The relationship between David Harbour and Millie Bobby Brown has been put under a microscope after claims they clashed on the set of Stranger Things.
Harbour, 51, played Jim Hopper in the Netflix sci-fi series, a role for which he received two Emmy nominations, while Brown, 22, was catapulted to childhood fame when she burst onto screens as Eleven.
Despite Eleven being Hopper’s adopted daughter in the long-running programme, which dropped its fifth and final season at the end of last year, it was claimed that the actors were not pals during filming.
Reports emerged that the Enola Holmes star had complained about Harbour’s behaviour, resulting in an alleged internal investigation.
While Harbour’s name remains a strong presence in the media after ex-wife Lily Allen released her new album and accused him of infidelity, the latest harassment reports came as somewhat of a surprise, given he and Brown have repeatedly spoken positively about one another, publicly at least.
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What have David Harbour and Millie Bobby Brown said about each other in the past?
Harbour and Brown still follow one another on Instagram, which is leading fans to question what’s been going on behind the scenes.
What’s more, they’ve both praised the other actor in interviews.
Brown previously told Empire of her working relationship with her co-star: ‘David and I connected on another level.
He always looked out for me, and I always annoyed him like a daughter or a younger sister.
‘I was always trying to climb all over him, and he was always rolling his eyes and laughing at me.’
She went on to say: ‘I think that’s kind of how the El and Hopper relationship really started to develop in the show—it was mirroring our actual lives and our actual relationship.’
And from Harbour’s perspective, he, too, says he’s always had a paternal-style bond with his younger cast members, who are in their early twenties now.
‘They’re all pretty good kids,’ he praised to Esquire Spain when speaking about the likes of Brown, Ginn Wolfhard, Noah Schnapp, and Sadie Sink.
He added that he has high hopes for the futures of the talented ensemble: ‘I would love to see Gaten [Matarazzo] play King Lear when he’s 70 years old.
‘I would like to see those kinds of careers out of them.’
Regarding Brown specifically, in 2017, Harbour vowed to ‘protect’ her as she was thrust into the limelight at the tender age of 13.
‘I think she’s in the crosshairs of something extremely dangerous that nobody seems to be paying attention to’, he told People. ‘I think the developing mind, someone who gets this famous and has still a brain that is not fully developed, is an extremely difficult thing to navigate.’
Harbour added: ‘I hope that she gets the help that she needs. I know that I try to protect her as much as I can.’
He made the remarks as an onslaught of trolling was directed at Brown, who was forced to delete her Twitter account due to the online abuse.
Harbour went on to share his hopes that they would remain friends for years to come: ‘I want her to be an artist too; when I’m in the nursing home, she’ll bring me her Oscars, and I can look at them and stuff like that.’
Alleged harassment and bullying claims
Things took a turn at the start of November when it was reported that Brown had filed a harassment and bullying claim against Harbour before shooting began for the last season of Stranger Things.
It’s been said there were ‘pages and pages’ of accusations, with sources claiming that, after the filing, Brown ensured she had a personal representative accompany her on set for all of season five.
‘The investigation went on for months,’ one source told The Mail on Sunday.
Insiders clarify that the alleged filing against Harbour did not involve any sexual misconduct.
Harbour finally commented on the report in a wide-ranging interview with Variety this summer, describing it as ‘a weird thing’ that ‘came out in a weird way’.
He explained: ‘It’s a show that went on for 10 years. We worked together for 10 years during her formative teenage years, playing father and daughter.
‘I don’t know if people have families and friends that you spend a lot of time with for 10 years — you occasionally get in arguments, disagreements.
‘In families, it’s okay because you’re just in a disagreement and then you come back together. The problem with a billion-dollar show is that there’s just hundreds of people who want to get involved.’
Meanwhile, Brown had a similar explanation of events provided to the publication via email: ‘Obviously I changed so much from season one to season five and David was there through all of it. Over time, our relationship became much more collaborative creatively.
‘When you work with someone for that many years, we could really push each other emotionally in scenes. Even though the series has ended, there’s still a lot of gratitude. Getting to share that experience with him for so many years is something I’ll always remember and value.’
In that interview, Harbour hinted at a future working relationship with Brown, saying: ‘You’ll see more of me and Millie — 10 years wasn’t enough. There is a special bond there. I love her. She loves me.’
The proof is in the pudding, as the pair are now set to reunite for a new Netflix father-daughter spy show, with Adolescence writer Jack Thorne on board to pen the scripts.
Harbour will star as a disgraced ex-FBI agent-turned-security expert, who returns to the field when his estranged daughter, played by Brown, vanishes on a mission. So it’s a Taken type of TV show.
A version of this article was originally published on November 3.