Sitting in his offices in Pennsylvania as he preps the second season of his hit HBO crime drama series Task, creator-showrunner Brad Ingelsby is just now realizing he is hitting new career milestone: he’s writing new scripts for an old character he knows well.
Even though he’s been writing movies and TV shows set in the Delco County area he loves so much going back to the 2010 thriller Out of the Furnace, the new season of Task marks the first time he is returning to a world he created, having never done a sequel or second season of a show. He says he is appreciating the new challenges that go with it.
“I felt like that was a big piece of why I actually thought we could do Season 2, was I thought there was an emotional story that hadn’t been completely resolved. And I feel like, I don’t know, it’s my first experience coming back to [a] character,” Ingelsby tells Deadline.
The reason Ingelsby finds himself here is because audiences were blown away by the first season of Task, which marked his return to HBO following the success of his other crime drama Mare of Easttown. After having one movie star lead that series in Kate Winslet, Ingelsby landed another A-lister to lead Task in Oscar nominee and Emmy winner Mark Ruffalo, playing FBI Agent Tom Brandis.
Also for Task, Ingelsby required another actor to match Ruffalo and play Robbie, a thief who only steals for criminals. After a thorough search, Ozark scene stealer Tom Pelphrey took it on, delivering a visceral performance that elevated the show.
Both actors delivered performances that have them in mix this Emmy season, but it’s Ingelsby’s writing that delivers a story full of twists and turns and characters who could each spin off into their own show — if they survive long enough.
Ingelsby sat down with Deadline to touch on returning to the Task world after this first go-round, the origins of Ruffalo’s character, and what it was like writing that incredible car scene that seemed to share similarities to another iconic crime drama.
DEADLINE: You’re prepping Season 2 of Task right now.
BRAD INGELSBY: Yeah.
DEADLINE: Is it easier returning to a character you had previously written, or is it a little more difficult to circle back? And I’m also curious: What is more enjoyable, writing a new character for the first time or revisiting an old one?
INGELSBY: That’s a great question. I think, in some ways, it’s easier to write the character the initial time, because, especially when you have a limited series — or at least, that’s what we imagined Task was,— you can map out an arc and I can go, “Oh, okay, I can go heavy on the arc,” and in Tom [Brandis]’s case, it was like, wow, he has to give this statement. So, there was a lot of drama. So, then to go, “Well, where did he go in the wake of that?” That’s tricky.
Now, the one piece we had that was carried over from last season was what would [Tom] do when his son comes home? And I have found that to be a very interesting part of his journey; there’s the statement itself, but now, in the second season, we get to explore, “Oh, now his son is home,” and what does that life look like, and how do they adapt, and what is Ethan going through, and how does Tom help him or try to help him and fail? And so, I felt like that was a big piece of why I actually thought we could do Season 2. I thought there was an emotional story that hadn’t been completely resolved, and I feel like, I don’t know, it’s my first experience coming back to character.
So, it’s kind of been, like, I’m getting used to it. I’ll tell you who’s really fun to write, is Martha [Plimpton]’s character, because she’s always bringing, like, some zingers, and she has just such a great way about her. So, I always feel like, whenever I get a scene where Martha’s character is in the scene, it makes my life easier because that’s a voice I know, and I just know her, and I think what also helps is that you know the actors, and you know what their strengths are and what they like to do and what they’re really good at. So you can write to that as well, which is something I wasn’t able to do in the first season, and so, I think it’s a little easier, in that we’ve had experience working together, and I know what they like and what they’re good at, and I can write towards those things.
DEADLINE: You still get to build an entire new group of characters for the most part for this second season.
INGESLBY: Yes. Exactly, and we get a whole group of bad guys, and again, I use that word loosely, but we get Mahershala [Ali]’s character. He has a team of guys that work with him, so I’ve gotten to write their characters, and they all have really interesting arcs, and we’re in the casting process now, but we’re meeting with some really interesting actors, and so, that’s the most fun for me, the character writing. The plot is always hard. You know, I struggle with the plot, but I love writing characters. In fact, I have to tell myself, stop writing so many, there are so many characters in this show, you have to peel back a little bit. I would keep going.
DEADLINE: You’re returning to that Delco County crime genre. How do you go about the process of creating characters where there is still the area they grew up, but you’re trying to avoid repetitiveness when you create them? Is that something you want to be mindful of when you’re writing them, or does it help sometimes to add past inspirations from previous projects set in that part of the country?
INGELSBY: No, I think it’s something you’re mindful of. I could see some of the themes in Mare in Task, but I think you’re looking for ways to avoid Mare themes as well. I think you’re looking for ways to build on Mare, and when we were doing Task, we had a whole big meeting at the start with all the heads of department, and we said, listen, you know, we don’t want to avoid Mare. We want to lean into Mare.
We want an audience to come into Task and be able to go, sort of. what you were just saying, “Oh, I think I’ve been in this world before.” I feel like this is a familiar place to me, in that I felt like it would help the audience understand, oh, this is going to be another story about working-class people, and we’re going to delve into complex lives and complex family dynamics. So, I felt like, actually, Mare was very helpful, in that we weren’t introducing an audience. Now, there were some people that hadn’t seen Mare, of course, but if you had seen Mare, I felt like you had a little bit of history with this world, in that you were going to tell another story.
But it was going to involve a group of people who you sort of knew a little bit about in terms of where they came from and where they lived and what their inner lives were like. And so, I actually wanted us to wrap our arms around it and have an audience have a sense of place feel comfortable, you know, seeing the same streets and same world, because I felt like, as a viewer, if I had seen Mare and I turned on Task, I would feel like, “Oh, I’m back in that place. There’s a comfort here. I know what kind of story I’m going to be told, and I know what’s going to be involved.”
DEADLINE: There were a lot of actors interested in Task, and a lot of high-profile stars chased. But ultimately it landed with Mark and Tom. I am curious, when you were writing this and then you started looking at actors, what were the traits you were looking for that you thought would make the most sense for Tom and Robbie?
INGELSBY: I think what I wanted was it was a very specific thing, and that was I had to believe that there was a character that you could believe was in the FBI, but was also a parish priest and studied the seminary. I wanted there to be an intellectual quality to him, and a lot of this was inspired by my uncle, who was an Augustinian priest.
So, I had the benefit of being able to look at actors and say, is that Uncle Ed? Do I believe that guy has the same qualities that Ed has? And I think, in truth, Mark has a lot of… and I mean this as a compliment. I think Mark is very similar to Tom as a character, in a lot of ways, and by that, I mean he’s very compassionate. He’s kind. He’s a listener. He cares about people, and when we were on set, we would always say Tom isn’t a great FBI agent. He’s not amazing with a gun or the first guy charging through the door. His special quality as an FBI agent is that he has empathy. And he can listen to people and take it in and be compassionate, because that came from his background as a parish priest, listening to people and his parishioners and the people in his congregation coming to him, and so, that was interesting to me, and I thought Mark had that in spades.
And then for Tom, for the Robbie character, that was really tricky, because he needed to have a physicality that you believed as an audience. You needed to believe a guy would go into these very dangerous situations inside drug houses and be able to tie up these dealers and be very commanding inside those dangerous situations.
You also had to believe that he would come home and put his son to bed and give him a kiss goodnight and try to date a girl online and have dreams of going to Canada. So, you needed a dreamer, and you also needed someone that had the physicality to go into drug houses, and Tom had the physicality. He’s a big, strong guy. He’s very athletic, but there is a gentleness to him, and there’s a dreamer in him and an optimist in him that I felt really suited what we needed to get out of Robbie as a character, and I wasn’t wrong. I thought they both were brilliant in the show, you know? And they’re both just amazing guys to work with, too, which helps a lot.
DEADLINE: When you’re creating characters, do you make them up before you start actually writing dialogue? That’s what I’m more curious about, because I’m so impressed with how layered everyone is.
INGELSBY: Having a character just pop in and pop out and not really bring anything to the story. I feel like if there’s a character in the story, then they have to pay off in some appreciable way, and what I like to ask myself is why are we coming into their life at this time? And I like to ask that of every character.
And I think if you asked me about Task, without having rehearsed it, I could go through and go, okay, Grasso [played by Fabien Frankel] has been maintaining this house of cards, and he’s been able to keep it erect. But now, you know, I always said someone threw the windows open in the house. So, he’s trying to keep the wind from blowing down this house of cards. And for Lizzie, who’s [played by] Alison Oliver, she’s aimless, and she feels like a coward, and now she’s going to show some courage. And for Thuso [Mbedu], [her character] Aleah, she had this history of abuse. And now she’s going to stand up, and she’s going to take her life back in some way.
It’s easier for Tom, Brandis and Robbie, because those are obvious questions. That they all have gone through an arc, and some of those are more substantial than others. But I don’t like to just throw characters in without a purpose.
They all bring something to the story emotionally, and then, also, they bring something to the story in terms of the plot, and I really, really try to map that out. I don’t like to have characters that are just there to move the ball down the field a few steps. I really want them to each play a part, each have an instrument in the orchestra. It really matters to me, and sometimes you’re more successful than others.
DEADLINE: Going back to Tom and Robbie, the car scene, essentially it’s like the café scene in Heat. It ties the whole series together. When you were writing that, how did you go into knowing that this is the one time they’re going to be together on screen? Did you also know that that was kind of the lynchpin that would elevate this show, ultimately, when it came together?
INGELSBY: I think it is the scene that was hanging over my head, because I knew we needed to get them together, and I also knew how important that scene was in terms of their arcs, right? Robbie knows he’s going up there to die. He’s going to sacrifice himself in order to try to give his family a better life. Tom has lost his faith, and it’s really through that car ride, I felt structurally, that he would take back a bit of that faith, or he would be on the journey… now, I don’t mean a religious faith, you know, per se. I just mean a faith in goodness again, right?
Robbie has a chance to kill him, and instead, says walk into those woods, man. You’re a decent man, Tom, and every scene with Tom after that, every scene with Mark’s character after, he’s on the journey back to some level of faith. There was a turning point in his character, and if he didn’t go on that car ride, if he wasn’t stuck in that car with Robbie, I don’t know that he would’ve been able to forgive his son, or would he have been able to give up the boy at the end? Because he wants to keep the boy, but he believes in goodness again. He believes that if I give the boy up, he’s going to be taken care of, and so, I felt a lot of pressure, because the themes of the piece and the arcs of the piece were really, really in that car, right?
So, it was really about mapping it out structurally. They start really far apart, adversarial, and then, slowly, we bring them together, and then Tom or Robbie, it sort of ends with an act of mercy, where it’s like, walk into those woods. You’ll see it. It’s really beautiful. You’re a decent man, Tom. So, I felt like I just kind of had to map it out and when I got the structure of it, then it started to become a bit easier, and then we found the bird metaphor, which sort of over time just fell into our lap, which I ended up really liking, the story of the vagrant, and sometimes it just comes and yeah, it was a fun one to map out. I felt the pressure, but I also felt like, you know, it was a great opportunity to get these two amazing actors together and to really let them, you know spar but then also connect, and I felt like that was the structure.
DEADLINE: So, Tom is walking towards him, and he says, I have a message for my son. He never says what that message is, correct?
INGELSBY: No, but I think that’s what I was trying to get at in that scene was, now, faced with death, he suddenly has all these ideas, right? All the things he’s been holding off, the forgiveness, the anger. He suddenly is sort of in a place where he doesn’t quite know what he wants to say, but he’s ready to address it, but it was only through that interaction with Robbie that he gets to that place, and then, when he knows why Robbie was up there, to sacrifice himself, to save his family, it’s like he’s starting to believe in goodness again, you know? And that’s what I wanted that arc to be at the end, was that he has a faith in goodness again.
DEADLINE: We keep talking about the son, and again, I think the important part of this show is those family dynamics that you see from with Tom in between his case-solving, whether it’s with his real daughter, with his step-daughter, all these things that are just plain great. But going back to the son, as you were finishing this up, did you know you wanted to see a resolve, and that’s why we’re heading for a second season?
INGELSBY: Yeah, I think that was part of it, and I also really loved the part of the deep dive we were able to do, and part of it was from a therapist. We use Ariel, who helps us on the show, and she reads all the scripts, but also, a big part of it was just my conversations with my uncle, and you know, what he kept coming back to me and saying was when I would ask about his years working at a parish, what was the most challenging thing to deal with? And he would always say shame. People are filled with shame, so much shame, and I think that idea, being a Catholic, having lots of guilt all the time, has always been in my life.
And when I started to think about Ethan and what he must be feeling — I killed my other mother. I have to come home and live in the house and be… like, what an unimaginable amount of shame he must feel, and that, to me, is just something that, as a writer, interests me. How does someone operate in a world and navigate a world where you think everyone looks at you as if you have a mark on you, and how does a father deal with that? And as a father myself, what would that look like to have a son coming home? And how would you deal with it and support him? But also understand that people are looking at him and talking about [him] — when you start to think about things, you realize there’s some fertile soil there to play in that’s not just fertile in terms of the plot, but also very emotional plot, and that, to me, is where if I feel emotional about a character or an arc or a relationship, then I know I’m in the right space. When I started to think about Ethan and Tom and what that looks like, I felt like it was emotional, and also, I felt like it’s what I like about the show and what I think is a big opportunity: that I get to tell stories that don’t often get told about caregivers dealing with mental illness and the toll it takes.
DEADLINE: As you said, you’re in prep on Season 2. You got Mahershala, which is an incredible counterpart to Mark. I’m kind of curious, as you were writing it and you’re looking into this season, what are you trying to do a little differently this time to make it feel fresh to the audience, especially since it’s your first time with a second season of something?
INGELSBY: I think what we want to do is sort of like what I was saying about Task Season 1 and Mare. I think we want to kind of think anyone who comes back to Season 2 of Task will see a lot of the same ideas and tension, but I also think we want to subvert expectations. I won’t give away too much, but I think we want to, you know, sort of take what you imagine the show will be, and then subvert it or twist it and have surprises along the way.
I think we’re embracing what people liked about Season 1, which are the sort of case and procedural aspect but also the family dynamics, and I think that we’re doing some interesting things with structure and time that I think are way, way different than what we did, and I think we’re taking some big chances in terms of the stories and the threads we’re telling in this season. I hope people feel like it’s the Task they remember but maybe even a more ambitious Task in a lot of ways.
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