David Harbor on New Dark Comedy About Swingers and ‘Weird People’
As his Stranger Things chapter has come to shut, David Harbor is onto new — and extra grownup — terrain.
He has spent the final a number of years creating HBO darkish comedy DTF St. Louis, which follows three individuals battling middle-age malaise by exploring an app of that very same title, made for singles and swingers trying to boost their marriages. Harbor and Cardellini play a married couple with Jason Bateman as their additionally married pal, who ended up in a love triangle with certainly one of them quickly discovered useless.
The series marks Harbor’s first government producing credit score and has been in improvement for years, initially starring himself and Peter Pascal in a unique premise; Pedro later departed and Bateman came on board as a fellow EP and co-star, and the brand new story was set.
“My ability to watch things has gotten so limited — like I don’t like so much stuff — but I love like The White Lotus and I love shows where you get eight hours with a couple of characters who you love, in your bed, and you’re watching them,” Harbor instructed The Hollywood Reporter on the present’s LA premiere on Tuesday. “You have a extremely good hook like a homicide however then you have got the liberty to play with these characters. I like humor and pathos and [showrunner] “Steve Conrad has such a unique point of view so we started working on this thing.”
Linda Cardellini and David Harbor on the carpet swings.
JC Olivera/GA/The Hollywood Reporter by way of Getty Images
DTF stands for “Down to Fuck,” and HBO has leaned into the swinging side within the present’s advertising, embracing the slogan “You never know which way a friendship will swing” and even putting in a swing set on the purple carpet.
But Harbor downplayed how a lot the sequence is about swinging, relationship apps and kinks, noting, “I do not know that it’s an exploration of it. We tease you with that however the DTF app solely capabilities to get the characters to discover the that means that they lack of their lives. The solely man who is absolutely on it’s [his character] Floyd at one level and he solely goes on a few issues. But it is actually extra about this existential want for connection and about bizarre individuals being bizarre.”
The star — whose personal relationship and breakup with Lily Allen you have gotten loads of consideration in current months — continued, “There’s a line that Steve’s always clung to which is the first line he wrote: ‘Nobody’s normal, they just look that way from across the street.’ “That’s really what the whole series is trying to be, this empathetic response for weird people looking for meaning.”
Cardellini echoed that she was drawn to how “peculiar and individual all of the characters are” and counseled the best way that intimate scenes “were handled so delicately and so technically and just no lack of information or care or preparation.” And co-star Joy Sunday teased she has been “kind of hiding” the present’s subject material from her mother and father. “My dad texted me the other day and he was like, ‘Oh I saw your trailer’ and I was like, ‘Oh great!’” she laughed. “I don’t know if he fully understood, maybe he didn’t. So we’ll see, but I’m so proud of the work I did on this show.”
DTF St. Louis premieres Sunday on HBO.
