Creature Commandos: David Harbour on Bringing Humor and Horror to James Gunn’s Frankenstein’s Monster

Actor David Harbour is no stranger to comic book adaptations having portrayed the title role in 2019’s Hellboy, playing an antagonist in 2011’s The Green Hornet, and his ongoing role as Red Guardian in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Now he is one of the stars of Creature Commandos, the new Max animated series that kicks off James Gunn’s DCU.

Harbour voices Eric Frankenstein, a monster fashioned together by Dr. Frankenstein from various dead people’s body parts. The mad scientist also gave him a companion, The Bride (voiced by Indira Varma), who wants nothing to do with him, a rejection Eric seems incapable of recognizing let alone accepting. While he’s not the big bad of Creature Commandos, Eric Frankenstein is the driving force of the B storyline in the James Gunn-scripted series.

I chatted with David Harbour over Zoom this week about what makes his character Eric Frankenstein tick, the possibility of reprising the role in live-action down the line, and more. (This interview has been edited for clarity.)

IGN: I’ve watched the entire series and it’s so much fun. It’s really hilarious too, and your character, in a wonderful ensemble of crazy characters and great performances, there’s something uniquely goofy yet frightening about Eric Frankenstein. I was wondering if you could speak to why I might find it that way.

David Harbour: Yeah, I like that. One of the things that was interesting to me about him was that he was a monster that was created by a man to be the perfect man, to be this erudite, sophisticated thing, and we just failed completely. I think it does have some reflections of what we’re trying to do with AI or whatever. It just gets out of control, and it’s never going to be what we think it is. He has all the pretense of being this sophisticated, rational person, and then underneath it is just nothing but some other guy’s spleen and some other guy’s liver and just passionate insanity and hubris and narcissism and need. Deep, deep need. I think it makes for a great combination because even within one sentence you’ll have the beginning of it start very reasoned, and then it just goes out of control. I think that’s something that’s fun to watch somebody go through.

IGN: He also seems like he’s in perpetual arrested adolescent development. He’s got all the flawed qualities of a boy or teenage male trying to figure out how to work with girls and women.

David Harbour: Exactly. Exactly. But then he has the power of a monster and the ability to kill people, which is a terrible combination.

IGN: It’s like when you see a 6’4, 14-year-old or 15-year-old where you’re like, “Sweet, God. That’s not normal.”

David Harbour: Who deadlifts 600 pounds too.

IGN: Is Eric a commentary on incels? I feel like you could read it that way for sure.

David Harbour: I guess you could read it, yeah, any way you want. That wasn’t really a part of my process. I guess I’m sympathetic to him. He does make the wrong choices and is terrible, but the needs themselves … he was himself created by a man. It’s the thing that your teenager will yell at you, I guess, is, “I never asked to be born.” Eric has that same quality where it’s like, “I’m not even human. You cobbled me together.” It’s like, “At least give me someone that I can hold who’s like me.”

I think I have a compassion for him. Yes, he’s awful. He makes awful choices with what he does, but I always approach my characters with a deep compassion. Because I do think that they, even though they make horrible choices, they’re still trying to do what’s right and trying to get a happy ending. It’s wildly perverse. I’m more focused on the actual need itself than I am on the actions, which are [created] by the writer.

IGN: It seems like Eric can’t possibly fathom that maybe someone else might like him too. He puts all his eggs in one basket.

David Harbour: True. That’s true. He’s very single-minded.

IGN: You would think looking at it from the outside that Eric’s the big bad of the show, but he is actually a very fun and fascinating side story. Were you surprised by that when you started reading it? That, okay, he’s not out to destroy the world, he has a very specific and oddly personal throughline in the whole thing.

David Harbour: That’s the thing about this series in general and James in general is you don’t expect it, but you know that you’re in the hands of someone who wants to tell you a good story. I think that he’s not going to shortchange you on any of the characters. I’ve seen that in his work throughout when he was doing back in the day those early smaller movies. You see that this is a guy who really wants to tell you a good story. If it’s not going to be a good story, if it’s not going to be weird, he’s not going to tell it. It’s not going to be his movie. His monsters always have more complicated aims than just being villains or monsters. They always have a very human component to them.

Especially in this show, I feel like you start to dive into these characters and you start to feel things. You’re like, “Oh, that guy’s not a monster.” Then they’ll do something monstrous and it pulls you right back out and you’re like, “Oh, no. That guy’s a murderer.” I think the push-pull of those things is also what makes it exciting because there are real stakes. You never quite know. You could be feeling one thing, and then the character will show their true nature of violence right afterward. It’s fun.

IGN: My understanding is that there is a possibility then we could see you in live-action as Eric Frankenstein down the line. Do you find having played Hellboy too, do you look at this as a more slightly urbane take on what you were trying to accomplish with that character?

David Harbour: There are definite parallels. I hadn’t thought about it until you brought it up, but there’s definite parallels around his childishness. Hellboy, at least in terms of my iteration, seemed to be a kid who was trying to do good though, and trying to help even though he had this albatross of being half-demon. Whereas I don’t think that… Eric Frankenstein wants to satisfy himself. He doesn’t really care if it helps the world. I think there’s a big difference, but there are parallels. [Gunn and I] casually discussed what it could possibly look like [in live-action]. He was like, “You could do a CG version. You could do it part practical.” We’re in an interesting moment with technology and with CGI I feel like plays into it as well where I think we’re doing two things.

We’re certainly understanding the power of technology, but I think we’re also starting to fall in love with humanity again because we see things like that Coca-Cola commercial or the AI-created stuff. We’re just like, “This feels wrong. What is right?” I think there’s something about practical effects along with CGI, with some help from that, that really could be the way of the future where we still have human beings directing the thing, and we just use it as a tool. If it’s possible going forward, I think that’s the best way to go. I love monsters, and I love creating monsters. Even though Hellboy was not a very successful movie, it was fun to play dress up every day. Even though it was taxing, it was three hours of makeup, it’s still fun to be a little kid and dress up like a monster. It’s the best Halloween costume in the world.

For more coverage, read IGN’s Creature Commandos review, learn why James Gunn kicked off the DCU with an animated series, and discover what the voice cast told us about breathing life into the Creature Commandos.

Creature Commandos debuts December 5th on Max.