David Harbour admits he thought Stranger Things would be a failure

Stranger Things star David Harbour thought the Netflix original series could be a failure heading into the first season because of Netflix’s lack of marketing for the series.

Can you imagine a world where Stranger Things was considered to be bad? That’s what David Harbour, star of the Netflix original series, thought while filming and waiting for the release of the first season on Netflix.

Harbour shared the story with Stephen Colbert on The Late Show last week, according to a report from Digital Spy. He feared the show would be a “complete disaster” and a “big failure” when it was released.

This isn’t the first time Harbour shared these feelings. Last year, he told a similar story about how worried he was the first season would be a flop. What a crazy thought!

Here’s what Harbour told Colbert, via Digital Spy:

"“I thought I was tanking the whole show. And then, before it came out, you normally see things on buses. I live in New York, I’m wandering around, buses, phone booths, there’s ads for shows. Not a single ad.”"

I think there’s always something negative about most art, though. Anyone who has tried to create anything feels that there work is terrible at some point in time. Some people probably have that feeling when it’s released.

It appears Harbour’s feelings were misplaced, and Netflix was not trying to hide the show from the public after all. Instead, it appears they were trying a different release strategy. This is Netflix, after all.

Check out the video below!

Heading into the premiere of Stranger Things, I hadn’t heard much at all about the series. I remember writing up a piece on the first eight minutes of the show after Netflix shared a YouTube video to try to hook people. That was in July 2016 and before Netflix really started ramping up production on their Netflix originals.

At that point, we’d seen good Netflix originals like House of Cards and Orange is the New Black, but we hadn’t seen anything like Stranger Things yet, and I’d argue we haven’t seen anything like Stranger Things since.

It turned into a massive, massive success over its first few months available, and by October 2017, when the second season premiered, the show was on everybody’s radar and only getting bigger and better.

Now, Stranger Things is the biggest show in the world heading into Stranger Things 4!

We’re also starting to learn a little more about the new season every few days. This fall, we found out the show was officially renewed for another season. Recently, it was announced that production on season 4 starts in January 2020 and will run through August, most likely.

That means we can expect to see Stranger Things 4 in 2021, although Netflix has not announced the release date.