When your career’s built on characters whose chief attributes of dependability and likeability are seen as extensions of your actual personality, there’s no room for error. Any revelation that challenges that image threatens it completely. David Harbour is finding that out.
First, he and his wife, Lily Allen, received a viral turn for their home in Architectural Digest. That was as good as it would get.
Then it was announced that the couple were divorcing. The reason? He managed to allegedly cheat—and have a multi-year affair—in an open marriage.
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Divorce is a virtual inevitability in Hollywood, and divorces for weirdo behavior don’t raise an eyebrow, much less a stink. “How dare you show your beautiful home to the world and then mar it with divorce?” was the general vibe. So things weren’t that bad, yet.
On Monday, a report surfaced that Milly Bobby Brown filed a multi-page report detailing bullying she experienced on he set of Stranger Things from Harbour. If true, Harbor won’t be able to get in his MCU Red Guardian suit and say something cheeky & endearing fast enough.
Brown, now 21, started filming Stranger Things when she was just 11. Worse, Harbour plays her protective adoptive father in the hit Netflix series.
This made the final season’s red carpet premiere where both actors were in attendance a highly anticipated moment — but neither seemed to address the rumor and appeared chummy enough, all things considered.
Both actors stayed mum on the topic, but co-creators of Stranger Things did not. When Ross and Matt Duffer were asked about the controversy by The Hollywood Reporter, Ross weighed in.
“Obviously, you understand I can’t get into personal on-set matters, but I will say we’ve been doing this for 10 years with this cast, and at this point they’re family and we deeply care about them,” Ross Duffer said. “So, you know, nothing matters more than just having a set where everyone feels safe and happy.”
The show’s director, Shawn Levy disputed the rumors after also using that very canned line about keeping everyone safe on set.
“I’ve read a bunch of stories and they range from wildly inaccurate to … there’s so much noise around it,” Levy told THR. “But the truth is that we view this crew and this cast as family, and so we treat each other with respect, and that’s always been bedrock.”
It’s likely we won’t get more details on what really happened until after the final Stranger Things episodes air, but ‘nice guy’ Dave Grohl might want to give David Harbor his crisis and image management deets.
