David Harbour Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters

I did have this feeling where I was like,

movies are fine to make a little money,

but I can't really, I don't love them.

And then I got the script for Stranger Things,

and I had this moment where read that script and I was like,

this is beautiful and this character is beautiful

and if they want me to play this character,

there'd be no way I could cynically show up

and sort of just like coast through it.

[upbeat music]

Stranger Things.

I'd always been a guy in movies who was like,

six or seven on the call sheet,

a real supporting player,

and I usually was the guy with the gun

who was running after Denzel or Liam Neeson

or whoever it was, either a cop or a villain or whatever.

And it was hard to put your heart into that stuff

after a while because you're seen a certain way,

you're edited together as a certain way,

and it just becomes a two dimensional thing.

And I always got into acting

to really create three dimensional characters.

And on stage, I could still create those characters.

You know, there was even a moment

where there was a big movie that they wanted me to play

like seven on the call sheet.

And I was like, No, I want to go

do 'Shakespeare in the Park.'

And they had people that couldn't believe it.

Hollywood can't believe when you turn them down.

But I did have this feeling where I was like,

you know, movies are fine to make a little money,

but I can't really, I don't love them.

And then I got the script for Stranger Things

and I had this moment where read that script and I was like,

this is beautiful and this character is beautiful,

and if they want me to play this character,

there'd be no way I could cynically show up

and sort of just like coast through it.

And then once I got it and I started working on it,

I found even more so.

If I was really going to play this character,

I had to just like put my whole self into it

in a way that was different.

And up until that point,

I had understood that Hollywood, or movies,

were certainly about kind of how good you look.

I don't have a lot of the components of that person

and that person hasn't gotten me very far anyway.

It's not like at 20-whatever, I was Chris Hemsworth,

so good looking and strong and fierce

that I was given these roles.

I was kind of a guy who's, they were kind of like,

Yeah, even when you're sort of good looking and in shape,

like we're not that impressed with you.

And so I was like, all right, I may as well,

because the one thing I can do is like, I can act.

And I was like,

I may as well just like throw my soul into this thing.

And I let myself go, like, I'm just going to eat donuts

like this guy would do.

And like go into this semi-depression

with this kind of clownish joie de vivre that he has

through that anger, I started smoking cigarettes,

and I was just like, I'm just going to play

the hell out of this guy.

And then I thought I'll be done

and I'll go back and just do plays.

And then it became like a huge success.

And I was like, oh wow, I can put my heart into things.

And that rejuvenated my experience of film and TV,

where I was like, oh yeah, you can tell narratives

that are important and that are three-dimensional.

David, you can do this.

And that was a beautiful experience for me,

and life-changing.

And then El, she just slams the door right in my face.

Uh huh.

You know, it is that smug son of a bitch, Mike.

He's corrupting her, I'm telling you,

and I'm just gonna lose it.

I mean, I am gonna lose it, Joyce.

Just take it down, Hopper.

I need for them to break up.

That is not your decision.

They're spending entirely too much time together.

My relationship to children in general has changed

and I think it's partially as a result

of playing this character of Hopper,

but also in relation to them.

One of the things I love about them so much

is just that they're actually kids,

like they're great actors as well,

but especially that first season,

they were so awkward and unaware of themselves.

I remember Finn, in particular,

would just like do this thing with his body

that only kids can do.

We understand cameras are on us,

but kids are still, I don't know what's going on.

I forget what it was like to be a kid, but it's just like,

you can't really control your body,

and I love that about them, that spontaneity,

and that purity, and that naivete.

In the beginning, I really tried to stay away from them

'cause I felt like Hopper

has a distant relationship with these kids.

And as the series went on, even the first season,

especially into the second,

I started to fall in love with them

and they really do feel like my family.

[upbeat music]

Hi.

[Mike and El] Hi.

And watching them grow up,

I was scared in the beginning, you know.

They got so famous and the papers do all kinds of things.

And now I'm so proud of all of them

in terms of their deft navigation of that world.

And it was incredible to watch along the way.

I mean, one of the funniest sweetest things

was after the first season,

Finn Wolfhard showing up in season two

and like trailing the Duffer brothers around

with headphones, wanting to direct an episode that season.

I was like, man, that is like a 14 year old kid, you know?

And he was earnestly wanted to direct

an episode of Stranger Things.

And I was like, yeah, that'd be amazing.

I'm not gonna let you give me any notes, Finn,

but yes, I would love to see you direct an episode.

What I wanted to say to you is that-

Uh oh, I think we're in trouble.

So yeah, I've been really proud of them

and it is this special relationship

because I occupied a time in their lives

that is so profoundly big,

like they were 11 to now they're like 17, 18,

and that period of your life is so big

and so I think I occupy a special place

in their lives as well.

Uh.

[El giggles]

You know what? Your mom called.

What?

Yeah, she needs you home right away.

Is everything okay?

I don't think so.

I do feel like when they show up on set,

they're like, Hey, David.

I do feel like there's a certain fear, respect of me,

that I no longer exploit.

I used to.

I just like that we have that place in each other's lives.

[upbeat music]

Hellboy.

Hellboy was an interesting experiment for me.

I still get a lot of love online in little DMs

and little ways for that movie which I really like now,

because the time it came out,

it was very poorly received and it hurt

because no matter what you're doing,

whether it's received well or badly,

I think you throw your whole self into it.

We were well-intentioned in trying to make

a new version of Hellboy that was as good as it could be

and not being compared to that.

Unfortunately, we were.

I sat down with Ron, I loved what he did in those movies.

I love those Guillermo del Toro movies

and we just wanted to try something different.

I thought there was supposed to be three.

[monster roars]

[upbeat music]

Whoa, whoa!

[monster groans]

[monster roars]

There was a lot of stuff that was left

on the cutting room floor in terms of my work on that.

I mean, I did a lot of work that we didn't ultimately use.

I wanted it to be very, very different

and whatever the constraints were around me

that didn't want that to be.

I mean, I had all of these things based on language

where Hellboy's natural tongue is demonic.

In fact, there are things like Anung Un Rama

that I felt like were demonic tongue.

And then, you know, people that learn language,

learn English at a later age,

like what those people are.

I had all this like intricate, detailed character work.

[speaking foreign language]

Google translate that, would ya?

It's just some, a friend told me, like a prophecy.

[dramatic music]

The most interesting the thing

about the whole experience for me,

I watched Frank Langella talk on a documentary

about being Skeletor in the He-Man movie

back in the '80s which, I think is the '80s.

If you haven't seen the He-Man movie,

it is quite an interesting movie

and Frank Langella's covered in prosthetics

and it's not a good movie,

but he worked with Joseph Campbell,

on like the mythology of that and coming up with a life

that he loved Skeletor.

He loved that character so much.

I have sort of a similar experience

to what happened with us with Hellboy

was like, I think the movie's fun,

but our vision and our passion for it was very high.

And then, you know, life winds up giving you

what life gives you, so it was interesting.

That's all I can really say.

How do you have hair on your tongue?

[upbeat music]

Black Widow.

Yeah, I just loved it.

I love Red Guardian, I love Black Widow,

I love that whole world.

It's sort of a combination and a culmination

of all these other things.

I mean, you have the enormity of the project,

which is this Marvel universe world

where the sets are the best possible sets.

The stunts, everything is just the best of all worlds,

and then you put, at the heart of it, Cate Shortland,

who is really an indie, very creative director,

who, in the past, has told some good stories

about women coming of age,

and that was a beautiful juxtaposition.

[Red Guardian chuckles]

Still fits.

Family back together again.

You got fat.

It's mainly water weight.

We had a lot of discussions about Red Guardian.

There's a lot of complexity there.

I mean, he is really kind of a silly guy,

but even the guilt around his own narcissism

and how he did fail his children is interesting,

kind of comes through in the movie.

I also liked the fact that I got really fat for it

and there's my favorite shot in the movie

is like I'm running out of this prison

and my belly is moving like this in front of me,

like a bag of ferrets, someone said to me.

It's not my own take, but yeah.

[upbeat music]

Revolutionary Road.

Movies still felt to me like a very foreign world.

I had no plans to do them.

My heart was really in New York theater

and I thought that was where I would be accepted as well.

And the fact that I was accepted was like a dream come true

and that's all I really wanted to do.

It's all my ambition was.

The interesting thing was Virginia Woolf

actually sort of led to the screen career.

Sam Mendes saw me in that play and called me in

when he was looking to put together the cast

for Revolutionary Road,

and it was one of the most incredible moments of my life

because I was just this theater actor in New York, you know,

done a little bit of film,

but I was certainly not known in any way.

And my agent told me I had a meeting with Sam Mendes

and I went in and I knew the book very well.

It was like one of my favorite books.

And I said, You know, amazing that you're doing this movie,

but I hope you don't mess it up

'cause it's a really beloved book.

And he said, Yeah, I hope we don't, too.

You're the only person I can think of in this role.

And I was like, What?

I was like, Who am I?

Like, I'm just some guy in New York like doing plays.

I mean, I can't believe out of all the actors you could cast

in a Kate Winslet Leonardo DiCaprio movie

that I'm like the only guy

you could think of in this role.

We're going to Europe, to Paris.

To live.

When?

In September.

But what for?

Because we've always wanted to,

because the kids are young enough, because it's beautiful.

I mean, really, Shep, you've been there. You tell her.

Yeah, it's a great city.

Throughout the years, my process has developed a lot,

and that production in particular was really kind of a blur

because I was so out of my element.

I had only known Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio

as being like a fan of these big, huge movie stars,

and so there I was like in scenes with them.

It was very confusing. I was sort of terrified.

So what are you gonna do, Frank?

Well, I'm gonna study and I'm gonna read.

I suppose I'm gonna finally figure out

what I wanna do with my life, Shep.

While she supports you?

Yes.

But my process in terms of starting to work on him

was that he had been a former military guy

and he prided himself on that

before he got lost in this suburban world.

And so even talking with the costume designer, I was like,

What would he be drawn to

in a shirt in the shop if he was,

and I thought he'd be drawn to more military type things.

And so we had like pockets on his shirt,

just little touches like that

because he really does have this life that he has

with these kids and this wife who,

and then he has this fantasy life with her,

which is about Paris, and, you know,

he talks about the way she smells like,

I think it's like fresh linen

and lemons or something, I mean.

What kind of man is gonna sit around

in his bathrobe all day, picking his nose,

while his wife goes out and works?

I don't know, Shep. I just don't know.

Why are you crying?

And there are moments where,

I mean, Shep, even in his name.

To me, it evokes a puppy.

It evokes like a dog.

And I think there were elements of that animal

kind of in him, this sort of faithful dog

who could get very angry and who could also be naive

and puppyish in a certain way.

And I just played with that with Kate.

April, this is what I've always wanted.

I love you.

[April] Don't say that.

The other great thing about him

is he just would reveal his inner monologue

and there was even a scene where I walk out

and I look over after my kids treat me like garbage

and I walk out and I look over our hill to their house.

In the book, he just sits there and he says,

I love you, April Wheeler. I love you, April Wheeler.

And he just repeats it and it's so beautiful

like he's almost practicing how he's gonna say it.

In the movie, they cut that out, and it's just him staring,

but we shot all that.

So there was a lot of playing around

with these different elements.

[gentle music]

Hi.

[upbeat music]

Brokeback Mountain.

That was really a very early movie for me, again,

and it was something where I didn't really understand

the medium as well.

I had known Jake Gyllenhaal a little bit.

You ever notice how a woman will powder her nose

before she goes to a party?

And then she'll powder it again once the party's over?

I mean, why powder your nose?

Just go home, go to bed.

I don't know.

He sort of understood that I didn't know that much

so he would sort of provoke me in various ways

to help me understand film in that way.

We'd be moving on and he'd say things like,

Ask for another, ask for another,

and I'd be like, What do you mean?

The director said he got it.

He'd be like No, ask for another.

You want it, just as for another.

He's got a little cabin down on Lake Camp,

got a house, a little boat,

said I can use it whenever I want.

We ought to go down there some weekend,

drink a little whiskey, fish some.

It was a little scene, so there wasn't a lot to go on,

but there was so much sort of packed in that scene.

You know, the short story itself was so rich.

I thought the movie was so beautiful

and it really wasn't about dialogue.

It was about these little moments that Ang would create

and allow to happen.

You could tell that the movie was built

on and all these delicate little moments,

as opposed to big scenes with lots of dialogue

and you felt that when you read it,

so it didn't matter that there wasn't a lot for Randall.

It felt very potent.

Get away, you know?

I feel like right from the very beginning,

they can tell that they both have these needs.

And even sitting on that bench was like a wonderful way

to be there with the other character

and just feel this need and Ang really let us play that.

I mean, when we shot it, it was very relaxed

in terms of how the lines played out or what happened

and we could really just sit there

and sort of take each other in

and take in the importance of this moment.

[upbeat music]

Quantum of Solace.

Quantum was a whole other level in movie-making

that I'd never been a part of.

The budget was like $200 million.

Showing up in London at Pinewood

and it was called B22 at that time.

It was the 22nd Bond movie.

They have their own stages, they have their own thing.

I went in and I saw they're set in some sewer with a car.

I mean, just the sets were so magnificent and huge

and the detail, I'd never really seen anything like it.

But you know, even in the magnitude of this,

the first day I got there, I talked to Marc Forster,

the director, who I just loved

because he was such a indie director in this huge sandbox

and had such love for even a smaller character

like Gregg Beam and really wanted me to play around.

But the first day I got there,

it was just Judi Dench behind glass,

like doing this monologue.

Like it was like three pages or something,

just talking to Bond on the phone

as she was behind this like computerized glass, I think.

Oh, hi, this is Gregory Beam, ma'am.

Hello, Mr. Beam.

I'm so sorry to keep you waiting.

We have no interest in Mr. Greene.

Thank you, Mr. Beam.

Connection terminated. He's a person

of extreme interest.

The great thing about it

was that Marc was such a indie director,

so he was really in it for the creativity

and the silly moments.

Especially with a character like this Gregg Beam character,

we played around with lots of different things.

I mean, I think at one point too,

there's a lot of stuff on the cutting room floor of that

that Marc and I just improv 'cause it's like, you know,

it's a James Bond movie.

We're not gonna like sit around this CIA guy, Gregg Beam,

for a long time, but there was a party

that Jeffrey Wright and I go to,

we go to the villain's like party at one point.

And I think I went up to some lady and was like,

Beam, Gregg Beam, you know, we were playing around

with stupid stuff like that.

Even though like, I think this is actually is in the movie,

but there's a moment where Jeff and I are talking

and he's gonna go meet Bond and I had a fly swatter.

Marc was like, Wouldn't it be great if you had

like a fly swatter and you could just like, you know,

and that was like a fun little thing like that.

So do we have an understanding?

Yeah, we do nothing to stop a coup in Bolivia

and in exchange the new government gives America

the lease to any oil found.

If it's oil you want.

Well you didn't find diamonds, did you?

[Gregg laughs]

But yeah, it was just this mega movie

that I had this minor role in,

but he really invested a lot and made him this silly,

intricate version of, I feel like of America to the Brits.

Like you have this super sexy British spy

who's got it all together.

And you know, even Jeffrey Wright on the lower level

of the American CIA is helping him out.

And then like at the top of the chain

is this kind of boorish, very loud, drunk and confident guy.

You don't need another Marxist

giving national resources to the people, do you?

No, we can hardly be expected to do something

about a coup we know nothing about.

I think the absurdity of all that was fun to play.

[upbeat music]

The Newsroom.

Elliot was great.

I really liked doing The Newsroom.

The problem that I had with The Newsroom

was that everyone was so intelligent in The Newsroom

and had such integrity and I kept fighting for Elliot

to be the guy who had no integrity and was not that bright,

but unfortunately Sorkin would give me lines, still,

that belied my intelligence.

Although, I think as the show went on,

he started to give me less of those lines.

There was a race for state rep in Hutchinson, Kansas,

that defies cliche.

The Democratic incumbent Jan Pauls is anti-gay.

Gay marriage?

Gay person, anti-gay.

Tonight, Jan Pauls faces off against

a Republican challenger, who's a pro choice,

pro gay rights railroad conductor named Dakota Bass.

There's no way I'm not spending the entire night

talking about this race.

I am.

I called it.

What you mean you call it?

I just told you about it.

Did you call it?

I- No.

I did call, okay.

You know, one of the most interesting things

is even the best newscasters out there,

the Walter Cronkites of our time

on whatever network it is you watch,

CNN or Fox News or whatever, all those guys, I mean,

a lot of the guys I've met and talked to

are underneath the table, you know,

texting their friends silly jokes.

I wanted Elliot to have that.

Like, I wanted him to be really interested

in his Twitter followers and interested in his brand.

And I liked that aspect in a show

where so many of the people were interested

in the integrity of broadcasting

and the integrity of journalism.

I wanted the other side of it,

which is that there's a lot in journalism

that is entertainment and that is not well-intentioned

by any means and is narcissistic

and I really wanted to play that.

And I think I got some of that in there

and Aaron was interested in some of that.

But in general it was a show sort of like The West Wing,

Aaron's very interested in this almost idealized version

of people with a lot of integrity in politics

and in journalism,

and I also see a different brand of person

in politics and journalism, and I really wanted to do that.

So I did as much as I could, but yeah, it wasn't a lot.

This is what I'm talking about, women and closets.

What about men and showers?

I've got an awesome shower. I love my shower.

Where's she keeping her clothes in the meantime?

My closet.

Where are you keeping your clothes?

The shower.

Oh, dude.

Aaron is a brilliant guy

and he's a guy who clearly, in college,

would write his papers right before they were due

because there would be days where,

I think I would talk to him too,

where we'd have a table read, you know, How's it going?

Table read in two days or something,

He be like, It's good, I gotta go home and, you know,

write 70 pages of the script, but it's good. [laughs]

I was like, Great, man. Good luck with that.

And you know, I think we even did have like a week or two

of shutdowns while he was working.

But I mean, I have a lot of sympathy for that

'cause I even look at the Duffer brothers

and the Stranger Things now, or I look at Aaron,

and it really is, he did have a writer's room

and they contributed a lot,

but it really is a very singular voice,

his shows and his movies,

and so he is doing a lot of the writing

and it's incredibly hard to write simply a one hour

of a television show,

but to produce 8 to 10 episode, 12 episodes,

of a television show is like, it's just really hard,

so I have a lot of sympathy for that.

And they also were very intense,

the script supervisors and the producers

were very intense about your saying of the dialogue

exactly as the dialogue was written

and that's the unique thing.

A lot of shows and movies that I work on, they'll be like,

Yeah, if you say something generally along those lines,

like, we're good.

There's one like I had a mini monologue early on

and it was something like half a page of like me,

like going at this thing.

And then we did a take and the script supervisor came over

and she was like, It's not someone, it's somebody.

And I was like, Man, in the middle of the speech,

like you just want me to focus on like someone, someone.

So it was very technical in that way.

They loved his words

and they didn't want you to change a single one of them,

the musicality was a part of it,

so that was very unique to that particular production.

[upbeat music]

End of Watch, that movie in particular

was a nutty experience for all of us.

I think the movie turned out very well

to the credit of David Ayer

And also Jake really threw himself into it.

One day the LAPD is gonna bend you

over your black and white

and they are going to [beep] you up the ass.

They are going to [beep] you so long and so hard,

you're gonna wanna eat your gun just to make it stop

and if you don't eat your gun,

and the [beep] somehow magically stops,

they're gonna give you freeway therapy.

We did a lot of police training.

We really went deep into this cop world.

We did also did the the PT type stuff

that they do when they're recruits.

We also got tasered as all police recruits do,

they get tasered and pepper sprayed

so they know what it feels like.

We didn't get pepper spray, but we got tasered,

and I will tell you that as a very unpleasant experience.

You kids have fun out there.

The LAPD's got a big [beep].

You got a big heart.

Thank you for sharing that.

Can't wait to get it up the ass.

In a sense, it probably adds to the flavor of the movie,

and also there were real gang members.

A lot of the extras were real gang members,

that David sort of knew in a certain way.

A lot of the cops in the movie are real cops

and there's a certain value to that.

In terms of my particular process, there was little value.

I think there is a metaphoric aspect to what we do

that really does not translate to real life.

I mean, there's a great like stopper quote

in Rosencrantz And Guildenstern

where the head actor comes out and says,

We're actors. We're the opposite of people.

And I do feel like it's kinda true.

Like me walking around as a policeman,

what I'll bring to it is something personal from my life

that can metaphorically relate to the policemen,

but me actually doing police stuff,

I can understand in a certain way,

but going too deep into it doesn't make much sense,

because I don't have a relationship to policing in that way.

Oh [beep].

Would you call for a rescue.

Don't move. Do not move.

What'd he look like? Where'd he go?

Northbound through the houses.

He's a Hispanic male, blue checkered shirt.

It's just a weird thing where sometimes

directors and productions get into the realism of things

so much that they lose sight of the fact

that I have no relationship to that particular realism.

What I have relationship to

is my personal metaphoric relationship to that.

In certain ways it's useful to understand procedure,

but it's really about a scripted character.

And so there's a weird play of those things that didn't,

the deeper you go into it, the less sense it makes.

[upbeat music]

The Equalizer.

This is an example of a heightened movie.

I suppose End to Watch really went for a kind of realism

that I sort of feel is better served

in the documentary realm.

So Equalizer is based on a TV show.

It has entertainment value.

It's kind of broader in its paint and its palette of color.

And I enjoyed that and yeah,

Frank Masters was more of a character in that way.

[beep] Why don't you get out of here?

Go [beep] yourself, you [beep] [beep].

You know who the [beep] you're dealing with?

I am a cop, you moron.

I loved Antoine Fuqua. I loved him.

And I really also, I didn't get to know him as well,

but I really like Denzel.

And I really learned a lot from Denzel on that movie.

I learned a lot that I brought with me

into Stranger Things, to be honest,

about a leading role in a film.

There was a stillness that he had.

All right, all right, all right. Whoa, whoa, whoa.

You're so [beep] nuts, [beep].

In terms of Masters,

he was really fun and wild to play.

I mean, he was just like a loose cannon.

One of the great things about Antoine, too,

is there's just tons of improv,

so most of the stuff that is mine in the movie is improv.

The whole scene with me and Denzel where he's handcuffed me

and I'm yelling at him, that wasn't even in the script.

And I even said to Antoine after we shot and I was like,

That's not going to the movie.

He's like, That's going in the movie.

I was like, Okay.

You know what, [beep] you, you [beep].

You have [beep] me so [beep] bad.

You did this, you [beep].

You hear yourself?

You did it to this badge, Frank.

You disrespected this badge, you understand me?

And also, that character was an exercise

in how many times and how many different ways

I could say the word [beep].

Antoine would say to me, he'd go like,

Oh man, it's like musical when you say it.

I'm like, you [beep] [beep] you [beep] don't [beep] and-

[beep] you, you [beep]. I got nothing, all right?

I got [beep] nothing. You hear me?

I got [beep] nothing because of you!

Just as many times as I possibly could.

I really liked that as well. It was fun.

[upbeat music]