David Harbour has made a living off of TV or film characters who serve as a catalyst to set off the lead actor. In Black Mass, he's the guy Johnny Depp's Whitey Bulger chillingly fucks with for so easily giving up his family's secret recipe for marinade. In HBO's The Newsroom, his character is taken down by a walnut allergy while on assignment, allowing Alison Pill's novice journalist to step on screen, and he is a golden boy physicist who bombs in WGN's Manhattan.

In the new 1980s-set Netflix series Stranger Things, which premieres on July 15, he is almost completely unrecognizable as Chief Hopper, a big-shot cop with a penchant for facial hair and large hats who moved to this backwoods town where nothing ever happens so he can complete his downward spiral of women, booze, and drugs. Unfortunately for him, his gut instincts won't let him ignore the pleas of a missing boy's mother (played by Winona Ryder) as he begins to believe that something supernatural might actually be afoot.

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Harbour took a break from rehearsals for his Shakespeare in the Park production of Troilus and Cressida in New York to talk with Esquire about filming a project set at a time when his own movie appreciation began, and why 1980s hairstyles are just as uncomfortable to wear as they are to look at.

What interested you in the role for Stranger Things? It's different from your other TV parts.

In its essence, it's kind of a sinful story. This conspiracy is a great egg you can crack. But what I loved about this character is he's such a complicated guy. I think you learn pretty early on that he had a kid who died several years ago from a terminal illness, and he doesn't really acknowledge her death. I just liked the fact that he was this cop who believed there's good guys and bad guys in the world, and yet he brought a child in the world and the child died and he has no one to blame but himself. He has this real self-hatred. That felt like the only way he could apologize to her was by killing himself.

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I always think it's sort of interesting to play characters that are difficult people in a certain way. He's a really difficult guy. You come to understand him more as the series goes on, but he hasn't dealt well with his daughter's death. He pops pills and he drinks and he messes around with different women, and he's not a really responsible guy. You start the story where you need a hero and this guy has gone to the last place you should look for that.

He doesn't believe Winona Ryder's character, Joyce, when she comes to him saying her son is in danger. He's not that great of a cop until he has to be.

The whole idea was at one point he was a big city cop and then when his daughter died, he came back into this small town to basically kill himself. He wanted the position and the salary and somewhere to go during the day, but his shtick with dealing with the world is to be charming and sort of see what he can get away with.

This is a much more high-profile TV part for you than your work on HBO's The Newsroom or WGN's Manhattan. How does that feel?

It's a very exciting step for me. We'll see how it pans out. I've been involved in projects where people think it's the best thing ever, and then it goes nowhere. You kind of have that at bay and just kind of serve the story and do it as best you can.

It's funny, once we got on set, the Duffers are just these adorable little film geeks. What I really love about the project is…sometimes when you watch something that's high profile, you can kind of smell the actors after a take going "good job" and the directors and producers all patting each other on the back. I think this has an earnestness and purpose, and we're all trying to tell the story and serve the material. I think that kind of comes through. It didn't feel like this was a big deal. It felt like we were earnestly trying to tell a good story.

I'm not a name or anything, and I think it's really awesome that Netflix wanted to hire a bunch of actors that they believed in and wanted to take risks on that. They're taking a chance on me; they're taking a chance on the Duffers. It's really amazing on a high-profile network like that.

Netflix

Netflix is also very much into the retro genre. They even recently announced they're making a reboot of the sci-fi seriesLost in Space. And your show kind of plays into that nostalgia feel too, as it's a 1980s supernatural crime drama that follows around a pack of teenage boys. What do you think about the way the Duffers have created a modern show that's set in the past?

I think it's kind of amazing. I think it's sort of an untapped thing. People are comparing it to the [J.J. Abrams] movie Super 8. But [Steven] Spielberg kind of created a mythology around the American thing of that era: the small town in the Midwest that is encountered by aliens and government conspiracies. That, to me, feels like a very American, Spielbergian mythology that we're picking up.

But as the way that that people retell stories—like Shakespeare would take ancient myths and retell them—the Duffers grew up with this mythology and kind of made them their own. I think that's really exciting and really thoughtful.

Did you grow up watching films like that?

I saw Raiders of the Lost Ark, like, 13 times in the movie theater. I made my grandmother go with me. I remember she would take me because she liked the air conditioner. Raiders of the Lost Ark and Jaws and E.T. and all of those Spielberg movies from that era—that was my film upbringing. It's interesting to play a leading man in his 40s who is of the era from when I was watching Roy Scheider or Harrison Ford play these guys. Movies really do affect you, especially when you're young, and I certainly learned what it was to be a man from some of their performances. It's really interesting. Now I can do that in a certain way.

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OK, we need to talk about your beard in this show. It's pretty awesome. How did you and the hair and makeup department come up with this?

It's funny. It was longer when I started because I had grown it for something else. But that hat the costume designer had designed by this guy in New York because I wanted him to have an iconic hat. I love hats like the porkpie hat in The French Connection or the fedora in Indiana Jones, so we came with this open road hat—a kind of hat like Eisenhower used to wear. We thought it might be something that maybe his grandfather had worn and had been passed down by generations of cops.

Then we had this beard and it was out of control and you couldn't really see any of my face. We trimmed it down. I love the stubbly look and it gives my face more definition. And then we had the hair. Everybody was very concerned that we had this long, over-the-ear hair, which feels horrible when you have it that long, but it's still period. That was the worst part, I think, having to keep my hair that long. That was very annoying.

Are you striving to be completely unrecognizable in this role?

I've donned a lot of different looks. I love actors that have a lot of fun—I always think of Sean Penn as a hair-based actor—and I like to do that as well. I want people to get lost in the character and to really not see me at all.

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