Spoiler Alert: This interview contains spoilers for the “Task” series premiere finale, currently streaming on HBO Max.
“Task,” Brad Ingelsby’s follow-up to “Marle in East Town” begins like a sliced drama of life before explosive violence later in the first episode.
Viewers are introduced to former priestly FBI agent Tom Brandis, played by the heart-like Mark Ruffalo. He struggles – drinking too much, sleeping too much – is clearly plagued by a tragedy that the Shaw has yet to fully reveal (though it is known that his son is in prison). Tom doesn’t seem to be very interested in his work. He has a career fair duty until he is grumpy assigned to run a task force to investigate a series of robberies targeting a motorcycle gang drug house called The Dark Hearts. And your ears don’t deceive you – the “Task” character speaks to Pennsylvania Honks in the same area as the “Mare of East Town” character. Both shows are set in blue-collar communities around Delaware County.
Unlike the “Marre of East Town,” which was whodunit, “Task” does not hide the person behind the crime. It is a Gerberman named Robbie Prendagast (Tom Pelfrey), who uses his route to rule out potential targets. He may be a criminal, but he looks like a decent man. He is one father raising a child along with his nie, Mave (Emilia Jones). It’s hard to put roots into the lobby, even when her uncle ruined her date and interrupted Maeve while she met a guy and crushed him. Well, at least until Robbie and his fellow bandits Cliff (Raul Castillo) and Peaches (Owen Teague) sneak into the drug house, gaining the dominance over the dealer, leading to a savage conflict. (Peach, we barely knew ya!).
However, there is another surprise in the store. The boy is at home too. Robbie and Cliff have no choice but to lure him out, as they saw them without a mask. Is the conflict between Robbie and Tom far apart, as we have surpassed that moral rubicon?
Advances the debut of “Task,” Ingelsby, Perfrey and Jones unleash an explosive first episode of the seven-part HBO Limited series.
Brad, when you wrote this show, why did you decide to roll it out in Delaware County?
Brad Ingelsby: It’s just lazy. That’s the people I know. It’s the blood in my veins. I would be happy if I could write a story about this field for the rest of my life. If I write a story about a group of people in Wisconsin or Minnesota, I have to do some research. I have to spend time there to get a sense of the rhythm of their lives. So, for me, I want to talk about the people I grew up with. I don’t know of FBI agents or police officers, but my uncle was a priest who left the priesthood. So there are some connections in my own life. It also felt like there was more stories to tell there. It wasn’t as if the “mare” had exhausted it in me. “Mare” was very important about his mother and son. Especially in “task” with Tom, the man who sees the pillars of his life and everything he thinks is true falls apart. He is trying to understand his suffering.
Is this story part of the same universe as “Marle in East Town”?
Ingelsby: Absolutely. We wanted to accept that. In fact, they don’t try to do it like “Mare.” “In fact, many of the same crew members of “Mare” have been working on this show.
What did you want to set up in this first episode?
Ingelsby: The first episode is about to establish a conflict course for the show. It was important to establish two leads and their home life and their work. I wanted to lean into the character’s emotional arc with the audience. They know that something is going on with Mark’s character, something is going on with Tom’s character, but not much knows. It also requires you to reach the track on the plot, and by the end of the first episode, Mark’s character will investigate a series of robberies led by Tom’s character. It was necessary to establish a dual track for Story, which is the dual track for the entire series. These characters’ emotional lives, and the procedural elements of the show.
We get a real sense of lobby and mave’s home life in the episode, as well as the warmth and mixed chaos in their home. What do you remember about filming those scenes?
Tom Pelfrey: It was beautiful. It was located in a place called Downing Town. It was a bit of a drive from where we normally filmed. But that was surprising. Because it was a real home, there was no recreation on stage somewhere. Our set decorators did such an incredible job. It felt so inhabited, down to the messiness of not being able to clean up the toys. It made our work easier.
Emilia Jones: I loved filming there because there was no phone connection. There was no distraction. We were all really hooked. We were entertaining the kids between the scene and the take. We were all hanging out constantly. It helped us bond. It was important because we were supposed to be close family.
It comes in the scene where Maeve cooked dinner using Reedummond’s recipe and no one wants to eat her food.
Jones: Maeve spends a lot of time trying to cook, clean and create structures for these kids. And then the lobby comes and ruins it. Maeve is tired. She’s really, really tired. But these scenes were much more fun than I thought. I always had to remind myself, “I’m tired, I don’t like it.” I had a good time, I mean, Oliver (Eisenson), who plays Wyatt, says a lot of “chicken bats” on the show, and he also says a lot from the camera. Our director, Jeremiah Zagal, followed around us with a lot of handhelds, which became more confusing.
Maeve’s frustration with her life comes in the scene where she dates for the first time forever and brings home to a man. What does she want when her night begins?
Jones: Maeve feels stuck and loses his sense of identity. She is extremely excited to be unable to hang out with new people outside her family and talk about farts and things. She’s always tired of coming to pick up people from her family. First she was her father, and now Robbie spirals into criminal activity. When Robbie isn’t enjoying her date without letting her go outside, she just snaps. Maeve loves his family and is trying to be patient.
As for the lobby, do you say that by sprinting through his nie’s room he’s ruining her evening?
Pelfrey: Well, I’ll go there. It almost sums up the lobby. He walks around the house and makes sure all the chickens lie down to rest. He gets a little nostalgic and then he’s in a bad situation.
Are there any similarities between what Mark Ruffalo’s character is experiencing with the struggles Tom’s character is experiencing?
Ingelsby: There are similarities. Once the story is built, we find many more similarities, to the point where the two characters collide. It’s about two fathers, but “Mare” was about his mother. There is also about two guys dealing with losses in different ways. In the case of Robbie, it is the loss of his brother and the absence of his wife, and the real uncertainty about whether she will return home or not. Tom understands the great losses in his life. They both love their family and try to take care of their families. They feel like they’ve probably disappointed their family. The deeper the show, the more you start to see how close these characters are. When they finally have a scene together, they see it too and discover these works that connect them.
What was it like filming the invasion of the drug house scene?
Pelfree: It was our first week. Jeremiah was mapping exactly what we were trying to do. He knew where and why when the camera moved, and how he wanted to fill the frame. We rehearsed the physical actions of it, so the timing was synchronized with the photographer. It was cool to wear a mask. It’s powerful to not have your face to express anything. You have to think about how you will use your body. What helps you turn your head in a certain way helps you communicate to the audience what you’re not doing with your voice and you can’t do it with your eyes.
Violence is truly cruel.
Ingelsby: The idea was to calm the audience down to Rob, who loves him. However, audiences need to understand the stakes of play. The structure of the first episode is a bit of a build. It doesn’t start with crime, and we end soon. We actually live quite a bit with the characters and get caught up in their lives. And only at the end of the episode is separated by this incredible violence. And then it’s like, “Oh, amazing.” These are the results of what they did. Because at that point in the story, we really like Robbie and Clinton. “These guys are cool. You can hang out in peaches.” And now, one of our crew is dead and now we have this little boy they have to take care of. We wanted it to be really violent. In fact, I spoke to Jeremiah and got through the pistol whip moment. Every time I talked about it, I said it really needs to be shocking. I did the same thing with “Mare”. There, the body does not appear until the end of the first episode. In “Task”, it is a kind of character work, and at the end the plot becomes entrenched.
Can you tell us about the final image of Robby returning home with the child in his arm?
Ingelsby: We wanted to say, “What’s going on in that house now?” We wanted to close the audience and leave the audience behind and get it as “Oh, what a god.” They need to have an unstable quality when credits are rolled.
This interview was compiled and condensed.
