“Stranger Things”‘ David Harbour on Fame and Mental Health

DAVID HARBOUR, ACTOR: I mean, the world that I understood and the world that I came up in and what I wanted to be when I was 14 years old was, I wanted to be an actor, a la Gene Hackman, Roy Scheider, like guys that made movies, played different characters, did different things, were part of telling stories. And now I feel like there’s an entire world of branding and this sort of mesh of celebrity and actor, which is a whole different world than I grew up in. So I have no expertise in it. And I think that I have often felt like, as narcissistic as I am, I have often felt that my path is the path. And I guess, as I go further with these kids, I start to realize that it’s not, and that I have to, like, let go of these ideas that I thought make a good career or a good life. And so I have done my best to try to guide as well as I can and then to say, like, hands off, in terms of, this is a new world that is your world. And you have to define it for yourselves.

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, HOST: And isn’t part of that new world the fact that kids not just in this program, but in many others — and there are a lot of child actors out there right now, young adults — they are potentially having a pretty tricky, maybe even slightly dangerous experience with early fame?

HARBOUR: I, mean, I would say that’s true, I would say it’s a very tricky thing to navigate for anyone. I mean, I was lucky it didn’t happen to me until I was 40. And so I had a true experience of life and being able to go to the grocery store and make myself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, I mean, things like that. So, developmentally, to have that amount of attention and that amount of need, like, people really do need something from you, and that — I think it’s somewhat unfair to do to a child, not that it’s anyone’s fault. I mean, it’s like, these are great performances. But I even said early on to the press when we were kind of in the zeitgeist of awards and stuff, I was like, I wish you guys could just let them be brilliant and, like, leave them alone and not pay any attention to them, and not even give them a compliments, so that they can grow and learn and fail and risk and do all these things that I was allowed to do, because I think fame is in certain ways a prison. Because you do become a brand and you become something where people want something from you. And if you can’t deliver, if you risk and you fail, then it’s detrimental to your brand. And I would hate to — I hate to feel that way at 45, but I would really hate to feel that way at, like, 13.