Stranger Things could have been a very different show if creators Matt and Ross Duffer had chosen an original casting choice for Chief Jim Hopper — and it wouldn’t have been Josh Brolin.
In an interview with “Happy Sad Confused” host Josh Horowitz posted Monday, the Duffers were asked to reveal who their “first choice” was for Hopper in the Netflix series. David Harbor himself asked them in a pre-recorded question that he shared with Horowitz.
“Hello, Brother Duffer,” Haber said. “I’d like to know about the casting process for Hopper. I’m pretty sure I was the second choice, but I don’t know who was the second choice. Maybe I was the third choice. But can you answer the question of how I was cast as Chief Hopper and who had to say no to let me play that wonderful, incredible role?”
Horowitz deduced that Josh Brolin was Hawkins’ first choice actor to play the police chief, based on clues from the Duffer family that he was one of Harbor’s friends.
“No, no, no, no,” Matt Duffer said. “No, it was Billy Crudup. It was totally different. Everything happens for a reason, right? So once it clicked into place, it was like, oh yeah. But yeah, Billy Crudup passed away. I don’t think he was on TV much at the time.”
Crudup currently appears on Apple TV’s “The Morning Show” with Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon, but he wasn’t a TV actor at the time. This was a huge benefit to Harbor.
“And, to be honest, David came in and one of the casting directors thought he was perfect for the role,” Ross Duffer said. “He came and read the book and did one take. We weren’t even there. We just watched the tape. And we knew it very clearly and instantly: This was Hopper. And we just cast him on the spot.”
Harbor played Chief Jim Hopper in all five seasons of Stranger Things, and co-starred with Winona Ryder, who played Joyce Byers, and Millie Bobby Brown, who played his adopted daughter Eleven.
