This week’s Take Ten guest is David Harbour. With an Emmy nomination for his role in HBO Max limited series DTF St. Louis, we get into some special memories from that show, plus he reveals the prop he kept from the Stranger Things set and even sings his go-to karaoke tune from The Lion King…
Add to that, we find out which of his past roles he’d prefer that you skip over, and some details of his experience in an acting program at Northwestern University with Pedro Pascal.
As a producer and star on DTF St Louis, Harbour felt an especially deep connection to the show, which explores a darkly funny love triangle between his character of Floyd, a sign language translator, weatherman Clark (Bateman) and Floyd’s wife Carol (Cardellini). In fact, Harbour calls it “one of my greatest working experiences”, saying, “I think DTF opened me up. It’s the first thing I produced. And it opened up a whole new world of being able to speak about what I feel like are contemporary neurosis in an artistic way.”
He also leaned into Floyd’s America Sign Language skills. “It’s very powerfully done in the show,” he says. “Whenever the sign language comes on, I just think your attention just goes laser focused. It’s really an incredible language and it’s an incredible tool to use cinematically too.”
“I don’t know if you know, but the last 10 years of my career, I’ve been working with a lot of kids, Harbour says. “And I finally worked with a couple of middle-aged individuals like myself. And it was really nice to sit around and talk about middle-aged stuff with middle-aged people.” One moment that sticks in his mind as a favorite? “With Jason, it would be that scene in the bath house… the 15-page scene with us in our tighty whiteys dancing around was… It just sounds weird that that’s how you tee it up. And then you go, ‘It was the greatest artistic night of my life.’ But it really was. It’s a beautiful piece of work.”
Millie and I, I think we wanted to bring you something with the chemistry of [Hopper and Eleven], of me and her, that will surprise you and that will be rich, and have that deep emotion, but also be just wild. So I’m really excited to be back with her.
After spending that 10 years “working with kids” on Stranger Things, Harbour is looking forward to reconnecting with his former co-star Millie Bobby Brown in a new spy thriller written by Adolescence scribe Jack Thorne.
“One of the most beautiful things about [Stranger Things] was people love that show and they loved Hopper and Eleven. They loved that relationship. I think the guys did a terrific job on Season 5, but I just don’t think you could pay off that relationship in the way that people wanted it to pay off. I just don’t think there’s a way. And so Millie and I, I think we wanted to bring you something with the chemistry of these two, of me and her, that will surprise you and that will be rich, and have that deep emotion, but also be just wild. So I’m really excited to be back with her. I love working with her. I’m really excited about Jack, I think he’s a brilliant writer. A24 is producing with us. It has a lot of stuff to say about this modern contemporary world we’re living in as well that I’m really excited to keep doing.”
Coming up, we’ll see Harbour as Red Guardian in Avengers: Doomsday. What can he tease about that? “You know that Yelena Belova [Florence Pugh] and Red Guardian have a connection. If you saw Thunderbolts*, you know how much they love each other and how much they’re trying to help each other. And Doomsday will affect that relationship,” he says.
There’s also the prequel film John Rambo on the horizon, with Noah Centineo as Rambo and Harbour as his commanding officer Major Trautman. “Oh man, you get that call and it’s like, I had to do it,” Harbour says. “The director [Jalmari Helander] is amazing… I also think they cast a really great guy in the lead. I met Noah and he has this very Stallone feel to him in the best way.”
To watch the interview, click on the video above.
