David Harbour ‘won’t engage’ with reports about end of marriage to Lily Allen
By Charlotte McLaughlin, PA Senior Entertainment Reporter
Actor David Harbour has said he will not engage with “hysterical hyperbole”, while appearing to address reports of the end of his marriage to Lily Allen.
The Stranger Things actor and the British singer had been living together in New York, before Allen seemed to talk in January about rumours of their relationship ending.
Harbour, 50, married Allen, 39, in 2020 after a year of being romantically linked.
The US actor told GQ Hype he is “protective of the people and the reality of my life”.
“There’s no use in that form of engaging (with tabloid news) because it’s all based on hysterical hyperbole,” he added.
Harbour said it “seems kind of silly to say this, but the art that I’m creating is about you” and about fans’ “experience of life”, and not the actor on screen.
“I think, for me, it’s dangerous, too, to get lost in the personality in any way,” he said.
“Whether it’s good or bad, it’s the same thing. It’s the same feeling: it’s this feeling of grasping and permanence. It’s this feeling of like, ‘Oh, now they love me. So do you like me now? Do you like me now? And what about now? And it’s, oh, now they hate me. Well, you hate me now. Do you hate me now?’
“It’s, like, whatever. I’m human. I’m working through stuff.”
He played police chief Jim Hopper in science fiction adventure Stranger Things, and he said its fifth and final season being aired later this year will see a “tremendous amount of change”.
“You can deny this change, be afraid of this change, you can kind of be chaotic about it and, like, eat your way through – whatever you need to do,” Harbour said.
“The best thing that I can do is take all of that experience and pour it into work, because my experience, no matter how awful or great, will always be useful to someone else if it’s channelled through art. I can always be of use. And so that’s what I’m doing.”
In January, Allen announced she was taking a break from BBC podcast Miss Me? which she hosts with her friend, TV presenter Miquita Oliver, saying her mental health was “spiralling”.
She returned the next month saying she had been in a treatment centre for therapy to be her “strongest self” for her children, and she was working on a musical in Los Angeles.
Allen has increasingly turned to acting, appearing on the West End stage in 2:22 A Ghost Story, as well as in Sky series Dreamland and the West End revival of Martin McDonagh’s Olivier Award-winning comedy The Pillowman.
The daughter of Welsh actor Keith Allen, she began her musical career in 1998, and has had three UK number one singles and two UK number one albums.
Harbour has played Soviet superhero Alexei Shostakov (the Red Guardian) in Marvel movie Black Widow and Thunderbolts*, which is about to be released, and has played the title tole in fantasy action movie Hellboy.
Read the full feature online on GQ Hype at https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/article/david-harbour-interview-2025