Stranger Things star David Harbour has shared a series of photos of the incredible body transformation he underwent for the latest season of the hit Netflix series.
Harbour — who plays the beloved Hawkins police chief Jim Hopper in the sci-fi horror drama — revealed that he lost 75lbs between Season 3 and Season 4. “All told it was a difficult and exciting ride, changing diet and exercise plans (or lack thereof),” he wrote in an Instagram post alongside side-by-side photos of himself from the show’s third season and the recent fourth season.
The actor also revealed that he has recently had to put the weight back on to play Santa Claus in the upcoming holiday thriller Violent Night and is having a difficult time cutting the weight back down for Stranger Things‘ fifth and final season.
“I am struggling to fight back down towards a good weight for wherever Hopper ends up in season 5,” he stated. “All this up and down is not good for the body, and I’ll have to give it up soon, but it is such a fun part of the job to live in a different version of your skin for a while.”
As Harbour explained in the post, he worked with personal trainer David Higgins to help shed the pounds. “My trainer @davidhigginslondon worked with me for 8 months to make the transformation, and then another year to keep it through the pandemic,” Harbour said alongside an image of himself flipping off the camera, which he said was from “the week we began, my resistances and fury flaring.”
The final photo shows Harbour shirtless on set, down to 190lbs, his once-pot belly transformed into a six-pack. Harbour had to lose the weight for Stranger Things‘ fourth season, which sees Hopper imprisoned in Russia, where he is starved and tortured.
Stranger Things, Season 4, Streaming, Netflix