In today’s cover story segment on the Daily Variety podcast, Variety’s Daniel Daddario details his time with David Harbor, who is navigating one of the most difficult transitions of all: stepping down from his career-making role as Jim Hopper on Netflix’s Stranger Things after five seasons. And Marc Malkin provides an overview of Taylor Swift and Joan Cusack’s red carpet look at the premiere of Disney’s Toy Story 5.
Harbor made headlines last year when his ex-wife, singer and actor Lily Allen, released an album with poignant lyrics about their marriage, which ended in early 2025. Harbor, who remained largely silent during the height of the controversy following the release of Allen’s album West End Girl last October, used the interview to share her views.
Daddario said Harbor seemed to have a very clear eye on what he wanted to say and what he didn’t want to say about Allen and the whole experience.
“I was struck by how calm and collected he seemed to be in explaining his experiences to me. Fortunately, part of what works here is that he’s a very thoughtful person and has spent a lot of time over the past year working on things out of the public eye on his own time. He’s able to talk about it in a very articulate and thoughtful way,” Daddarios says.
“He had no ambiguity about where the boundaries were. You might expect someone who’s still undecided about how far they want to go about something to be fidgety. There were probably no-go zones, not because they were so sleazy, but because he wasn’t a major celebrity this far into his career,” he says. “He never expected this. As a theater actor in New York, even as a character actor in Hollywood, he expected to have a private life where the media wasn’t interested in him. And now that the media is interested, he doesn’t want to talk about it. He never spoke condescendingly or negatively about his ex-wife Lily Allen, and I think it was easy for him to stay unfazed when he was put in that position, because he knew what the bright lines were for him. ”
At the Toy Story 5 premiere, actor Cusack explained why he has been away from Hollywood in recent years. She enjoys running a gift shop in Chicago.
“I’m so honored to be able to work in this industry for so long, but it’s also great to be able to live my life, raise my kids, be in Chicago, and be a normal person,” Cusack told Variety.
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