David Harbour Talks Running, His New Video Game Movie And The Best Season Of ‘Stranger Things’

David Harbour is now an avid runner. He has the COVID-19 epidemic to thank for his new hobby. Filming on productions like “The Last Jedi” was quite stressful during those days. Stranger Things Harbour began to experience anxiety attacks after the hospital was full.

“It was just a terrifying time,” he tells me over the phone. He went to his PT for help when it got so bad. “And what he recommended was 40 minutes, low heart rate, steady state cardio,” Harbour says, “which is not in vogue Running is a popular activity in the fitness industry, and it’s great for your body, heart, and mind. And so I started running and I run about 40 minutes, but very low heart-rate, like 135, generally for like 40 minutes and I found that—I thought I would have to do a lot of work with the anxiety—but instead your body just takes over and your breathing slows down and you just get into a rhythm and the mental things follow your body. And that to me is really simple and profound and it doesn’t take a lot of work and I really like that.”

We’re having this conversation thanks to Harbour’s involvement with Brooks Running and the Back On My Feet charity program. Harbour explains that the program’s purpose is to get homeless people running in order to help them find housing or other resources. The program requires that participants show up for three runs a week, every day, for a period of 30 days. After achieving this, members can move on to Next Steps, which allows them to work with staff to build a personal roadmap to independence.

What is the most important thing? “Just showing up,” Harbour says. That’s the key. This achievement can be a significant one if the participants are able to commit to running the three runs every week.

Brooks Running joined forces with Harbour to surprise Back On My Feet participants in December. Harbour was invited to join the group to run as a surprise guest. Brooks Running also offered a Buy Gear, Give Gear program that matched purchases of running shoes or apparel with donations to Back On My Feet runners.

‘Your Body Will Eat Itself’

Harbour claims that running and exercise have had a significant impact on his life. Stranger Things 4. “I feel more vibrant and more alive when I’m doing cardio, when I’m running,” he tells me, though he says it can be dangerous. “If I go for a three or five mile run, I’ll eat more during the day.” To actually lose weight, Harbour had to go beyond exercise.

“When I did lose weight, yeah, I was doing a lot of restricted dieting. I was following the trend of intermittent fasting, which is now very popular. It worked for me even though I don’t know how I cook, or what clean protein things I can do. I often have to order food at the cinema. Even if I do have to get a slice or pizza, if I just tell myself that I will only eat one meal today, I tend to lose weight. Even if that meal is pancakes like you, you just aren’t getting enough calories and your body does burn fat.”

Harbour says about 80% of the weight loss was from diet, but “running and some Pilates and some weight training kind of keeps you from getting—I don’t know—kind of saggy, you know? I wanted [Hopper] to have in season four, I wanted him to have, a kind of a lean and hungry look, so to speak, and so that came from some running and some weight training, but the majority of it is if you really want to lose weight, it’s like you just don’t eat very much and your body will eat itself.”

At this point I note that being hungry sucks and David says it doesn’t get any better with time. “You think that you’ll get used to it,” he says. “Like oh yeah, like in nine months I won’t feel this . . . but hunger always feels like hunger. And it sucks.”

Violent Night

Harbour dropped 75 lbs in seven months for Stranger Things 4 and that lean and hungry look was a stark contrast to the Chief Hopper we’d known from the first three seasons. Harbour was able to gain weight, as it often does. His next role, unlike the starving and obese Hopper, required him to have a stomach. Harbour portrays a drunken, ass-kicking Santa Claus. Violent Night That required a totally different physique.

“I went into this Violent Night thing and I did put on a lot of weight and tried to make him look very different,” Harbour tells me, “and then I had a a horrible meeting with my doctor after who was like ‘You gotta stop doing this’ so, so you know I picked up the running, and I I will say, even when I’m at a heftier weight when I’m doing the running three times a week. There’s something about—and again, this is anecdotal, like I can’t point to scientific evidence of this at all, so I don’t want to—but I will say just anecdotally that my skin looks better like I just have a vibrancy to my being.

“You know, if you want to look good in this world, which I think a lot of our training is about, like looking good like you know our society is very into looks—who can blame us?—but if you want to look good, there’s something that low steady-state cardio, low heart-rate cardio, it just feels like my skin clears up.

“I still can be a little bit soft in the middle,” he says, but with the cardio he feels more clear—physically and mentally. Harbour points out that the key to success is simply getting up and moving. Harbour ties it back with the Back On My Feet program, and the importance to just show up.

“There’s something to showing up,” he says, “and there’s a lot of times when you don’t feel like going to the gym or you don’t feel like going for a run. You just have to start. After you show up, it is so rewarding. You feel better. You will feel better. It all is one.”

‘Run Happy’

David Harbour was already in 40 when he started running. How can someone who has never run as a regular activity know where to begin?

“Brooks has this great campaign that we started a couple months ago,” he says, referring to the It’s Your Run campaign. “It’s your run and run happy. You don’t always have to run happy,” he clarifies, “but I think the biggest problem that I get into and that a lot of people get into when starting an exercise routine is you beat up on yourself because you’re not good at it. And when I started running in the pandemic, I was not good at it and it meant that I would run for maybe three minutes and then walk for seven and then try to run for another couple and then walk again and that’s okay.

“It’s really about sticking with it that’s important,” he says, “and it’s about showing up. So even you don’t even run—if you just decide ‘Alright, I’m going to show up on Monday morning at 8 am and I’m going to be so frustrated and not want to run that I’m just going to stand there for half an hour’—I mean, those types of things. Making that commitment is, I mean it’s 90% of the battle because eventually you will run and you will get better at it and you will achieve something great.”

I joke that when the monsters from the Upside Down show up you’ll also be able to run away, which is pretty useful.

“Absolutely, run away,” he says. “Or if you’re Hopper, just grab a sword and run towards them.”

“Right, yeah, a Conan sword,” I chime in. “Actually, I have a Conan sword on my wall behind me right now so I got a kick out of that.”

“Ohhh you Are a geek, aren’t you, wow?” he says laughing. “Alright, I’m part of the club, don’t worry.”

Why should you run when you can drive?

Speaking of geeks, Harbour’s next big project in 2023 is the Gran Turismo Film being directed by Neill Blomkamp District 9 fame.

“I’m shooting a movie right now called GT,” he says, that’s “loosely based on the Gran Turismo video game, but it’s about racing basically. It’s about Le Mans and different races and it’s really an incredible movie. It’s directed by Neil Blomkamp—who, I never say his name correctly—but he directed that District 9 movie. Fantastic director. So I’m shooting that now in Budapest.”

He mentions that videogame adaptations can be a bit tricky, but he claims this is a different type of videogame movie. There’s no story in Gran Turismo, They were able create it all from scratch.

“You know the great thing about GT is there’s no story in that video game, it’s just a driving simulator right? But it’s about guys that race these sims and about the real world of racing.

“I think one of the problems that video game movies have is like, at least when I see a video game movie, I want to be playing that character. I don’t want somebody to have him do things for me or her do things for me. I would love to play this character. And this is a very different type of movie and there’s also a lot of practical, crazy racing stuff, so I’m very excited about it.”

Harbour was concerned that Harbour would be making a movie about video games. “I was nervous when they told me it was a video game movie because I generally think they’re all very hard to make well. And then when I read the script for this, I thought it was just gorgeous.” When he heard Blomkamp was directing he was sold. “The shooting has been, it’s been just really great. I’m very excited about it,” he says.

Beyond GT, Harbour launches production Stranger Things 5—the final season of the popular Netflix show—in the middle of 2023 and will be shooting that and the new MCU film Thunderbolts—Marvel “villains/losers” Harbour—The filming took place simultaneously over a period of 8 months.

The Best Season Of Stranger Things

Speaking of Stranger Things One final question. What was the best season?

“Wow,” he says, thinking for a moment. “I mean, I’m a purist. So I do love Season One. I mean, I like the fact that we’ve expanded and you know, everybody’s . . . the budgets are bigger so we’re all making a little more money and we’re all like, you know, I mean that’s all great, so I don’t want to look back with too much nostalgia. But I will say there’s some kind of creativity in the fact that we were nothing, and that we didn’t have much of a budget and we had to be very creative and the monster was just some guy in a suit, and there was some kind of magic about that. We were pure, and no one had found us. It was like we were very pure during the shooting. When it came out, it was very pure and I just loved that season.”

I agree. Season One was so pure and wonderful, it was truly amazing and completely unique. It was truly a unique moment in modern television.

Visit the official website to learn more about Back On My Feet. Brooks Running’s Buy Gear, Give Gear program resulted in over $650,000 worth of donations to the charity program, with donations continuing throughout 2023.

David Harbour’s Violent Night It’s in theaters right now, just in-time for Christmas. It’s on my Best Christmas Movies list as the lone theatrical entry. It’s worth a look!

FOREBES: MOREHere Are The Top Christmas Movies to Watch This Holiday Season On Netflix. HBO Max. Disney Plus. Amazon Prime.By Erik Kain

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