Actor David Harbour, who plays Jim Hopper, confesses in a new interview that he first believed season 1 of Netflix’s Stranger Things would be the last.
David Harbour confesses that he believed season 1 of Stranger Things would be the last. Harbour played Jim Hopper, the police chief of the sleepy Indiana town of Hawkins, in the science-fiction horror series that initially appeared on Netflix in 2016. Hopper’s inquiry into Will Byers’ (Noah Schnapp) strange disappearance uncovers a government plot involving a telepathic young girl, a parallel realm, and terrifying beasts.
When Stranger Things first aired, both reviewers and viewers hailed it as a huge success. Throughout its existence, the series continually broke Netflix’s audience records, making it one of the most watched programs on the streaming site. This happened dramatically lately with the release of Stranger Things season 4, which quickly rose to become Netflix’s most popular English-language series. Due to the series’ complete integration into all facets of contemporary culture, Stranger Things has received multiple Emmy nominations and wins, and its influence has even extended beyond television.
Harbour acknowledges that he believed Stranger Things would be canceled after season 1 in a recent interview for BBC’s The One Show (via Insider). He started to think throughout production that the show’s chances weren’t excellent, and someone on the set helped him think that way. See what the actor has to say about his initial impressions of Stranger Things below.
“I recall when the first season was being filmed. We were in Atlanta, and Netflix had allocated us approximately $20. We were filming episode four at the time, and I recall my hair stylist approaching me halfway through and saying, “I don’t believe it’s going to work.”
“By the time we ended, we wrapped, I believed we wouldn’t get a second season and would be the first Netflix program ever to not receive a second season. We said it would be a fiasco and that nobody would watch it.”
Although Netflix started providing streaming choices in 2007, its first original series, House of Cards, did not premiere until February 2013 on the service. Harbour is aware that there was some ambiguity about the future because Stranger Things was one of the first significant Netflix originals. It is natural that Harbour was unsure whether the show would be successful enough to merit a second season given its cheap budget and absurd concept.
This isn’t the first time the actor has talked openly about his initial concerns; only last year, he said that Paul Wesley, the star of the Vampire Diaries, had warned him that Netflix was attempting to bury Stranger Things before it ever debuted. Thankfully, it turned out that Harbour and Wesley were both mistaken.
Looking back, Stranger Things seems to have all the ingredients for success: a fair dose of nostalgia, overt references to ’80s movies and TV, and compelling performances. However, given the complexity of the series, if one of those elements had been handled improperly, Stranger Things may have ended as swiftly as it had begun. The fifth and final season of Netflix’s most popular series, Stranger Things, is now just around the corner for fans.
