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What is it with David Harbour and getting locked in Soviet prison?
First, hisStranger Thingscharacter, Sheriff Jim Hopper, ended season three imprisoned in Kamchatka.
Now the latest Marvel movie,Black Widow, puts his supersoldier Alexei Shostakov behind Russian bars, too.
It must be something about how much I love the cold weather and borscht, Harbour jokes.
Ive been plagued by internet memes for about an entire year and a half now.
The circumstances surrounding Hopper and Shostakovs imprisonments are, of course, quite different.
I relish the ideas of Russia that Red Guardian represents.
I grew up reading Russian literature in college.
I was big into Chekhov, Dostoevsky, and Tolstoy.
Marx did talk about … the dissolution of the state so the proletariat owns everything.
That is something that I really love and appreciate.
For this project, it was [director] Cate Shortland who sat me down.
I didnt even know what she was doing.
She was like, Im making this movie.
I didnt even know it was really part of the Marvel thing until she pitched the story.
And she really approached it like an independent film director in a lot of ways.
It was a lot of rehearsal, a lot of playing around.
There were also different iterations of the script.
Yeah, no, I have no idea.
But that would be a very interesting thing.
Like, what happens to that memory or that trauma of that event?
Red Guardian, Jim Hopper, and to a certain extent, Matt, yourNo Sudden Movecharacter.
And part of my impulse for acting was to help people feel less alone.
I do like to find contradictions in characters.
I really like revealing the extraordinary through the ordinary.
Im not so keen on extraordinary [through the] extraordinary.
But you cant actually feel like, thats me.
You also play a lot of characters who are somewhat begrudgingly father figures.
I think any parent can relate to that idea.
I mean, I was not a father up until, like, last year.
Like, Ive never been a 20-year-old guy, even when I was in a 20-year-old body.
I was too old too much of an old soul, in a sense.
I just never fit that model of a 20-year-old, even a 30-year-old.
BothNo Sudden Move and this upcomingStranger Thingsseason were or are being filmed in accordance with COVID safety protocols.
Are those protocols and the reasons for them difficult to set aside while youre acting?It is difficult.
I appreciate the safety protocols.
I certainly want everyone to be safe.
It is troubling because theres something about the human creative element that big, large-scale productions just wont acknowledge.
When we were deep in the pandemic, I completely understood.
Its troubling because acting really is about interacting and its about being messy.
I think thats a really interesting thing.
