Dear Gossips,
The nominating round for the Emmys opened yesterday. Nominations will be announced on July 8. We are now in the weeds on the television trophy trail. As we approach nominations, I hope everyone remembers that Heated Rivalry is not eligible—though I am sure the Emmy producers will find a way to get Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie to the show in September, they’d be idiots not to—and Widow’s Bay IS eligible. I didn’t think it was, but they just snuck under the eligibility wire.
Nominations means campaigning, and campaigning means press. David Harbour has a cover profile in Variety supporting his campaign for supporting actor in a movie/limited series for DTF St. Louis. David Harbour is also coming off a difficult year in 2025, in which he was accused of bullying by Millie Bobby Brown, excoriated in his ex-wife Lily Allen’s album West End Girl, and he was hospitalized after some strange behavior, which he categorizes as a “breakdown”. David Harbour was a fan favorite, internet zaddy going into 2025, now he’s trying to put the pieces of his public persona back together in time for an Emmy run.
The main issue is that he doesn’t really say much about much. And he doesn’t have to! If he just wants to shut it down, do his work, and never talk about personal subjects, he can. But the weird half-life of talking around these major incidents that all occurred in a very compacted time span but only in vague and very sanitized terms doesn’t really help all that much.
For instance, there is no clarity about what really happened with MBB, except that something DID happen. Harbour says that “you occasionally get in arguments, disagreements” with someone after working together for ten years, and that “[t]he problem with a billion-dollar show is that there’s just hundreds of people who want to get involved”. So, someone else escalated whatever happened? MBB filed the complaint, though. Who else was involved? I’m more confused now, even though I think I know what he’s saying. When a project is successful, everyone wants their piece of the pie, and that CAN create mess as people look for places to insert themselves and claim credit. But at the end of the day, MBB is the one who filed the complaint, not someone else.
Though MBB is just as vague, saying, “When you work with someone for that many years, we could really push each other emotionally in scenes. Even though the series has ended, there’s still a lot of gratitude.”
We’re just never going to know. Clearly, none of these people will speak openly about what happened. Which again, is fully their prerogative, but my point is that this kind of carefully worded obfuscation doesn’t really help. It would actually be better just to say, “We’re not talking about it.” Sometimes, no crumbs is better than some crumbs.
Things with Lily Allen are no less clear. On West End Girl, Allen paints a clear picture of a sh-tty, insecure husband who cheats on and demeans his wife. Harbour, though, says, “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,” and, “I just won’t speak about that.” But then he goes on to say, “Stories are complex […] and that’s why I say I respect her creation of art to channel her experience. It wasn’t my experience.”
So she made it all up? More crumbs!
There is also the inescapable implication that Allen’s album and the publicity and speculation it generated was a contributing factor to Harbour’s breakdown. There’s really no way around that. He has talked about being diagnosed with bipolar disorder and being hospitalized before, he has spoken about the impact stress has on his mental health. But there is no acknowledgment that Lily Allen is not responsible for his mental health. There is only a thinly veiled suggestion that she certainly did not help. Crumbs crumbs crumbs.
What David Harbour experienced in 2025 is a series of events that require nuanced conversations, but this Variety profile is trying to be a trophy campaign puff piece. It can’t JUST be that, though, because Harbour’s reputation took a beating last year, and now he has to reset the table and remind everyone that really, he’s a character actor who ended up on a hit show, but he’s just in it for the work. He’s trying to reframe his career around difficult topics no one is interested in addressing head on, and that kind of just makes it worse. I actually have more questions now than I did before I read the Variety profile.
Live long and gossip,
Sarah
