Lily Allen says lockdown saved her relationship with David Harbour

Many couples broke up due to the pressure of lockdown, but the Smile singer says she and the Stranger Things actor experienced the opposite
Tina Campbell7 May 2024
The Weekender

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Lily Allen has made a surprising admission about her marriage to actor David Harbour.

Whereas many couples have blamed the Covid-19 pandemic for contributing to the breakdown of their relationships, the singer says she and Harbour experienced the opposite.

The Smile hit-maker, 38, met the Stranger Things star, 49, on dating app Raya back in 2020 and they married a year later in Las Vegas.

She has now confessed that they would have struggled to get to know each other had multiple global lockdowns not intervened in their hectic work schedules.

Appearing on the latest episode of Kathy Burke’s Where There’s A Will, There’s A Wake podcast, twice-married Allen who has two children with former spouse Sam Cooper, explained: “He’s an actor and I have two children, who at the time were six and seven.

David Harbour and Lily Allen got married in Las Vegas in 2021
Getty Images

“I don’t know how we would have been able to spend enough time with each other to know it was going to work for us to therefore take the risk of moving to America [together].”

Allen added it was only because of the pandemic and “being forced to live with each other for a year” that she realised the relationship would work and decided to move to the US.

“If it hadn’t happened, I just can’t see how that opportunity would have arisen,” she concluded.

Elsewhere in the podcast which focuses on celebrity’s “dream deaths”, Allen admitted she had a number of regrets when drawn on the subject by host Burke.

“I definitely wish I hadn’t got so out of my box at certain things…I mean I got too drunk or took too many drugs at certain events and probably made a bit of a fool of myself,” the London-born star mused.

Lily Allen admitted that she had a couple of regrets while speaking to Kathy Burke on her Where There’s A Will, There’s A Wake podcast
Alan Chapman/Dave Benett/Getty Images

“There was a period of time when I broke up with my first husband, I ended up using quite heavily and drinking quite a lot and I had a lot of paranoia,” she elaborated.

“There were things going on in my life, I had a stalker, and I was moving out of my home and everything seemed not in a good place and I felt very much like I wanted a clean, fresh start.

“In a rather cutthroat way, I fired a lot of people on my team, who had been with me since the beginning of my career, including my press officer, my lawyer and my stylist, and they are all people that I really, now that I am feeling myself again, miss…maybe not so much my lawyer, but Murray if you’re listening, I really miss having him in my life in the way that I did then.”

She continued: “It’s very valuable to have people in your life that you can trust and I could trust them but at the time I felt very much that I wanted a fresh start and it didn’t matter, I just had to put myself first. And I kind of wish I hadn’t done that because they were very supportive, and I think it was really upsetting and shocking for them.” Where There’s A Will There’s A Wake is available to listen to on all podcast platforms.

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