Stranger Things star David Harbour is having quite the year. He’s the next Hellboy. He delivered the highlight moment at this year’s Screen Actors Guild Awards. He’s got an incredible Instagram account. Now he’s ended up in the middle of the most 2017 of debates: Is he Dad or is he Daddy? Harbour of course plays the dutiful sheriff Jim Hopper on the hit Netflix show Stranger Things, where his half-size-too-tight uniform, imposing frame, and gruff exterior with a soft center have managed to turn him into Hawkins, Indiana’s most lovable father figure. There’s a lot to love about Hopper, but what does the man himself think? Harbour shared his dad/daddy preference with Mashable:
[Laughs.] Oh my god, I don’t know if you saw that I posted a poll on Twitter there for about five seconds [Editor’s note: We sure did], then somebody Tweeted me like, ‘David, children go on this website,’ I was like ‘oh, I gotta take this down, too many kids like our show.’Â
Â
Look, at the end of the day, my biggest fear in life is that I’m gonna wind up being an actor who plays the dad on a TV show like Full House or Small Wonder or something — I’m like the desexualized dad in the show Alf. No, that’s not what I want to play in my life. I’m a man, I’m not gonna wear dad jeans or whatever you call them… so in that way, I’d have to go with daddy. [Laughs.]
So even though Harbour’s IG is stacked with dad-grams, he’s not letting complacency pull him into full dad territory — despite the fact that he just cited Small Wonder in a conversation about which internet jargon most applies to him and described Twitter as a website, which is a super-endearing dad move. No, Harbour is laying claim to his sexy status, and therefore, he is a daddy. With the argument settled, how do we get him and Winona Ryder to make out next season?