Stranger Things' David Harbour Found The Upside Down Scenes Incredibly Hard To Film
"Stranger Things" has proven to be a consistently popular show for premium streaming network Netflix. Season 4, the latest entry, achieved massive numbers at 1.4 billion viewing hours. The forthcoming Season 5 will be the final chapter of the long-running series, which centers on the fictional town of Hawkins, Indiana. "Stranger Things" has expanded its scope throughout its run, shifting to different locations and adding more and more main characters to the fray while upping the threat levels.
One of the main characters is Jim Hopper (David Harbour), the chief of police for Hawkins. The heroic and often overly aggressive Hopper becomes something of a guardian for the show's younger protagonists, especially Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown). This eventually becomes something more akin to a father-daughter dynamic, which helps showcase the growth of both characters.
The core conflict of "Stranger Things" revolves around the town being invaded by monsters from another dimension, the Upside Down. Naturally, this leads to many plot elements that lead characters to travel to the Upside Down to fight the threat head-on. And, for Harbour, these scenes were some of the most complicated for him to film.
Harbour found the suits he wore during Upside Down scenes difficult to deal with
During an AMA on Reddit in 2016, "Stranger Things" star David Harbour was asked what the most difficult scenes were to film and what the most fun portions to film were, and when it comes to the former, his answer was pretty clear. During the Season 1 finale of "Stranger Things," his character Hopper is forced to go to the Upside Down to find and rescue Will Byers (Noah Schnapp).
During his time there, he and Joyce Byers (Winona Ryder) wear protective suits while exploring the dangerous world. For Harbour, wearing these suits was a big pain. "Most challenging was all that stuff in the upside down," Harbour said. "[S]uits were difficult, long days."
It's hard to imagine that filming in uncomfortable suits for an extended period is fun, so the actor's answer certainly makes a lot of sense here. While their use makes logical sense for the story, they can still likely be an annoyance for talent to use, so much so that viewers will probably note that few of the other characters utilize them on their return visit to the Upside Down in later seasons. And as for what was the most fun for Harbour, it all came down to the more action-oriented scenes, especially those involving him punching bad guys in the Hawkins Lab.