David Harbour learned a lot about fatherhood thanks to his role as Jim Hopper on Stranger Things.
By playing a father figure to Millie Bobby Brown’s character, Eleven, Harbour learned what it meant to be a stepdad to wife Lily Allen’s two kids.
"TV definitely helped me in my life,” he said during a recent episode of the That Scene With Dan Patrick podcast.
"I'm very much a New York sort of city rat. I liked my freedom, my independence. And then it was really this part that did change a lot of that perspective," he explained.
"The show sort of opened my heart in a lot of different ways, and one of the ways that it did was it started to make me realize how thin my existence was without a family,” Harbour continued.
By “maturing into a father” on Stranger Things, Harbour felt it was something his “subconscious was crying out to do.”
"I think that's partially why things are so successful, because there's some unique alchemy between the performer and the role," Harbour said.
"I feel like there was something in Hopper that had a deep need for family, and there was something in me that had it, too, but that I wasn't even aware of."
"As I began to explore this role, the role allowed me to do that in my real life.”
