What to Know
If watched any of the five seasons of Netflix’s mega popular show, Stranger Things, you will know just how sweet and sacred the relationship between David Harbour’s character, police chief Jim Hopper, and Millie Bobby Brown’s Eleven, a young girl with intense supernatural powers, is.
Right before the show’s last season premiered, there was online chatter about the 22-year-old actress filing harassment and bullying claim against her scene partner of nearly a decade. Both David and Millie have since separately talked about what was happening there and if there was any legitimacy to the claim.
David Harbour finally addresses those harrassment rumors involving his much younger co-star.
On June 10, 2026, Variety published an in-depth interview where they spoke to 51-year-old actor, David Harbour. Even though it explored a lot of different things, including the breakdown of his marriage to singer, Lily Allen, a lot of Stranger Things fans will be very interested to learn about what actually happened between him and his co-star, Millie Bobby Brown.
Digging into a conversation about what was happening in December 2025, when he was skipping out on some Stranger Things press and there were rumblings that Millie filed a “harrassment and bullying claim” against David before production on the final season started, David divulged, “I had a breakdown.”
Even though Millie later clarified that she “felt safe” acting alongside David, he called the timing of that story “a weird thing.” He also clarified that fans of the show can rest assured the pair are working on several upcoming projects together as “10 years wasn’t enough” and “there is a special bond there.”
David calls their special relationship like working with ‘family.’
In an email that Millie Bobby Brown sent to Variety, she shared that there’s “a lot of gratitude” that exists in her longstanding relationship with David Harbour.
Starting the series as a young child, Millie outlined that she had “changed so much from season 1 to season 5, and David was there through it all.” She goes on to share that she will “always remember and value” the “many years” she acted on Stranger Things alongside him.
David tried to further explain thing to Variety by sharing that the pair “worked together for 10 years during [Millie’s] formative teenage years, playing father and daughter.” He made the comparison to “people have families and friends that [they] spend a lot of time with for 10 years” and there’s occasional “arguments” and “disagreements.”
The DTF St. Louis star went on to share that “in families, it’s OK because you’re just in a disagreement and then you come back together.” This is exactly where he starts to lose people.
Some folks online aren’t buying the ‘family’ dynamics that David is trying to claim were there.
The thing about the relationship between David Harbour and Millie Bobby Brown is that at its core, they were both being paid to act and do a job, which requires a certain sense of professionalism, especially from David who was a heck of a lot older than his co-star.
This Reddit thread is full of people who just aren’t buying the claims that David made during his interview with Variety. One person pointed out that there’s quite a stark difference between having a minor disagreement and filing a bullying and harrassment claim at work. They wrote, “…my fam arguments don’t result in filing bullying and harassment complaint and requests for a chaperone while working. I’m also an adult that doesn’t fight with children and teens.” Ouch.
Another individual in the thread is very uncomfortable for the way David is trying to normalize adults having full-on beefs with children or those much younger than them. “It’s not normal for a 45+ year old man to have an explosive fight with a 20 year old woman that he’s known since she was a literal child and he’s crazy for trying to normalize it,” they shared.
Another person pointed out that the pair really aren’t “family,” but coworkers. They wrote, “It wasn’t family and friends though. It was coworkers. And as a more senior actor working with a child, it’s kinda on him to not start s—.”
What are your thoughts? Should we just let things be now that it seems the pair apparently worked everything out? Or are you still uncomfortable thinking about what Millie Bobby Brown might have experienced during her Stranger Things days working alongside David Harbour?
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