David Harbour has stepped away from Behemoth!, Tony Gilroy’s new drama for Searchlight Pictures, and it honestly feels like the first time in a while he’s taken himself off the roster instead of someone else doing it for him. A representative for Searchlight confirmed to Variety that he exited the project and that his role has already been recast, though the new actor hasn’t been named yet.
He was originally set to star alongside Pedro Pascal and Olivia Wilde, which is the kind of line‑up most actors would cling to with both hands. According to the publication, multiple insiders familiar with the film explained that Harbour chose to step back after feeling overwhelmed by the end of Stranger Things — a months‑long final season rollout, intense press attention and a global microscope on every move — and decided he needed to rest rather than roll straight into another major shoot.
And then there’s the personal mess, which has not exactly stayed personal. Lily Allen’s album West End Girl has spent the past few months turning the breakdown of their marriage into public conversation, with tracks about affairs, open‑marriage rules and a husband who can’t handle fame and money being widely read as digging into Harbour’s behaviour.
Given everything that has been swirling around him, stepping out of a prestige gig like this reads less like a wobble and more like a reset he probably should have taken a while ago. Or maybe he wants to spend more time with Madeline, literally who knows?!
The project he’s leaving behind is very much in serious film person territory. Behemoth! is described in its official logline as following “a musician from a family of musicians who returns to Los Angeles”, and is billed as “a love letter to the music of the movies and the people who make it”.
Harbour has been open for years about his mental health, which complicates the picture in a way that deserves a bit of nuance even if he hasn’t exactly come out of 2025 looking like a saint. He’s spoken about being diagnosed with bipolar disorder at 26 after an intense episode, and said in a 2022 interview that while there is more talk now about “wanting an open dialogue about mental illness,” it often focuses only on the “tragedy”.
“We pathologise this idea of normal and in truth, everybody has a lot of different experiences we should try to appreciate,” he said.
So yes, it’s been a rough year and a lot of the public fallout is on him — but it also tracks that someone who’s been this candid about his mental health would eventually hit the brakes instead of trying to outrun the headlines.
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