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By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
It’s been a pretty weird year for David Harbour. On one hand, he’s celebrated some major career milestones, like wrapping up Stranger Things and bringing his oddball MCU character back for Avengers: Doomsday. On the other hand, he’s been involved in some very notable celebrity scandals. The first was when the Daily Mail ran a story claiming that his Stranger Things costar Millie Bobby Brown had filmed a harassment and bullying campaign against him. The second was when his ex-wife, Lilly Allen, released an album all about their nasty breakup, one which included salacious details about Harbour’s love life.
For a long time, Harbour said nothing about Allen’s album or the pseudo-allegations she makes against him (which she freely admits may not all be true) in its songs. Now, he recently opened up about many of the biggest stresses of the past year, including watching his emotionally wrenching breakup turn into a highly public sex scandal. For the most part, the Stranger Things star kept it classy and only emphasized one point: that he remembers things very, very differently than his ex-wife does.
When The TV Lawman Marries A Rebel
Grab your popcorn and buckle up, because you’re going to need some context for this insane tale. It all starts with David Harbour marrying Lilly Allen. They were such an unpredictable pairing (he’s a gruff movie star and she’s a free-spirited singer) that the internet soon fell in love with this power couple. Those online fans were understandably disappointed when these celebs got divorced in February 2025. Normally, that would be the end of it, and everyone would find a new celeb pairing to obsess over. But Allen ended up releasing an album called West End Girl that seemingly spilled all kinds of tea about her topsy-turvy relationship with Harbour.
The singer never said the album was explicitly about Harbour, and in one interview, she said of the lyrics that “I don’t think I could say it’s all true.” Nonetheless, the lyrics seemed very much directed at her ex-husband: Allen sang about breaking up with a spouse who was jealous of her growing success as an actor and wasn’t ready for a long-term commitment. In the album, she claims that this husband kept an entirely separate apartment dubbed “the P*ssy Palace” where he could have affairs with other women. Since the husband was a thinly veiled stand-in for Harbour, the lyrics (which included salacious details about preferred sex toys) amounted to musical allegations against the Stranger Things star.
Everything Blows Up
For a very long time, Harbour said nothing about West End Girl; meanwhile, Allen went viral for wearing receipts from gifts Harbour allegedly bought affair partners. Recently, the Stranger Things veteran spoke about the album for the first time in an interview with Variety. “It was weird,” he said at first. He then demurred about what Allen said about him: “I do believe that it is the privilege of every artist to use their experience to create art, and so I respect her for doing that.” He explained that he didn’t want to discuss things in much detail because “In spite of the fact that a lot of people don’t allow me a private life — I value it. And I also value the lives of the people that I interact with privately. I just won’t speak about that.”
When the interviewer offered one last chance for David Harbour to push back against Lily Allen’s lyrical claims, the Stranger Things star continued to demur by noting that “stories are complex…and that’s why I say I respect her creation of art to channel her experience.” He then finished his thoughts by saying what countless jilted ex-boyfriends and ex-husbands have said about their partner’s allegedly hellish time in the relationship. “It wasn’t my experience.”
The No-Win Scenario For Celebrity Break-Ups
Fans hoping for something a little more salacious (like a comment about the aforementioned sex toy) are likely to be disappointed that Harbour didn’t spill more of the dirty deets. However, there’s almost nothing he could say here that wouldn’t damage his career. If he tries to defend himself too loudly, he would almost certainly be labeled misogynistic, abusive, uncaring, and so on. Which is, ironically enough, exactly what would happen if he took a different tack and claimed that all of Allen’s lyrics were correct.
Harbour effectively chose the only path left to him, which was to be slightly defensive but non-committal enough to ensure one thing: that those Marvel checks just keep on coming, baby!
