David Harbour says he’ll focus on movies after ‘Stranger Things’ ends

The actor doesn’t want to be pigeon-holed as Sheriff Hopper for the rest of his life.

David Harbour is wary of getting stuck in the upside down.

As Harbour waits to shoot the fifth and final season of Stranger Things (currently delayed while the WGA waits for the AMPTP to return to the negotiating table), he is also ready to hang up his hat. Not just the one he wears as Sheriff Hopper on the Netflix hit, but also his brand as a TV more broadly.

“The first year of Stranger Things, I remember having a discussion with a publicist and her saying, ‘Maybe you don’t want to be associated with the show so much,’ and I was like, ‘Why? I love this show. I love the character,'” he told Insider in an interview. “And I do love the show. And I do love the character. But I don’t want to be just that character. I don’t want to be just that guy.”

“I’ve been on Netflix … but this was a small original movie that’s going to a cinema. A whole new world opened up for me with that,” Harbour said. “I like this playing field. I want to make original movies that go to the movie theaters.”

Harbour is intent on carving a space for himself on film, rather than spending his life under the shadow of Sheriff Hopper. “I think about George Clooney leaving ER,” he said. “Now we just see him as George Clooney. But there was a time when it was, ‘The guy from ER is doing a movie with Nicole Kidman.'”

“I’m trying to navigate some of that,” he continued. “It’s tricky because you don’t want to s— on the people that love you for this thing that you did that you also love. But at the same time, you kind of want to leave the nest. I got more in me. I got different stuff in me, and I want you guys to see that. I don’t want people yelling ‘Hopper’ on the street every five minutes the rest of my life.”

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