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      With ‘The Kissing Booth 3,’ Joey King Closes a Chapter of Her Life

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      The actress started on the Netflix movies when she was 17 and grew along with her high school character, Elle: “I went through a lot of important life moments in her shoes.”In hindsight, it’s somewhat of a miracle that “The Kissing Booth 3” got made in the first place.Not because the 2018 “The Kissing Booth” was initially a stand-alone film — before the summery rom-com, about a high schooler who falls for her best friend’s brother, became an unexpected hit on Netflix. And not because of the pandemic; this final chapter was shot earlier, in 2019, at the same time as “The Kissing Booth 2.”With workdays that included wrestling in massive inflatable sumo suits, shooting a montage at a water park and racing go-karts in Mario Kart-like costumes, it’s remarkable that Joey King and her colleagues, who had a ball in the process, were able to focus enough to get the job done.“If you put us in a room and you expect us to get much done that’s productive, it’s going to be hard,” King, the franchise’s 22-year-old star, said in a video call. “We’re like 12-year-old boys.”The trilogy’s final film, which begins streaming Wednesday, follows Elle, King’s character, through her last summer before college as she juggles dating her boyfriend, Noah (Jacob Elordi), and checking off the aforementioned antics with her friend Lee (Joel Courtney) in a last-ditch effort to complete their childhood bucket list.One of her next projects has a different vibe: King described “The Princess,” which she’s shooting this summer in Bulgaria, as an action movie, “‘The Raid: Redemption’ meets Rapunzel.” She sat down for a video interview (energetic as ever, it’s worth noting, at 6 a.m. local time) to discuss the end of the series that has defined this phase of her career and how Elle’s coming of age has mirrored her own. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.What was it like shooting the last two films back to back?Actually, we shot them at the same time — meaning in one day, we’d be shooting scenes from both movies. It was so confusing.How did you keep everything straight?I can’t give myself that kind of credit, because I didn’t. I knew exactly what I was doing every day, but when I was on set and my director [Vince Marcello] would come over and say a note or something, I was like, “Wait, are we in Movie 3 right now?” He’s like, “No, we’re still in Movie 2.” It’s not like they were very similar, because their story lines do take crazy different turns. But it was kind of fun to marry them together.King filmed “The Kissing Booth 3,” above, and the previous film in the trilogy at the same time. “It was so confusing,” she said.Marcos Cruz/NetflixWas this film — along with “The Kissing Booth 2” — the first project you executive produced?It is, which was lovely. I’ve been putting my hand more into producing lately; I’m actually producing “The Princess” as well. But it was really special for me to start on those movies since I’ve been with them for such a long time.I’m a bit of a sponge. On set, it was more of me absorbing stuff from Vince and being like, “So why did we make that decision?” Just asking more questions. He was so willing to be even more collaborative with me and ask my opinion. I felt like I had a voice on set, but my voice really did come in on the back half of filming. I had a lot of say on what the final product was, and I also am very heavily involved in the marketing process. I’m very passionate about both of those things, and I feel like I am one of the target audiences. It’s fun to be able to have a say in something that I would want to watch at the end of the day.At the heart of these movies is a coming-of-age story. Did you find similarities to your own experiences at this stage of your life?I’ve always felt very connected to Elle. I remember receiving the script for the first movie. I called my team, and I said, “When can I audition for this? I want this so bad.” And they were like, “You don’t have to audition for it; it’s an offer.” If I had had to audition for it, I would have done anything to get that job.So when I started playing Elle, I felt like [she] and I were very, very similar. Her vibe, her sense of humor; I felt very in tune with it. And same thing goes for the second and third movie, if not more so — I went through a lot of important life moments in her shoes.King with Jacob Elordi in the final film in the series. King said, “I went through a lot of important life moments in her shoes.”Marcos Cruz/NetflixHow do you feel you’ve changed since then?I have changed so much. It’s actually quite unbelievable to me. I never thought I was going to change as a person, and I was so wrong. That’s the beauty of being young. My perspective on life changed — my perspective on family, on relationships, on career. So that’s why, when I feel like I’ve really gone through so much with Elle, it’s because I have changed so much as a person and learned so much.In what ways?I became a little bit more present. I started meditating. I found a very incredible relationship [the director and producer Steven Piet]. Obviously I’ve always loved my family, but I have found a deeper appreciation for them. And career stuff, too: I started becoming more zeroed in on exactly what I wanted to do and how much I didn’t want to do certain things. And that was really interesting, just to feel a little more empowered in my own abilities to make decisions. I’m actually quite an indecisive person. If you take me to a restaurant, I have no idea what I want. And that’s even if we decide where we should go. But when it comes to my career, my brain switches over to a decisive mode. That’s a new development for me.You’ve had such a range of roles at this point — “The Kissing Booth” is very different from “The Act.” [King was nominated for an Emmy for her performance in the Hulu true-crime drama, as a young woman convicted of killing her mother.] When you talk about narrowing down what you want to do, do you hope to keep that sort of variety? Or do you prefer certain roles?I personally love to keep a wider range, and I never really have a specific “this is what I want to do next.” I want to keep excited about it. I love the fact that they [“The Kissing Booth” and “The Act”] were polar opposites. And I’m hoping that people are excited to see me in different kinds of roles, because I very carefully decided that this is what I want to do.This was, as far as we know for now, the final “Kissing Booth.” But if the opportunity arose, can you see yourself returning to Elle and this story in the future?I started these movies when I was 17. We were just like, we hope people like it — if anyone even sees it. Little did we know what a big impact this would have. I’ve never tired of playing Elle. It’s so fun. Watching this story be wrapped up so nicely in like a beautiful bow, I think it would be a little hard to come back after that. We made this ending exactly what I think it needed to be. Selfishly, do I want to play Elle again? Absolutely. But I think that the story is on its final chapter. More

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      Netflix’s ‘High on the Hog’ Renewed for Second Season

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      The show, hosted by the food writer Stephen Satterfield, traces the origins of African American food.“High on the Hog: How African American Cuisine Transformed America,” the Netflix show that explores the roots of African American cuisine, has been renewed for a second season, the streaming service announced Tuesday.Hosted by the food writer Stephen Satterfield, the show is based on “High on the Hog: A Culinary Journey From Africa to America,” a book by the culinary historian Dr. Jessica B. Harris. The first season, which premiered in May, mirrored the first half of the book, tracing the roots of ingredients, like okra from West Africa, and exploring Black foodways in places like Texas.Fabienne Toback, an executive producer on the show, said that the new season would likely explore the second half of Dr. Harris’s book. The show will continue to focus on systemic racism and could explore the impacts of the coronavirus pandemic on race and the restaurant industry, Ms. Toback said. Release and production dates are still to be determined.“Part of the reason that we were so attracted to the project is that everyone eats, everyone loves food,” said Ms. Toback, who produced the show with Karis Jagger. Ms. Toback added that “High on the Hog” has opened viewers’ eyes to the history of Black food and the challenging circumstances that brought ingredients to the United States.“Having food to talk about these things has made it for lack of a better word, palatable,” she said.Follow NYT Food on Twitter and NYT Cooking on Instagram, Facebook and Pinterest. Get regular updates from NYT Cooking, with recipe suggestions, cooking tips and shopping advice. More

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      Stream These 12 Titles Before They Expire in August

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      Netflix in the United States is losing dozens of titles this month. These are the best among them.There’s a little something for everyone in this month’s selection of titles leaving Netflix in the United States, including indie dramedies, family features and crime pictures, as well as the best of the recent James Bond flicks. Check out these 12 titles before they disappear. (Dates reflect the final day a title is available.)‘Nightcrawler’ (Aug. 9)The screenwriter Dan Gilroy made his directorial debut with this disturbing 2014 thriller. Inspired by the work of Weegee, the influential photographer of New York City street scenes of the 1940s, Gilroy penned the story of a contemporary news videographer (played to chilling perfection by Jake Gyllenhaal) whose pursuit of grisly crime scene footage takes him into morally dubious territory. Rene Russo is in top form as a news director who doesn’t quite realize how dangerous her employee is, while Gyllenhaal does some of his finest acting, unnervingly personifying the slippery slope from ambitious go-getter to out-and-out sociopath.Stream it here.‘Safety Not Guaranteed’ (Aug. 12)Before they were tapped to reboot the “Jurassic Park” franchise, the director Colin Trevorrow and the screenwriter Derek Connolly crafted a much smaller-scale fusion of science fiction and human drama. Aubrey Plaza stars as a young journalism intern who responds to a classified listing for a time-traveling partner, figuring the delusional man behind the ad (Mark Duplass) could make for an entertaining profile. But her cynicism slowly dissolves in the face of his earnestness — and her observations of the strange activities that are fueling his paranoia. The filmmakers find just the right tonal mixture of character comedy, low-rent sci-fi and genuine warmth, while Plaza and Duplass create unexpectedly convincing chemistry.Stream it here.Michael Keaton as the fast-food entrepreneur Ray Kroc in “The Founder.”The Weinstein Company‘The Founder’ (Aug. 20)Michael Keaton is phenomenal in this biographical portrait of the McDonald’s mastermind Ray Kroc, using his trademark quicksilver wit and endless charisma at the service of a character who is slowly and counterintuitively revealed to be a bit of a snake. His Kroc is a rather desperate hustler, envisioning himself as a Horatio Alger protagonist just one step away from his big break, which he finally finds in the efficient, assembly-line burger stand of brothers Maurice and Richard McDonald (John Carroll Lynch and Nick Offerman, both excellent). But his dreams for the chain are bigger than its creators’, a bump in the typical rise-to-success narrative, which creates fascinating and fruitful thematic tension.Stream it here.‘Casino Royale’ (Aug. 30)The James Bond franchise had hit a bumpy stretch in the mid-2000s, as audiences turned away from the increasingly silly shenanigans of adventures like “Die Another Day” for the grittier superspy stylings of the “Bourne” movies. So the Bond producers brought back the director Martin Campbell — who had previously rescued the series from obsolescence with the 1995 jump-start “Goldeneye” — to reboot Bond with an origin story. Daniel Craig made his first appearance in the role, complementing the character’s signature debonair charisma and offhand wit with genuine danger and darkness, while Eva Green impresses as the woman who made Bond do what he seldom would again: fall in love.Stream it here.‘Stranger Than Fiction’ (Aug. 30)Will Ferrell revealed he was capable of more than dumb-guy slapstick with his leading role in this clever comedy-drama from the director Marc Forster (“Monster’s Ball”). Emma Thompson stars as a superstar novelist who finds herself struggling to complete her latest tome; it seems her protagonist (played with naïve, wistful charm by Ferrell) has, somehow, become aware of his fictional status and of the death his creator has planned for him. It’s an ingenious premise, but it’s no mere intellectual exercise. The screenwriter Zach Helm explores the rich emotional implications of the scenario, forging an unlikely but affecting relationship between Ferrell and a marvelous Maggie Gyllenhaal.Stream it here.‘Chinatown’ (Aug. 31)The neo-noir films of the 1970s, and particularly the era’s plethora of private eye movies, took advantage of the temperature of the times; in a decade where distrust of authority and institutions was at an all-time high, it’s not surprising the unshakable moral ethos of the dedicated detective were again in vogue. Few films reanimated the golden age of noir as expertly as Roman Polanski’s 1974 best picture nominee, which also took full advantage of the shifts in tolerance of adult subject matter to include the kinds of plot twists earlier films could only hint at. That tension, coupled with the beauty of John A. Alonzo’s cinematography and the stellar performances of Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway and John Huston, resulted in one of the finest films of the decade.Stream it here.Reese Witherspoon in “Election.”Paramount Pictures‘Election’ (Aug. 31)Reese Witherspoon turned what could have been a one-dimensional caricature into one of the most iconic performances of her era in this whip-smart satire of small-town life, political ambition and middle-age malaise from the co-writer and director Alexander Payne (“Sideways”). Witherspoon stars as Tracy Flick, a zealous high school student whose election to class president seems a foregone conclusion until the student government supervisor (Matthew Broderick) decides the front-runner could use a little competition. Broderick’s casting is a masterstroke, allowing the viewer to reimagine Ferris Bueller as a feckless school administrator, while Payne and his co-writer, Jim Taylor (adapting the novel by Tom Perrotta), nimbly weave a tale that plays both as small-scale drama and big-picture allegory.Stream it here.‘The Girl Next Door’ (Aug. 31)The brief, “American Pie”-prompted return of the teen sex comedy was coming to an end by the time this entry from Luke Greenfield hit theaters, to middling box office and missed reviews, in 2004. But it found an enthusiastic audience on home video and streaming services, drawn less to its ludicrous plot — in which a high school senior falls for his sexy new neighbor only to discover she’s hiding from a past in adult films — than to the genuine sweetness at its center. Elisha Cuthbert and Emile Hirsch convey a bond that goes beyond mere physical chemistry; their characters seem genuinely to like and care about each other, and the strength of that bond gives the film an unexpected emotional spine.Stream it here.‘Hot Rod’ (Aug. 31)The Lonely Island comedy trio — composed of Andy Samberg, Akiva Schaffer and Jorma Taccone — made the leap from viral videos to the big screen with this 2007 comedy. Samberg stars as Rod Kimble, who fancies himself as the second coming of Evel Knievel but is closer to the victims on “America’s Funniest Home Videos”; the movie chronicles his attempts to become a big-deal daredevil, primarily as a means of taunting his toxic stepfather (a game Ian McShane). The semi-surrealist approach of the Lonely Islanders puts this one a cut above the typical dimwitted ’00s comedy, as does the supporting cast, which also includes Sissy Spacek, Isla Fisher, Danny McBride and Bill Hader.Stream it here.‘Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events’ (Aug. 31)Over the course of three seasons, Netflix turned Daniel Handler’s series of children’s novels into one of their most entertaining series, a blackly comic tale of villainy and perseverance. But the Snicket novels had been adapted once before, in this 2004 film from the director Brad Silberling (“Casper”), with Jim Carrey as the dastardly Count Olaf. Neither version detracts from the other; the film and the series work in concert, creating a similarly stylized world with a correspondingly delicious sense of dark humor.Stream it here.Miss Piggy and Kermit in the 2011 film “The Muppets.”Scott Garfield/Walt Disney Pictures‘The Muppets’ (Aug. 31)The Muppet movie franchise was in a pretty sorry state when it was brought back to joyful life in this 2011 feature from the director James Bobin and the screenwriters Jason Segel and Nicholas Stoller (who got the gig when their previous film, the decidedly adult-oriented romantic comedy “Forgetting Sarah Marshall,” included an uproarious puppet musical sequence). Segel also stars as a likable small-town guy whose visit to Hollywood with his fiancé (Amy Adams) and decidedly Muppet-like little brother results in an emergency reunion of the long-disbanded “Muppet Show” gang. Bobin, Segel and Stoller put together all the right pieces — winking humor, catchy tunes, a parade of cheerful guest stars — to create the best Muppet movie in decades.Stream it here.‘Road to Perdition’ (Aug. 31)Tom Hanks found a rare opportunity to explore his darker side in this 2002 adaptation of the graphic novel by Max Allan Collins (itself inspired by the classic manga “Lone Wolf and Cub”). Hanks stars as Michael Sullivan Sr., a Depression-era enforcer for the Irish Mob who must flee his Illinois home with his 12-year-old son when he crosses the erratic son (Daniel Craig) of his longtime boss and father figure (an Oscar-nominated Paul Newman, in one of his final roles). The director Sam Mendes re-teams with his “American Beauty” cinematographer Conrad L. Hall to create a picture that’s both gorgeous and melancholy, pushing past the surface pleasures of its period genre setting with timeless themes of family, morality and mortality.Stream it here.Also leaving: “The Big Lebowski,” “The Departed,” “Nacho Libre,” “The Manchurian Candidate (2004),” “The Social Network,” “Superbad,” “The Time Traveler’s Wife,” (all Aug. 31). More

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      In 'Hit & Run,' the 'Fauda' Creators Move the Action to New York

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      Avi Issacharoff and Lior Raz, who created that Israeli hit, are back with “Hit & Run,” a new geopolitical thriller that swoops from Tel Aviv to the back alleys of New York City.One afternoon in 2015, shortly after their gripping terrorism drama“Fauda” debuted in Israel, Avi Issacharoff and Lior Raz met for lunch in Tel Aviv. More

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      How Disney is Chipping Away at Netflix's Dominance

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      The cracks are showing in Netflix’s worldwide dominance.Netflix is still king of streaming video, but audiences are slowly shifting toward new rivals, namely the Walt Disney Company’s Disney+, according to research from Parrot Analytics.Netflix’s share of worldwide demand interest — a measure, created by Parrot, of the popularity of shows and a key barometer of how many new subscribers a streaming service is likely to attract — fell below 50 percent for the first time in the second quarter of the year.The company’s “lack of new hit original programming and the increased competition from other streamers is going to ultimately have a negative impact on subscriber growth and retention,” Parrot said in a news release before Netflix announced its quarterly earnings on Tuesday.Netflix said it had attracted 1.5 million new subscribers in the second quarter of the year, beating the low bar it had set when it told Wall Street that it anticipated adding just one million.The company said it expected to add about 3.5 million new subscribers in the third quarter, lower than the approximately 5.5 million that investors were expecting. Netflix shares fell as much as 4 percent in after-hours trading on Tuesday before bouncing back a little.The company now has 209 million subscribers, but it lost 430,000 in the United States and Canada, its most lucrative region, over the period. It now has 73.9 million subscribers in that market, with about 66 million in the United States.In a letter to shareholders, Netflix said that “Covid-related production delays in 2020 have led to a lighter first-half-of-2021 slate.” Netflix relies on creating as many different shows and films for as many different audiences as possible, and the pandemic upset that formula, forcing the shutdown of productions around the world.Traditional media players have started to consolidate, again, potentially setting off another race for talent, studio space and production resources. In May, Discovery announced that it would buy WarnerMedia from AT&T, creating the second-largest media giant, behind Disney and ahead of Netflix. Less than two weeks later, Amazon announced that it would buy Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, home to the James Bond franchise, for $8.45 billion, a price many analysts considered rich.In the earnings call after the report, Reed Hastings, Netflix’s co-chief executive, said he didn’t think it made sense for Netflix to jump into the consolidation game. He even offered his own analysis of some of the industry’s biggest deals, including Disney’s acquisition of the bulk of Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox.“Certainly Disney buying Fox helps Disney become more of a general entertainment service rather than just a kids and family,” he said. “Time Warner-Discovery — if that goes through — that helps some, but it’s not as significant, I would say, as Disney-Fox.”Mr. Hastings’s co-chief executive, Ted Sarandos, offered a sharper critique of these megadeals. “When are they one and one equals three? Or one and one equals four?” he asked. “Versus what most of them tend to be, which is one and one equals two.”Netflix has downplayed competition concerns even as newer entrants have chipped away at its long-held grip. Disney+ more than doubled its share of demand interest in the second quarter compared with a year earlier, and Amazon Prime Video, AppleTV+ and HBO Max are also gaining, according to Parrot.In its letter to shareholders, Netflix said the industry overall was “still very much in the early days” of the transition from traditional pay television to streaming.“We are confident that we have a long runway for growth,” it said. “As we improve our service, our goal is to continue to increase our share of screen time in the U.S. and around the world.”Mr. Hastings said competition would further stoke streaming across all companies.“As you get new competition in, you get validation — more reasons to get a smart TV or unlimited broadband,” he said. “So for at least the next several years, the growth story of streaming as a whole is very intact.”But Netflix hasn’t seen any impact from the “secular competition,” Mr. Hastings said, referring to Disney or HBO. “So that gives us comfort,” he added.Netflix, he said, is really competing against traditional television, and the “shakeout” won’t happen until streaming makes up the majority of viewing. He cited the latest study from Nielsen, which showed that streaming accounts for about 26 percent of television viewing in the United States, with Netflix making up about 6 percent. Disney+ is far behind at 1 percent.In other words: If Disney+ is hurting us, we haven’t seen it.The argument that Netflix has been competing with regular television and other streamers for a long time overlooks the fact that new rivals like Disney+ and AppleTV+ are much cheaper than Netflix (and subscription television). And although those services produce far fewer originals than Netflix, they appear to be getting more bang for their buck.In the second quarter, Disney+ got a big boost of demand interest from “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier,” a series based on the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which has thoroughly dominated the box office in recent years. “Loki,” another Marvel spinoff, also helped, according to Parrot.Amazon Prime Video got a boost in the period with “Invincible,” an animated superhero series for adults. And AppleTV+ attracted new customers with three originals: “Mosquito Coast,” a drama based on the 1981 novel; “For All Mankind,” a sci-fi series; and “Mythic Quest,” a comedy series that takes place in a game developer studio.Speaking of, Netflix said this month that it planned to jump into video games. It has hired a gaming executive, Mike Verdu, formerly of Electronic Arts and Facebook, to oversee its development of new games. It’s a potentially significant move for the company, which hasn’t strayed far from its formula of television series and films.The company called gaming a “new content category” that will be a “multiyear effort” and said it would be included as part of a subscribers’ existing plans at no extra cost. Games will first appear on its mobile app, an environment that already allows for interactivity. The vast majority of Netflix’s customers watch on big-screen televisions.Gaming isn’t meant to be a stand-alone or a separate element within Netflix. “Think of it as making the core service better,” Mr. Hastings said. “Really, we’re a one-product company with a bunch of supporting elements.” More

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      ‘Black Widow’ Star David Harbour Loves Being a Big-Screen Loser

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      The actor talks about his roles as a failed superhero in the new Marvel blockbuster and as a milquetoast accountant in Steven Soderbergh’s “No Sudden Move.”This article contains spoilers for the films “Black Widow” and “No Sudden Move.”It’s never a particularly good time to be a loser, but it’s an excellent moment to be David Harbour, who embodies misbegotten characters so fully in his latest movies.Harbour, who may be best known as the reluctantly heroic police chief Jim Hopper on Netflix’s “Stranger Things,” can currently be seen in “Black Widow,” the Marvel movie directed by Cate Shortland that opened over the weekend. In it, he plays Alexei, a Russian super-soldier who formerly led a thrilling life as the costumed champion Red Guardian. Now confined to a wintry prison where he has become feral and overweight, all he can do is reminisce about good old days that may not have happened as he remembers them. That is, until his rescue by Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson) and Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh), the spies he raised as his own daughters.Alexei is the latest in a series of strangely compelling deadbeats for Harbour. He also appears in Steven Soderbergh’s new HBO Max thriller, “No Sudden Move,” as Matt Wertz, a milquetoast accountant drawn into a criminal enterprise that’s well out of his league.And these are precisely the kinds of characters that Harbour loves to play. As he explained in an interview on Thursday: “Winners are great, and we like them, rah-rah. But to me, the beauty of human beings is in the flesh and the failures. We’re all frail.”Having performed over the years in Broadway productions of “Glengarry Glen Ross” and “The Coast of Utopia” as well as in films like “Brokeback Mountain” and “Revolutionary Road,” Harbour called his current renaissance “another step in a very even-keeled, slow trajectory, which I like.”Now 46 years old and married to the pop singer Lily Allen, Harbour said he was happier to have found success at this stage of his life. If he’d had this much attention as a younger man, Harbour said: “Oh God, that would be miserable. It took me so long to cultivate an artistic voice. If I had people judging me so early about whether or not they liked what I did, I wouldn’t be able to survive that.”Speaking via video from New Orleans, Harbour talked further about the making of “Black Widow” and “No Sudden Move,” his offbeat influences and the comfort of working with Soderbergh during a pandemic. These are edited excerpts from that conversation.Harbour with Scarlett Johansson, left, and Florence Pugh in “Black Widow.”Jay Maidment/Marvel/DisneyIs there a story behind how you were cast in “Black Widow”?It’s oddly pedestrian. I have friends who tested for “Guardians of the Galaxy,” who talked about a top-secret lair and getting sides [dialogue pages] and then they burn them. My agent said Cate Shortland wants to meet you for a movie she’s doing. He didn’t even know what it was about. I sat down with her, and she said, “I’m doing this ‘Black Widow’ movie for Marvel with Scarlett Johansson.” And then she proceeded to pitch my character as this dude who’s big and violent with tattoos and gold teeth and also needs you to like his jokes. She pitched me these incredible contradictions, and we talked about all these family dramedies with desperate people — movies like “The Savages” and Ricky Gervais on “The Office.” And I was like, hell yes, on so many levels.Please, elaborate on the Ricky Gervais connection.It’s just that he’s so desperately insecure, and that insecurity manifests itself in boastfulness. I love people like this. He now has such deep regret and emotional guilt, but he can’t feel any of those things. So all he does is exist on his sociopathic charm and his need for validation. Someone like Hopper [in “Stranger Things”] has guilt, but it’s so internal, whereas he’s loud in every way. Smelly and sweaty and big and hairy. So cringey, as the kids say.Is it flattering to be told by a director that she sees you as this person?I have such an odd ego. I am always flattered, and then I look back years later and I go, what were you flattered by? I’m sort of an outcast myself. Growing up, I was, certainly. And I’ve always wanted to act because I wanted people to feel less alone. Even when I’d play villains, people would say, “There was a way that you humanized the experience so that we understood someone, as opposed to judging them.” So that’s what flatters me — you’re using me as an artist to understand this deeply troubled and confusing individual that a less capable person would make a mockery of. I maybe proceed to do both. But I can hopefully give you some understanding of him.Had you ever worked with Johansson, Pugh or Rachel Weisz, who play the other members of your makeshift family?I had never even met them. But then we had rehearsals for about two weeks, which is rare on a movie this size, and we really did take on those family dynamics, right from the get-go. I did feel like Rachel was the woman I was meant to be with — no offense to Lily Allen, because she is the actual person I was meant to be with — but it did feel like Melina and Red Guardian had something beautiful. Scarlett felt like the oldest child; I started to see her as rigid in a certain way, and I started to poke fun at her rigidity. And Florence really felt like the baby of the family; I just wanted to coddle her and make her laugh.Which did you film first: the prologue scenes where your character is neat and trim, or the main sequences where he has gone to seed?I had grown the beard and the hair for “Stranger Things,” and I was like, “Let’s use the weight.” So I started eating even more. I got up to 280 pounds, and I loved it. I said to the first A.D. [assistant director], “Listen, we have to shoot the flashback stuff at the end, so that by the time we shoot the flashback, I’ll lose the weight and I’ll be thin.” And he was like, “You’ll never be thin.” [Laughs.] I was like, “Yes I will, man.” And I lost like 60 pounds through the shooting. The first stuff we shot was at the prison, so that belly that’s coming at you, that’s all real belly. And then as we shot, I started to lose weight. I was just hungry a lot of the shoot.”I’m the anti-Tom Cruise” when it comes to stunts, said Harbour, with his four-month-old puppy.Akasha Rabut for The New York TimesYou’re a recently married man — how was all of this physical transformation playing at home?[Dryly] It’s a true testament to my undeniable charisma when I say that my wife met me at 280 pounds with this beard and this hair. We went on a date at the Wolseley [restaurant] in London, and she really fell for me at my worst, physically and hair-wise. So as the thing went on, I started losing the weight and working out. And she honestly has some mixed feelings about it. Which is a good place to be in a relationship. It’s really good to start the relationship from that part, as opposed to being the young, handsome buck and watching yourself degenerate over the years.Did you get to do many of your own stunts on the film?They really want you to do it. They’re very encouraging. But I’m the anti-Tom Cruise when it comes to this stuff. I do not want to fly the helicopter. I want Alexei to be a production of eight different people. I’m the face. I’m very happy to put the stunt people in. But I do my own arm-wrestling. I wouldn’t let anyone else arm-wrestle for me.Your best-known characters now are men who, underneath their exterior shabbiness, possess at least the potential to redeem themselves. How did this come to be your particular turf?That’s what I love about Alexei and what I love about Hopper. It comes from my view of Walter Matthau. In “The Taking of Pelham One Two Three,” you have this schlubby leading man and you put him against Robert Shaw, who’s like the most bad-ass Brit in the world. You think he’s never going to take this guy. But there’s something about his American heart that we want to love, and I love embodying that. Once Hopper rolled around, it was like, swing for the fences. Give him the dad bod and let him smoke cigarettes, have him be a total mess.Just a few years ago, you were playing a lot of intimidating bruisers and flat-out villains. How did you pivot from that?It was very interesting to be perceived as a villain. There were heavies, but then I was cast as true, dangerous psychopaths, too. There’s something about the mental freedom of the psychopath that I can embrace in a certain way. It really was [the casting director] Carmen Cuba on “Stranger Things” who was like, “I know this guy’s been the villain and he’s been fifth and sixth on the call sheets for a long time, but I think he’s the Harrison Ford.” No one had seen that before. I always blamed it on the jawline or the brow, whatever it was. It really takes a sophisticated eye to go, it doesn’t matter whether he has a double chin. His heart is there.Harbour as a milquetoast accountant opposite Amy Seimetz in the new Steven Soderbergh crime drama, “No Sudden Move.”Claudette Barius/Warner Bros.How did you get your part in “No Sudden Move”?It got shut down during Covid, so they refashioned it and put that movie back together. A couple people couldn’t do it so a couple replaced them, and I was one of them. Steven Soderbergh’s process is very simple: He sent me the script. Would you like to do this? Yes, very much. And then I met him on the first day.Going by only the screenplay, what was your read on the character?Matt lives in a prison of his own making. The tragedy of Matt is that he can’t be who he is, and he’s been living this lie for a long time. There is a carrot that gets dangled in front of him, and as one of the characters says in the movie, he had the brass ring and he just let it go by. That’s the true tragedy of Matt Wertz. There’s some excitement that he may actually get to live a life, finally, after so much struggle. And he disappoints us. [Laughs.]Was this the first film you made during the pandemic?That was my first pandemic shoot. “Stranger Things” had come back for Season 4 in September, and they didn’t need me until January. And I freaked out. I love my wife and kids, but I also need to go to work, because I’ll lose my mind here, trying to home-school them. This job came to me, and I took it. We were in Detroit for two and a half, three months, sequestered in a hotel. But luckily it’s Soderbergh. He did “Contagion.” So all the C.D.C. guys that he worked with on that were there on set. We were talking about the vaccines. I would go to Soderbergh and be like, “When is this going to be over?” And he would be like, “Oh, sometime early next year, there’ll be vaccines.” I was like, “Which one?” He’s like, “Pfizer’s doing very well — two shots.” It was incredible. You’re making this movie and you’re finding out what’s actually happening at the C.D.C.Harbour on being asked to play losers: “I have such an odd ego. I am always flattered, and then I look back years later and I go, what were you flattered by?”Akasha Rabut for The New York TimesWhat are you permitted to say about the new season of “Stranger Things”?Ugh. I want to tell you something. I have my prepackaged answer, which is true, that it’s a super-exciting season. It’s gone to a whole other place. It started out, in Season 1, with this small-town police chief, and now it’s become this sprawling thing with a Russian prison and a monster. The brothers [series creators Matt and Ross Duffer] are big into video games, manga and anime, and we definitely play on that this season. We talked about “The Great Escape” and “Alien 3” as influences. In terms of Hopper, you get to see a lot of back story that you haven’t seen before, it’s only been hinted at. As opposed to this dad he’s become, eating chips and salsa and yelling at his teenage daughter, you’ll unearth some more of the warrior that he had been.Having now made a mega-budget Marvel movie, was there anything you could take from that experience into “Stranger Things”?I do a lot more stunts this season than I’ve ever done. And I — if I do say so myself — did some pretty impressive things. And that truly came from being humiliated on the set of “Black Widow,” being not able to do those things. There is an ego in me that’s growing. Hopefully by the time I’m 55, I’ll be hanging out of a helicopter as well, making my own version of “Mission: Impossible.” More