David Harbour on Lily Allen's Breakup Album: 'Respect'

David Harbour is finally responding to that album. The Stranger Things actor is the admitted inspiration behind Lily Allen's West End Girl, a raw unraveling of martial turmoil, with lyrics about an unfaithful husband who buys secret gifts for other women he hosts at an apartment away from the marital home. The album was released months after the couple's marriage imploded. In a new interview, Harbour tells Variety that it was a "weird" experience that fed into a scary mental health crisis, though he's not going into much detail on that.

As for the album, "I respect her for doing that," the actor says, noting the role of experience in creating art. Pushed to say more, he adds, "stories are complex," but "it wasn't my experience." It's unclear if Harbour delivered different feedback to Allen herself. The singer, who appeared on the March cover of ELLE UK, told the magazine she "spent about eight months being absolutely terrified of what was gonna come back to me" after writing the album. Well-received by critics and fans, it has triggered a career revival with West End Girl now under discussion to become a West End play, per the Guardian.