David Harbour, Lily Allen Divorce: Actor Admits Loving 'Flawed People' Amid Cheating Allegations

While the globe has been captivated by the warmth and cheer projected by David Harbour , 50, as he promotes the final series of Stranger Things, a ghost follows him: the searing narrative of his alleged infidelity, laid bare by his estranged wife, singer Lily Allen.

Allen, 40, used her chart-topping album, West End Girl, to pull back the curtain on their collapsed marriage.

In excruciating detail, she reportedly accused Harbour of repeatedly and shamelessly cheating, claimed he pressured her into an open relationship only to violate the 'rules,' and even alleged he was a 'sex addict' after discovering a cache of sex toys and love letters in his New York bachelor pad.

Until recently, Harbour had maintained a complete silence regarding anything beyond the fictional confines of the sci-fi drama. However, a joint interview with co-star Millie Bobby Brown, 21, seems to offer his oblique, yet undeniably telling, reflection on the turmoil.

His words, intended to describe the complex bond between his character, Jim Hopper, and Brown's Eleven, serve as a startling mirror to his own shattered life.

David Harbour's Search For The 'Deeply Flawed' Human Being

When David Harbour was asked to speak about the complex dynamic between his character, Jim Hopper, and Eleven, the powerful young protagonist, his answer offered a curious insight into his personal preferences and, perhaps, a reluctant self-assessment regarding messy human behaviour.

'You know, there are two people that are both lost, that are both heroic, sometimes beyond their capabilities, that both have such big, broad, deep hearts,' Harbour began. He then reflected, 'They are both deeply flawed in how they express themselves and make tons of mistakes. That is right up my alley. I love playing characters like that. I love human beings like that. I love humanity.'

It is difficult to hear this assessment—of someone who 'messes up' and is 'deeply flawed'—without immediately including David Harbour himself. Expressing yourself by sleeping with women who are not your wife certainly counts as a 'flaw.'

The pressing question now is whether owning up to being 'deeply flawed' will be enough to save him from the public's judgement. This outlook appears particularly precarious given that he was reportedly spotted as recently as this September with Natalie Tippett, the costume designer whom Allen allegedly modelled the character 'Madeline' after.

In the track Madeline, Allen sings: 'We had an arrangement. Be discreet and don't be blatant. There had to be payment. It had to be with strangers. But you're not a stranger, Madeline.'

The Mail on Sunday revealed that Harbour and Tippett, 34, appear to have coincided at the Thermea Spa Village in Winnipeg, Canada, while he was filming the movie Violent Night 2 in September this year.

Tippett, who met David Harbour on his 2023 film We Have A Ghost, posted pictures of herself there while he was known to be in production nearby. Nine days later, Allen's explosive album was released.

The short-lived marriage began swiftly with a Vegas ceremony in 2020 after the pair met on the celebrity dating app Raya in 2019.

While they announced their separation in February 2025, they had actually split in December 2024. Allen claims his infidelity began in the summer of 2021, and that she reluctantly agreed to his request for an open marriage later.

David Harbour's Reflections On Hamlet And The Final Curtain

Harbour's candid admissions about his attraction to 'flawed' people take on a deeper resonance when considering his own mental health struggles. He gave up drinking at 24 and has been open about his diagnosis of bipolar disorder, being institutionalised, and contemplating suicide.

Allen, too, has been transparent about her own battles with mental health, sobriety, and a past scarred by rejection from her hell-raising actor father, Keith. Following her split from Harbour, she told Vogue that she 'wanted to die,' though she is now on antidepressants and actively pursuing sobriety and therapy.

The filming of the final series of Stranger Things coincided almost exactly with the end of his marriage. Speaking exclusively in Los Angeles, David Harbour revealed he was contemplating suicide—and reading Hamlet—in the run-up to filming.

'Here's where I get pretentious,' he said. 'I do think Stranger Things has parallels to Hamlet in a sense. I did read a lot of Hamlet when I was doing this, and I think that Hamlet starts out in the play, you know, incapable of being able to confront this ghost of his father'.

He compared Hamlet's famous soliloquy, 'To be, or not to be, that is the question,' with Hopper's final emotional arc. Hopper, who is grieving his own deceased daughter, finds a new father-child bond with Eleven.

'So I think what Hopper does come to in a real way, is this vulnerable sense of, you are not in control of this situation. You are not in control of this universe,' Harbour mused. 'There is a vulnerability to that, and a new vulnerability that is the acceptance that the universe will be what the universe will be. And that you can only play your role for this life in that.'

The end of the ten-year show was a deeply emotional moment. Harbour admitted he initially didn't plan on showing up for the last day of filming with the younger cast members—or 'the kids'—who he has known since Millie Bobby Brown was just eleven. He eventually relented.

'I sat in the back and I watched them play this scene, just crying,' he recalled, describing the moment as 'incredibly cathartic'. 'I had this incredibly cathartic moment of watching these young stars and these young actors who I've known so deeply for so many years become men and women. And just this sense of like pride and joy and love for them, for what they've accomplished, for who they've been in the world amidst all this chaos and for what we've accomplished together.'

Brown echoed the sentiment, calling the Hopper-Eleven relationship 'a deeply flawed but rich relationship.'

Brown, now a successful young woman married to Jake Bongiovi and a mother via a surrogate, sees the show as her anchor.

'I did everything, I graduated on the show, I learned how to be a friend,' she said. 'It makes you grow up of course, because naturally you are in the light... Also well, I'm a mother, I'm also married, so it's changed me a whole bunch.'

The irony is poignant: Millie Bobby Brown leaves Stranger Things as a successful, grown woman with a husband and family, while her screen partner, David Harbour, exits the show having publicly lost just that.