Spoiler Alerts: This story contains spoilers for episode 5 of “Task” and “Vagrants,” which is streamed on HBO Max.
In the context of the violent robbery of Philadelphia drug houses, HBO’s “task” revolves around a group of FBI-led field agents on a mission to find missing children. As Tom Brandis (Mark Ruffalo) approaches revealing who is behind the robbery, the task force is challenged by Perry Dorazo (Jamie McShane), one of the leaders of the Dark Heart gang, who is trying to find and kill the person responsible for stealing the local trap house. As both the FBI and Dark Heart are searching for the Delaware County suburbs of Philadelphia, they find themselves in a cat and mouse game to find the culprit.
Darkhart discovers that the man they’re looking for is Robbie Prendagast (Tom Pelfrey), but is a modest garbage collector and takes responsibility for the deaths of multiple gang members as well as to lure Sam (Ben Doherty) (Ben Doherty). As Perry begins to put together the loose ends to discover Sam’s whereabouts, he questions his own judgment after discovering Erin (Margarita Levieva), his intimate son and surrogate son Jason (Sam Keely), a lake near the forest.
McShane spoke with diversity about staging the shocking drowsing sequence during filming of episode 5, injuries to the set, and working on season 2 of “Wednesday.”
Perry visits Prender Grast House in Episode 5 and reunited with Maeve (Emilia Jones) after her father’s death. From Maeve’s perspective, she believes Perry may have something to do with her father’s murder. What does Perry think of seeing Maeve after all these years?
Even if she suspected Perry, he had nothing to do with Billy’s death. Perry didn’t even know about his father’s murder, and when he showed up at his family’s house, I don’t think he really gave him that much thought. He’s just there to see what’s going on and he’s shocked that she’s already a very big child. Despite talking to her, he also does the typical thing he does, trying to find more information about where Sam is.
Throughout the season, Perry and the rest of the dark mind look down at the task force as they try to find Sam. The FBI has its own way of dealing with crime in towns. Who is better at keeping things clean with these two rival groups?
Dark Hearts has a way to find something faster and more effective than the FBI. For the legal purposes of the show it depends on how you define “clean” as it is a task force. But if someone needs to take care of something or someone, or if they need to prevent something from coming back, it becomes a dark heart.
After Perry kills Erin, he remains around her body in complete shock. Perry is the type of leader who can kill someone who has no regrets, but at that moment he feels regretful about killing Erin.
Perry had no intention of killing Erin. He says he gave her a clean way out of her situation and now they have to deal with it differently. When he tells her to go, he tells her he is bringing her back to confess her. When she escapes, he tries to get her until he finds out that those kids are playing with the party (on the cliff), and Erin is just screaming bloody murder. He tries to keep her quiet while he looks up at the kids, but he is not completely aware of what he is doing. He’s terrifying when it hits him, but at that moment, the gang mentality clicks inside.
What was it like filming the sequence of Erin’s death, especially since the entire scene takes place in the forest and the lake?
It was a brutal filming. As soon as I tried to rise from the water on all sorts of loose rocks, I went down vigorously, snapping my tendon to my finger on the first take, unable to straighten my right ring finger. They called Medic and they took me to the emergency room. Because they had to check if it was broken. After every take I literally had to pull out my finger and hold it. After working on “Tasks,” I went to Texas to film “1923.”
On the final take, when Perry left after Erin’s body floated, I didn’t want to go back to where I had fallen, so I went to a deeper area. I forgot what they told me not to go that way, and while the camera was still lying I smashed my left shin into a jagged rock. So by the time I got out of there and got to emergency care, I was walking with my pants wrapped around and bleeding my legs. The nurse said, “Yeah, you’re here for your feet.”
Earlier this year, he returned to his role as Galpin Sheriff on Netflix’s “Wednesday.” Between that role and your role as Perry, they are two incredibly different performances you filmed at the same time. What about that experience when you were jumping between the two?
I was very fortunate to get both of these roles. It was interesting to be working on “Wednesday.” Because we filmed in Romania for season 1. In season 2, they filmed in Ireland. I’m not a lot of scenes, but it was enough where I had to go back and forth between filming in “Tasks.” Luckily, my beard looked the same on both shows. After finishing work on “1923” I returned to Ireland (to shoot on “Wednesday”).
It was a lot of fun coming back to Season 2, but I think “Task” is the best show I’ve ever done in my career. It was absolutely fantastic to be part of these two shows.
This interview was compiled and condensed.
