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Security on blockbuster movies these days would seem to rival that of an intelligence agency. Leaks are just about the worst thing that could possibly happen, and so steps are taken to make sure that nobody accidentally says the wrong thing before a movie comes out. In the past we've seen various Marvel actors accidentally slip and give more away than they're supposed to. Mostly Tom Holland. However, it looks like David Harbour really broke the rules when he was filming Black Widow as the actor now admits to sending set photos to Stranger Things creators The Duffer Brothers.
Appearing on Jimmy Kimmel Live! David Harbour talked about the similarities between his role in Black Widow and Stranger Things, the fact that in both he plays a character that has spends some amount of time in a Russian prison. It seems that Harbour was afraid that the movie and the series could end up looking too similar, so he sent images of the Black Widow prison to the creators of Stranger Things so that they could plan their set design a little differently. Harbour explains...
I had this long hair and this beard and I was big and I thought, ‘I can’t be the same guy with long hair and a beard in the same prison. I was taking pictures of the set unbeknownst to anyone and sending them to the Duffer Brothers making sure they didn’t use any of the same colors as the [‘Black Widow’] set. And making sure the looks were different and the outfits were different. I kept sending these photos.
It's completely understandable why David Harbour would want to make sure the Duffer Brothers had an early look at Black Widow. If he ended up playing two characters who looked too similar and if the prison he was in also looked the same, it would look like one project was intentionally copying the other and it just wouldn't look as creative.
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At the same time, one has to wonder if Marvel Studios is all that thrilled to hear that David Harbour was taking set photos and sending them around. It's not that anybody would expect Harbour or the Duffer Brothers would intentionally leak the pictures, but the simple fact that they exist would increase the likelihood that such things might happen. Accidents happen and part of the added security and secrecy is simply to try and prevent those accidents as much as it is any intentional attempt to leak details.
However, in this case we didn't see set images of a Russian prison on Reddit, so it seems the pictures stayed between David Harbour and the Duffer Brothers. Now somebody will have to ask the Duffer Brothers if those pictures actually influenced their set design or not.
I would guess David Harbour probably won't get in too much trouble for revealing he was taking pictures on set, though I also wouldn't be surprised if folks from Marvel pay a little bit closer attention to him on the set if he finds himself in the MCU again in the future.
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