It’s been a decade since Stranger Things star David Harbour stepped into the shoes of Chief Jim Hopper — but it seems that he’s finally ready to be hanging up the badge.
“You get to a certain point where you’re like, ‘How much more story is there?’ You’re having to play a lot of the same beat,” Harbour told Scarlett Johansson during a conversation between them for Interview Magazine. “And there’s a feeling where you’re like, ‘I want to take a risk. I want to do something that people haven’t seen me do before.’ So yeah, after 10 years, it’s like, ‘Okay.'”
That said, it was definitely a truly exciting experience for him in the early days. “When I started, I loved it so much,” Harbour explained in the chat. “Buddies of mine who’d done TV shows for many years said, ‘By season three or four you’ll be running.’ And I was like, ‘Never! I love all these guys so much.'”
It makes sense that Harbour would be having this particular conversation with Johansson, as both of them have spent time in enduring franchises. Harbour has been part of the Stranger Things universe from the beginning, but he is also a Marvel alum as well, having portrayed Red Guardian in Black Widow and again Thunderbolts*. In the chat, she noted that she also had feelings that her “identity” had been so deeply entwined with Marvel for many years, to the point where it hindered her ability to even change her appearance.
“It’s the same thing with this show,” Harbour noted. “There’d be certain seasons where you feel like, ‘I’m going to go in this different direction.’ But as you say, a piece of your psyche is occupied with this group of people and this storyline. I don’t paint my nails, but I get that idea of ‘I can’t get a haircut’ or ‘I can’t shave this freaking mustache.'”
Season 5 of Stranger Things, the show’s final season, is set to premiere on Netflix on November 26 — but this will only be the first part of that final season, consisting of four episodes. The next three episodes that make up part two are set to drop on Christmas and the finale episode will premiere on New Year’s Eve.
Photo by Roy Rochlin/Getty Images.
Lex Briscuso is a film and television critic and a freelance entertainment writer for IGN. You can follow her on Twitter at @nikonamerica.
