and allow them to have the failures that they’re inevitably and wonderfully going to have.” It wasn’t enjoyable, but it’s been fulfilling and rich in a certain way, and it’s helped me be a better father as well.

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Dimitri: The Trailer shows Hopper being abducted, we are seeing a different Hopper. Do you think he will be reunited with rest of the castmates? The trailer is just out of this world.

David: He’s almost like a fresh baby coming out of the womb. He doesn’t even have any hair anymore. He’s lost a lot of weight. He has malnourished, but at the same time, it’s awakened this real survival instinct in him, and this real warrior spirit he’s always had. He’s always been this smart protector warrior. I think that as the seasons went on, he started to become a dad, and frustrated dad, who needed to re-learn what that meant and what that means is he had to become a prisoner, as opposed to a cop. He had to reawaken what was important to him and lose what he valued most, but he didn’t know he valued until he lost it.
It’s what keeps him alive in that prison, is the idea of his family and friends and the people that loved him and that he loves. It’s also the thing that tortures him that he didn’t appreciate at the time that he had. There is something too where it’s almost like Henry V, the cherry that grows beneath the nettle is always the right route. I think you’re going to see that with the hardship or the Lotus that Grows out of the Mud. You’ll see that the hardship awakes in him not only struggle but this inner beauty that he’s been hiding in the shell for a long time.

Dimitri: Season Four, due to COVID of course, was delayed in terms of production. Do you know if Duffer Brothers have to do any changes to the storyline to adopt such a massive gap between the seasons?

David: I think the idea is that we do our best. I think we even started shooting and then we had to shut down for a year or so. I think that at one point, Sadie’s face turning from a little girl to a woman. It’s funny, you walk into a door, and then we’ll shoot the scene inside a year later. Of course, they’ve changed to a certain way. I know they’re doing some enhancement of that, but part of it, you just lose that when you watch something. There are people that are very in the script supervising and want to pick everything apart, but there’s also people that just believe that these characters are who they are, and they forgive your mind, just forgives things in their mind.
When you see your best friend on the street, you don’t clock the changes that have occurred in them, you just clock them as, “Oh, that’s my friend, Mary,” and you just see them. I think that people have a relationship to the characters themselves in the same way. They’re just like, “Oh, that’s Eleven,” or, “That’s Matt.”
It was funny to watch, because I think the initial shock will be that, but then you’ll get into the story. This is so painful to admit, but I sometimes go down a road of watching reaction videos on YouTube to the trailer, that was really interested what people would think of it. Usually, what I saw as I watched a couple of them was, the first time they saw the kid they were all like, “Oh, they’re so old.” Then almost immediately after that, they’re just in the story.
The storytelling is so rich, the Duffers are so damn good at what they do. It’s just so compelling that whatever qualms you have, or whatever initial, for lack of a better word, bitchy comments, “Yes, but they’re getting too old,” or whatever. The continuity doesn’t work. You just get wrapped up in the storytelling, because the Duffers are such good storytellers. I just think you’re going to have a wonderful time watching the season.
Continuity-wise, even though the kids have grown up, the funny thing about me is I lost a ton of weight for this role and then we started shooting in February 2020, and I have lost a ton of weight. Hopper, you’ll see, has a pretty dramatic reveal of how much weight he’s lost. Then we shut down for a year. I didn’t shoot for a year and three months.
It was hard to maintain that level of starvation. You’ll see that even me, there was a couple of continuity things with the size of my cheeks. I think that you’ll only be really watching those things if you’re that type of litigious person, and I don’t think our fans care that much. I think they want to watch and care and love the story.

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Dimitri: Absolutely. How did you lose weight? Did you hit the gym or did you have a special regimen to keep the weight off? I’m asking for myself.

David: Exactly. You want tips?

Dimitri: Yes, please. [laughs]

David: It was funny. I tried all kinds of different things, and there was one thing that really works. It’s called, not eating, and it sucks. There’s been this trend in intermittent fasting, and I used to do that, that didn’t help. Then ultimately, it just gets more and more severe, where you just live with hunger. I did go to the gym. I just try to stay in shape, but it’s more about not eating a lot of food. It sucks because I like to eat food very much.
It’s something where if you’re going to make a piece of art that hundreds of millions of people are going to see, it’s worth it to be hungry for a couple of years to create something that’s authentic, and real, and beautiful, and that people will relish for years to come. It’s like, whatever, it’s a year and a half of my life where I got to be hungry, so it’s totally worth it. That’s the secret, don’t eat.

Dimitri: Thank you for the advice. I snowboard, this season I actually lost some weight over the winter because I went to the mountains every weekend.

David: That’s good. That keeps you in shape.

Dimitri: Duffer Brothers are brilliant. You mentioned it on a number of times today. Those guys are just completely on a different planet. Do you think some crazy possibility that we will see some spin-offs?

David: I know that Season Five, they’ve announced to be the end of our show Stranger Things. I know there’s going to be a clear ending. There’ll be one more season after this, which we’ll start shooting later this year, or early next year. Then that’ll be it for Stranger Things but I do know that Netflix plans, at least one, possibly several, spin-offs. I do know that these characters can and there’s a real hunger for them to exist in other ways. I think the big flagship show will come to an end. It’ll be a very satisfying ending because I think from the very beginning we never wanted to be one of these show that after a season, season eight, or some people are, oh, that show is still on TV.
I know COVID killed us in a certain way but I think we’ve always wanted to be one of these shows where it’s, well, this is a full 48-hour movie that’s going to have a clear beginning, middle, and end. I know that season five is the end of the flagship, but I can’t imagine– Netflix loves these characters, they love this brand in a certain way. I think they’re going to want to do spin-offs and all things. We’re definitely going to be involved in some of that. I’m sure some of that will be interesting.
Also, I’m really interested to see what they want to do next because I mean, the great thing about them is, this has been a great project, and people love this. Also, they’re just great directors and great storytellers. I know they have things up their sleeve that are just going to be other great movies. I mean, you don’t want Chris Nolan to continue to do Batman spin-offs. You want to see Inception or whatever he comes up with, its fucking nuts. I think that the Duffers will have the same thing. I think you’ll see their next movie, and you’d be, whoa I thought I like Stranger Things but this thing is nuts.

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Dimitri: That’s amazing. I mean you’ve got other projects with Netflix as well. You have We Have a Ghost coming up with Anthony Mackie. He was actually one of our covers as well last year. I’m glad that you’re joining our cover stars.

David: You guys do beautiful stuff. I love you.

Dimitri: Thank you. I wish we were doing this interview after the photoshoot because I could ask you some stuff about the shoot, but I hope you enjoy working with Mike Ruiz. He’s such an amazing photographer.

David: His photos are great. Can’t wait.

Dimitri: About We Have a Ghost with Anthony Mackie, that’s another Netflix project. Sounds like a really fun family film. Are you excited about changing yourself in a different pace?

David: There’s a lot of new stuff coming down the pipe that you’ll see announced later on years. Yes we have a ghost. I’m not exactly sure when it’s going to come out but it was a really interesting project. I read the script, and it’s very unique. What I get to do is very unique, and strange, and very different from what I normally do. Then this director, Chris Landon, he made a movie called Freaky. It came out during the pandemic, which heard a little bit but it was a really interesting, fun movie. He is a very fun, interesting, unique director again.
It’s the thing that didn’t quite fit in any boxes and that’s what I really liked about it was, because I get — I mean, certainly now that Hopper has become so popular. I think a lot of directors and people want me to play Hopper in various iterations of Hopper. I think this was something that came across that was just so different. I mean if you’ve you seen some of the photos it’s, there’s just this crazy outfit, this crazy thing and yes, I’m excited for everybody to see it.
I don’t want to say too much about it because I don’t know what they want me to reveal or not reveal. I’d rather have the director talk about it. It’s really an interesting, unique project. It’s different from a lot of things that I see.

Dimitri: You were in other Netflix film with Chris Hemsworth – an action film Extraction. Do you enjoy changing styles and moving from one gender of films to other?

David: Yes, and then there’s another– I don’t know if they made this, I think they made the announcement they were shooting it. I think end of this year, also, there’s another project called Violent Night, which is Universal, that’ll come out sometime this year. Yes, that’s a different beast with a theatrical release.
I mean I love the family I’ve made at Netflix. I really think that certainly at the beginning of this show, they’re taking risks that no one else was taking, and they were letting people do things that no one else was doing. I want to be a part of that and I want to be a part of them continuing to do that because I think there is the potential there to do all interesting projects.
That’s why they sent me, I thought Extraction was really fun and interesting and different action genre compare to We Have a Ghost, I think there are a lot of projects certainly around in Netflix, that I want to contribute to that direction and network. I think the network, or that whatever, the streamer. I think that’s the way they see me as well. I’m happy that those two align because I really do like when they’re taking a risk and doing those fun projects.

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Dimitri: How do you feel about Netflix revolutionising how we consume new films and bindge-watching film-like projects Stranger Things? I mean you, including the Stranger Things have really created that phenomenon. You’re just have to consume it almost at once, even logical you understand that its not going to go anywhere tomorrow and you can resume but no you can’t stop it. [laughs]

David: No, you can’t. You got to get to the end of it. I mean, it so sad, too, because we work on this thing. We worked on this sequel for three years. Then you sit down, and I’m going to watch the same way, I’m going to watch that thing. I think it’s going to be 12 or 14 hours long or something. The episodes are much longer. I’m just going to sit down a binge the shit out of that thing and then I’ll be done. I have to wait another fucking two years. It’s horrible. It’s a really fun way to experience a show because you experience it as this epic movie in this world that you live in with these characters. You get to laugh and cry with them and be invested in them for such a longer period than a movie. I really love that way of consuming content as well.

Dimitri: I love it. Absolutely love it. I’m glad that you’re part of this phenomenon which now pretty much every other studio is catching up to, but you were definitely at one of the early stages of the Netflix binging. Do you enjoy being part of Netflix family?

David: It’s such a Wild West time of streaming right now. Feels like everybody is starting to get into this market. When Netflix started, they were really the originator. I mean, it’s not called Disney Plus and chill, it’s Netflix and chill.
It’s like the Kleenex of tissue paper. I think that they’ve really risen now. They’re at a place where there’s so much competition from all these different streamers that are trying to define themselves. I didn’t think that Netflix is working in a different way to reinvent or to redefine themselves going forward, even though they are still the monolith.
I mean, what I liked about my position there is that I get to work with really smart people and then I also get to help, guide the direction of the streamer by the projects that they offer me and by the projects that I like to choose to do before them. I would really like to see them move into really risky, interesting content that I love. It’s this fun thing with the family where you get excited again, it reveals part of the back of the beginning of the interview. My controlling side. Above my also big, heart side, which is that I love them as a family and in that way, I want to be provocative with them as well or be like, “Come on. Netflix. This is where we should be going.”
This the content that the people want. They want the Stranger Things. They want the really rich, complex content. Like any family situation, I love them and I want to be with them and also, I want to help guide the direction as well, so it’s a very close relationship that I have with Netflix.

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Dimitri: That’s amazing. You have the play coming up. This is a completely different ballgame compared to acting on screen. There are no second takes on stage. Do you enjoy being on stage?

David: I was primarily a theatre actor most of my career. I’ve done seven plays on Broadway and numerous opera with plays and I was nominated for a Tony. Theatre has been my bread and butter and then films probably started coming along and then Stranger Things came along and I haven’t been on a stage for seven years or eight years because of the thing with success, opportunities that opened in film. A great thing about film is there’s you can pay your rent, finally. Whereas theatre, it doesn’t pay you as much.
I have say, I’m very excited for this play. It’s this writer Theresa Rebeck who’s such a brilliant, strange, sensitive, funny, dark playwright and it’s with Bill Pullman who is one of my favourite guys. I’ve wanted to work with him for years. I think the work that he does on the center is so damn extraordinary. I think he’s one of these actors and so many of them are who are getting better as he gets older and it’s so I look up to him.
The thing is, I’ve dying to get back up on stage because you’re right. There’s no second takes but what there is on stage is there is a freedom of each night it’s different. It’s like a soccer game, each night there’s an electricity to what happens. Even though the lines are the same, Bill and I are very committed to this idea that every performance should follow its own path. We’re all going to the same place but like a river, it’s going to bend as it does that particular night, which is every day with the audience and with whatever we’re experiencing on stage. There’s a truthfulness to the actual event quality of it.
The great thing about theatre is you could be there the night that something really wild happens and you could be and therefore you’re part of that. I think that’s so wonderful. It’s like you don’t need a second take because each take that you do is so unique and you’re not really. You don’t invest in a certain goal but the framework for that goal is so wide that you can create a unique experience each night even with the same text and that to me is the power of theatre is that you see it on a Tuesday and it’s electric in a certain way.
Then you see it on Friday and it has a certain sadness to it that you didn’t see and then Sunday matinee, it’s really funny. Theatre has a malleable quality to it that I am mercurial quality that I adore and has always been my bread and butter. I’m also just a big, physical guy. One of the things Theresa loves about me and she said it. She’s like, “You get really loud and big and it’s really exciting and scary.” Something like you really get to see and feel the size of me on a stage, which you don’t really on film and I love being able to be that expressive, be that big as a human being. I’m dying to get there and do it. I haven’t on a stage in seven years but I am just dying to do it.

Dimitri: It will be amazing to see on stage because like, as you said yourself it’s a totally different environment. We haven’t had any human interaction for 2 1/2 years. We’re kind of getting back to normality. We’re still learning how to talk to and see people three-dimensionally again.

David: I know. I know. That’s one of the things. The hunger for the live experience I certainly haven’t. Just going out to restaurants is being around people and breathing their air. It’s something that we’re just still so terrified of but it’s necessary to get close to people or at least for me as a human being. Be able to see a mountain and see a whole place to express something.
That’s going to be one of the wonderful things to jump right back in there. I really need to get in there and tear it up with another human being and I need a group of people to watch that happen. It’s just something that’s been so vital and you’re right. It’s been like I’ve been emaciated for two years because I haven’t been to the theatre. I’ve been starved for it.

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Dimitri: If you had a chance to give your younger self a piece of advice, what it would be?

David: [laughs]. It’s a great question. It’s funny because first of all, I don’t think that I would have been able to achieve the things that I’ve achieved without making the mistakes that I made. My natural inclination is to go back to my younger self and say, “Don’t make these mistakes,” but I feel like it’s like having a kid who’s really nice and really does all the right things. It’s that kid sucks. You want the kid whose and when they’re a teenager they’re going to lie to you and they’re going to act out and they’re going to tell you, you’re stupid.
There’s a joy in that and I think there was a joy in the fact that I don’t get to control the mistakes that I made and when I made those mistakes. I would just say, to my younger self, “Try to be less hard on yourself and try to allow yourself the space to just be, to make mistakes and to not feel you have to be perfect. To feel you’ve not done anything at a certain time and just enjoy the ride, not be so hard on yourself.” I think that would be the only advice I’m giving you.