Black Widow Star David Harbour Addresses Rumors That He’s Engaged

Rumors have been circulating that Black Widow and Stranger Things star David Harbour is engaged to singer Lily Allen, the sister of Game of Thrones star Alfie Allen. Allen was seen wearing a ring on her finger during a recent outing, leading some to assume that Harbour had popped the question. During an appearance at German Comic Con Dortmund, Harbour cleared those rumors up. When asked about the engagement, he laughed the rumor off. “Oh, no, I’m not engaged,” Harbour said. “That’s a rumor, that’s a rumor. But I do have a girlfriend, yes. The tabloids are correct about that. But I’m not engaged.”

During the convention, Harbour also talked about the death of his character, Sheriff Hopper, in Stranger Things. “I think Hopper — from the very beginning I’ve said this — he’s very lovable in a certain way, but also, he’s kind of a rough guy,” Harbour said. “Certainly in the beginning of Season One he’s kind of dark, and he’s drinking, and he’s trying to kill himself, and he hates himself for what happened to his daughter. I feel like, in a sense, that character needed to die. He needed to make some sacrifice to make up for the way he’s been living for the past like 10 years, the resentments that he’s had. So he needed to die.”

But is Hopper really dead? Harbour speculated about the character’s future in Stranger Things 4 and beyond.

“Now whether or not there is this second act, whether or not there is some sort of resurrection, whether or not we can see him go off in a certain way, would be really interesting to me. I would love it,” he said. “Anybody watch Lord of the Rings? Gandalf the Grey fights the Balrog, descends into darkness, battles him forever, and everyone thinks he’s dead. And then he re-emerges as Gandalf the White, with sort of a new strength and a new power. That would be an interesting arc for him.”

Harbour is also set to play Red Guardian in Marvel’s Black Widow. He seemed excited about the role when he talked to ComicBook.com about it earlier this year.

“That’s one of the things I really like about this character,” Harbour said. “There’s an openness to interpretation. The one thing we do is know is that he’s the counterpart to Captain America on the Russian Soviet side, but that way we have a lot of play with who he is and we are playing with him.

“Initially when I heard the pitch she [director Cate Shortland] was like ‘He’s this and he’s this.’ And I was like ‘Yeah, I got it.’…he spins and he twists and he turns in ways that make sense and in ways I don’t expect characters to go there. I expect characters to be a color or a flavor and we get to know them and this guy is really rich.”

Black Widow is set to bow May 1, 2020. Other upcoming Marvel Studios projects include The Falcon and The Winter Soldier in Fall of 2020, The Eternals on November 6, 2020, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings on February 12, 2021, WandaVision in Spring 2021, Loki in Spring 2021, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness on May 7, 2021, Spider-Man 3 on July 16, 2021, What If…? in Summer 2021, Hawkeye in Fall 2021, Thor: Love and Thunder on November 5, 2021, and Black Panther 2 on May 6, 2022.

Cover photo via Jason Mendez/Getty Images