David Harbour opened up about the “mistakes” and “slip-ups” he’s made over his 50 years amid his divorce from Lily Allen and rumors of an on-set complaint filed by his “Stranger Things” co-star Millie Bobby Brown.
In an interview with Esquire Spain, published Saturday, the “Stranger Things” star discussed if there was anything he’d change personally or professionally about his life, during which it appeared he was addressing his relationship with the singer-songwriter, noting that all events of his life are just part of the “journey.”
“That’s such a hard question – the question of regret, or something,” Harbour explained. “I would change either everything or nothing.”
“You either accept your path completely and realize that even the pain and the slip-ups and the mistakes are all part of the journey, and that there’s truth and growth, wisdom and deeper empathy and connection in all that,” he said. “It’s kind of like a house of cards, the minute you try to change one thing you kind of have to change it all.”
He also mentioned that when it comes to being an artist, being creative often means incorporating events from your own lived experiences so that you can pass them on to others for them to have a “cathartic response to their lives.”
“If you’ve never been through anything, what do you really have to offer?” Harbour went on. “If I were to change anything, I’d change everything, and just make my life happy and silly and like, whatever, and then I wouldn’t be an artist anymore. And that would suck.”
With that, he added that he plans to create “more stories that are complex and rich” that make audiences feel every emotion.
“There’s personal stuff that I want to do, and people that I want to love, and be good to and nurture, things like that,” he said.
Harbour’s remarks come a little over a week after Allen shared that Harbour broke their “agreed-upon boundaries” while married. The pair met in 2019 and married in 2020, and the singer moved herself and her daughters to New York.
Allen’s fifth studio album, “West End Girl,” is largely focused on the end of her four-year marriage to Harbour. Though Harbour has yet to directly address any of her accusations, Allen made her case: she and Harbour had an open marriage, and the actor still violated a lot of their rules.
“There are usually agreed-upon boundaries in relationships,” she told The Times in an interview published Oct. 25. “But whether those boundaries are adhered to or not is becoming a grey area all of a sudden. Dating apps make people disposable and that leads to the idea that if you are not happy, there’s so much more to choose from — right in your pocket.”
The actor is also in hot water for rumors surrounding an alleged complaint filed by Millie Bobby Brown on the set of “Stranger Things.” The Daily Mail reported that Brown, who plays Eleven/Jane Hopper on the hit Netflix series, was said to have included “pages and pages” of accusations in her filing.
The news was exclusively reported Saturday by the British newspaper. TheWrap’s requests for comment sent to Netflix, series creators Matt and Ross Duffer, and reps for Harbour and Brown were not immediately returned. Harbour reportedly faced an internal inquiry, the outcome of which is unknown. The Mail said none of the complaints were of a sexual nature.
