While Lily Allen casts her estranged husband David Harbour in a pretty devastating new light in her confessional new break-up album, “West End Girl,” the British singer-songwriter wasn’t always so down on him.
Before Allen and the American actor separated last year, she even supported him during a particularly tumultuous professional situation that has just come to light. The Daily Mail reported over the weekend that Harbour’s “Stranger Things” co-star Millie Bobby Brown accused him of bullying and harassment before production began on the Netflix show’s fifth and final season. In the teen-focused, sci-fi mystery and horror show, Harbour plays a small-town police chief in the 1980s who becomes the legal guardian to Brown’s Eleven, a girl with psychokinetic and telepathic abilities.
Filming began on the fifth season in January 2024. Brown, who began the series at age 12 and who is now a 21-year-old global superstar, had a personal personal representative with her on the set as filming continued through December 2024, a source told the Daily Mail. The fifth season is expected to begin airing in the United States and the U.K. later this month and is expected to be one of Netflix’s most-watched shows ever.
Allen steadfastly supported Harbour throughout his “ordeal” in 2024, involving Browns claims, the Daily Mail said. Those claims did not include allegations of sexual impropriety, the Daily Mail reported.
“Lily supported him throughout it all. It was a brutal time,” the source said.
Allen might have other things to say now. She and Harbour reportedly split in December of 2024. That’s around the time she began writing “West End,” her first album in seven years, according to the Times UK. The British newspaper also said the album chronicles the demise of her four-year marriage to Harbour.
The Cut said that Allen goes into “vivid detail about Harbour allegedly breaking the rules of their open marriage and being a “sex addict.” In an interview with Times, Allen did not say that everything she poured into the lyrics — about cheating and vasectomies — necessarily happened. “I don’t think I could say it’s all true — I have artistic licence,” Allen said “cautiously,” the Times said. “But yes, there are definitely things I experienced within my relationship that have ended up on this album.”
Allen and Harbour had a whirlwind romance that began when they met in 2019. They married in Las Vegas a year later, with Allen moving to Harbour’s beloved hometown of New York. She brought along her children, Ethel, 13, and Marnie, 12, from her previous marriage to the builder Sam Cooper. Their new nuclear unit settled into luxe brownstone in Brooklyn, which was featured in the pages of Architectural Digest.
But amid whatever turbulence was happening the marriage, Harbour also faced allegations that he was mistreated Brown, for whom he claimed he developed protective feelings for.
“I think she’s in the crosshairs of something extremely dangerous that nobody seems to be paying attention to,” Harbour said at the 2018 Critics’ Choice Awards, according to The Cut. “Someone who gets this famous and has a brain that is not fully developed is an extremely difficult thing to navigate and I hope that she gets the help that she needs. I know I try to protect her as much as I can.”
Whether those protective feelings morphed into something intolerable to Brown is not clear. But there was an internal investigation at Netflix, according to the Daily Mail. “There were pages and pages of accusations. The investigation went on for months,” the Daily Mail source said.
It remains to be seen whether Harbour’s alleged personal and professional issues will overshadow the Season 5 rollout of “Stranger Things.”
“Netflix will never comment on an internal investigation, but the fact they’ve not denied it speaks volumes,” a Netflix source told the Daily Mail. “‘Stranger Things’ helped put Netflix on the map.” The show also made Brown and Harbour multi-millionaire stars, the source added.
“Millions of fans around the world have been anticipating the finale,” the source continued. “No one wants anything to take attention away from that.”
While the source said it was “unfortunate” that Harbour’s issues have come to light, just off ahead of the new season, the person also said: “It will be a theatrical event. Nothing is going to overshadow this, not even the leading man’s private life.”