As his Stranger Things chapter has come to a close, David Harbour is onto new — and more adult — terrain.
He has spent the last several years developing HBO dark comedy DTF St. Louis, which follows three people battling middle-age malaise by exploring an app of that same name, made for singles and swingers looking to spice up their marriages. Harbour and Cardellini play a married couple with Jason Bateman as their also married friend, who end up in a love triangle with one of them soon found dead.
The series marks Harbour’s first executive producing credit and has been in development for years, originally starring himself and Pedro Pascal in a different premise; Pedro later departed and Bateman came on board as a fellow EP and co-star, and the 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,” Harbour told The Hollywood Reporter at the show’s L.A. premiere on Tuesday. “You have a really good hook like a murder but then you have the freedom 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 Harbour on the carpet swings.
JC Olivera/GA/The Hollywood Reporter via Getty Images
DTF stands for “Down to Fuck,” and HBO has leaned into the swinging aspect in the show’s marketing, embracing the slogan “You never know which way a friendship will swing” and even installing a swing set on the red carpet.
But Harbour downplayed how much the series is about swinging, dating apps and kinks, noting, “I don’t know that it is an exploration of it. We tease you with that but the DTF app only functions to get the characters to explore the meaning that they lack in their lives. The only guy who is really on it is [his character] Floyd at one point and he only goes on a couple of things. But it’s really more about this existential need for connection and about weird people being weird.”
The star — whose own relationship and breakup with Lily Allen has gotten plenty of attention in recent 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 commended the 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 show’s subject matter from her parents. “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.
