Tom Pelphrey, Emilia Jones, Fabien Frankel and Brad Inglesby

Taken to Task

By Jay S. Jacobs

So how does a TV show come together?

“It always starts with characters,” Brad Inglesby explained to me on the red carpet at the Philadelphia Film Festival, where the season finale of his acclaimed TV series Task was going to be screened a few hours before its HBO debut. “I just have an idea for a character, and I start to build out their world from there. This one, I had an idea for a priest who turned into an FBI agent, and then I had an idea for a trash man who started robbing houses. I’ve got to figure out an excuse to get them together how to tell this story.”

This story turned into Task, the latest hit HBO series by the showrunner, who also helmed the popular series Mare of Easttown a couple of years ago. The show, which stars Mark Ruffalo, Tom Pelphrey, Emilia Jones, Fabien Frankel, Thuso Mbedu, Aleah Clinton and Martha Plimpton.

Ruffalo plays the priest-turned-FBI agent of Inglesby’s imagination, and Pelphrey is the larcenous trash man. It has become an eight-episode limited series which has been running on HBO. I spoke with Inglesby and his stars Pelphrey, Jones and Frankel at the Film Festival screening of the season finale, which would then premiere on HBO a few hours later.

The scripts for the series inspired a whole lot of interest from international talent to be a part of the series. Much like Kate Winslet on Easttown, a British actor who played a resident of Delaware County, in the suburbs of Philadelphia. While Ruffalo is from Wisconsin and Pelphrey grew up in nearby Northern New Jersey, Jones and Frankel are both from London. However, they all knew that they wanted to be a part of the show.

“Oh my gosh, so much drew me to Task,” Jones said. “I’m a big Brad Inglesby fan. I love Mare of Easttown. I think Brad just writes such complex, intriguing characters. Every character has such a rich backstory, and they always have a why. He’s such an actor’s writer. That was a big draw for me.”

“That’s Brad,” Frankel agrees. “Honestly, anything that Brad writes, I would want to be a part of. I think he’s one of the greatest writers in modern television, and soon to be a modern cinema. I would work with him on anything.”

“It’s one of the best scripts I’ve ever read,” Pelphrey explained. “The character of Robbie is beautiful. It made so much sense to me immediately. Sometimes it’s hard to even articulate exactly what it is that’s happening but just read it and you get a feeling. I had all the strong feelings when I read the first episode of Task.”

“The show is about family and forgiveness and loss and love, but also with a whole lot of action,” Jones continued. “It just was something that I really felt like I had to be a part of. And I’m really lucky that I was able to.”

Task has a series of extremely complex characters – both the supposed good guys and the bad guys tend to be good people but keep getting thrown into a series of bad situations. That dichotomy was fun for the actors.

“Maeve is so strong and tough,” Jones said. “No matter what is thrown at her, she takes it on. I think that that’s really fun to play at any point in your life, but especially as Maeve is only 21. She’s so young, and she’s shouldering such adult responsibility. It’s really cool that she’s one of the strongest characters in the show. She’s tough, and she’s kind of the adult in the relationship between her and Robbie. It was really, really interesting to play.”

“The complicated characters are always more interesting, I think,” Pelphrey agreed.

“Also the fact that Maeve is so strong, but she’s also very vulnerable and she’s also scared” Jones continued. “It’s like a lot of the time in the scenes, there were a lot of emotions that Maeve was feeling all at once, and so that was really challenging to play, but in a really good way.”

“You just want to serve the story that Brad’s written as best you can” Frankel said. “So, my part, I’m playing an FBI agent. I was very fortunate that I spent a lot of time with the police. It was really, really useful.”

Of course, one of the unacknowledged characteristics in Task, as with Mare of Easttown before it, is the very specific lifestyle in Delaware County, a working-class area outside of Philadelphia. The area has its own habits, its own accent, its own lifestyle, which is unique even from the rest of the Philadelphia area.

“What’s important to me is that if you’re going to make a show about a specific place, it really helps to shoot it in that place,” Ingelsby said.

“It’s such a dream to be able to film where the show is actually set,” Jones explained. “It’s very rare that that happens. Most of the films that I do are not actually filming where they’re set. So it’s really nice. I think it really helped me with the accent because the accent is so specific.”

“It’s great to be back on the east coast,” said Pelphrey, who grew up not too far away in North Jersey. “I love it here. I love the vibe of the people. Very good.”

“I think, especially for the actors, if they get to live here, if they get to spend time here, it gets in their bloodstream,” Inglesby continued. “They get a feel for the rhythms and the routines of life here. They get a rhythm, or they get a sense for how the relationships work here, and it comes through on the screen.”

So the area is almost an additional character?

“It is 100%,” Pelphrey claims. “I think Brad would tell you that. I think he drove the location scout insane with the amount of locations Brad had. He was very specific about it. It’s very important to him to show the area and show different parts of the area. He really does want to feature Delco and Philly and everything as a presence.”

“Man, I really love this city,” Frankel exclaimed. “I got nostalgic, even coming off the plane today. I really feel a deep kinship with the city and with the people of Pennsylvania. It’s an amazing time out here.”

“I would just kind of bar hop around Philly and Delco and just talk to the locals,” Jones explained. “It really helped me build Maeve as a character. I had people to talk to and to draw from. It really helped. It feels like you’re totally surrounded by the world, totally immersed in it. It was really helpful for me.”

“It’s really a selfish desire to have something be more honest and more representative of the area,” Inglesby said. “To actually shoot it here, one, you get to shoot natural places, so you get to see the actual architecture of the streets. And two, I just feel like it’s where the actors get a sense for the place themselves and that really starts to come through in their performances.”

How exciting is it to come here for the Philadelphia Film Festival after filming in the area?

“It proves Brad right,” said Frankel. “I’m so glad that they got to screen the premiere here and the finale here. It’s always so nice to get to see anything on a big screen. So, I’m immensely happy that the show got a screening here.”

In fact, Pelphrey has become so well-known in the area that he was asked to pitch out the first ball in a recent Philadelphia Phillies playoff game.

“That was really special,” Pelphrey said. “That was a great honor. Very cool. I’ll definitely always remember that experience.”

As honorary Philadelphians, do the actors have a go to Wawa order?

“The first thing I did when I arrived was get a hoagie from the Wawa,” Jones admitted. “Because everyone – the TikTok’s that I was watching when I was learning the Delco accent – was, right, get a hoagie. Get a hoagie. And I was like, wow, I got to get one. So I did that. The minute I arrived, I did that. And I felt very Philly.”

“We’ve got Wawas everywhere in Jersey too when I was growing up,” Pelphrey said. “They make a chicken cutlet sub. I get cheddar, honey mustard, all the lettuce, tomato and onion. Yeah, I get that hoagie to go. That’s like a good late-night Wawa standby for me. They do a good sandwich.”

“I don’t, but I should,” Frankel admitted. “I didn’t spend as much time on Wawa, but I’ll tell you, I ate some great food, man. Terrific. I ate in so many good restaurants.”

It’s a limited series, but do they think it’ll come back? (Ed. note: A few weeks afterthese interviews took place, it was announced that Task would indeed be coming back for a second season.)

“I wouldn’t know,” Frankel admitted. “I’m not the person to ask. that’s a Brad question or an [executive producer] Mark Roybal question. They’ll be able to tell you. I hope it does, because I think that Brad deserves to get as many seasons on HBO as he can, so we’ll see.”

“I would love nothing more than to be a part of it,” Jones said. “I mean we all would. We were all saying this when we were filming. We were all saying, like, I just wish that this was an ongoing thing, because we all love each other so much, and we love the scripts and the world. So obviously, if that ever happened, I would jump at the chance.”

Copyright ©2025 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: October 21, 2025.

Photos by Jay S. Jacobs © 2025. All rights reserved.