Mark Ruffalo And Brad Ingelsby On Closure & The Future

Following the success of his HBO limited series Mare of Easttown, Brad Ingelsby had a feeling his next series could draw some star power. So when he delivered the script for his crime drama follow-up Task to HBO higher-ups last year, it was Mark Ruffalo whose name kept crossing his mind to play FBI agent Tom Brandis. The only thing was, HBO brass thought it would be a tall task to get the busy movie star to sign on to another TV series.

“I think we were scared to go to Mark because HBO said he’s never going to do it,” Ingelsby tells Deadline.

Regardless, HBO sent the script to Ruffalo and soon after he met up with Ingelsby and the show’s main director Jeremiah Zagar to discuss the show and the character. While Ruffalo admits being reticent to for another dark drama after winning an Emmy for his work on HBO’s I Know This Much Is True, ultimately Task was too good to pass up.

Fast forward to last night’s season finale, and by all accounts the decision was the right one: HBO not only has another hit series from Ingelsby, but is also sure to have him and Ruffalo in the awards-season conversation given the strong critical response.

Ruffalo and Ingelsby sat down with Deadline to discuss all things Task including why Delco County makes for such a good space for storytelling, building chemistry with his series co-star Tom Pelphrey in the limited screen time they shared, and whether there are more stories to tell for Agent Brandis.

DEADLINE: It seems you’ve created a new genre, the Delco crime thriller. I believe it’s your fourth project set in the area?

BRAD INGELSBY: Yeah, so, as the first one, Out of the Furnace, I think they shot that in Braddock, PA. It’s a little bit west, but I did American Woman, which was set in Delco, and then I wrote The Way Back for Delco but [star Ben] Affleck wanted to stay with his family so we moved it to … we shot it in Long Beach. Yeah, it’s funny. It was originally set in Delco.

DEADLINE: What makes that part of the country … I mean, you’re from there originally, right?

INGELSBY: Yeah, I think it’s just laziness. It’s the people I know. I think it’s just the people that I grew up with and the people that I still live near now again, because I moved back home, and I just have a lot of respect for those people, and I feel inspired to write those stories. I really do love where I live … so, always trying to make it as authentic and honest and as layered as I can, you know?

DEADLINE: When did you start coming up with this idea for this show? Was it during the Mare of Easttown shoot?

INGELSBY: Yeah, it was a little bit after. I came up with Mark’s character first. So, I was interested in a priest who had lost his faith, because my uncle was a priest, Augustinian priest for a long time. He left the priesthood, married a woman. He’s not an FBI agent, but I got really interested in that idea and how his ideas about, you know, faith have changed over the years, so that was really the start. I always start with characters. So, I got the idea for Mark’s character, and then I got the idea for Tom’s character when I was talking to our tech advisor, who said to me … we were talking about a different story, actually, and he said to me, the mailmen and trashmen, they know so much about your life, but you don’t recognize it.

MARK RUFFALO: You’d never know it.

INGELSBY: Yeah, you’d never know.

RUFFALO: They’re in the shadows, but not really, but they know everything.

INGELSBY: And so, I was like, well, that’s a really interesting character, and that idea resonated with me, and I didn’t want to do another whodunnit, because we’d done that with Mare. So, I thought, well, what’s the tension, you know? And I thought, well, maybe a collision course, where you get to know and care about so many of these characters, and then they collide in the sixth episode.

DEADLINE: So when your scripts for Task had come in, every agent in town said it was, like, the best script they had read in some time, and all they wanted to do was get their star a meeting with you.

INGELSBY: Oh, man.

DEADLINE: From your perspective Mark, when someone like an agent comes to you and says, Brad’s got the scripts in. Did Casey [Bloys, Chairman and CEO, HBO and HBO Max Content] say we want you to come back?

INGELSBY: We were scared … I mean, because I think we were scared to go to [Mark], because HBO said he’s never going to do it, right? You remember this. You can tell it.

RUFFALO: Yes, and that’s what I heard from them, and my agent said, do you want to meet? And I was like, yeah, and I said let me let me read it. And I read it, and I was like this is really good, and they said do you want to meet? And I was like, yes, and I got to meet Brad and Jeremiah. We went out to dinner, and we talked a lot about it.

INGELSBY: We did.

RUFFALO: [About] the character and where it was going. But the line was that HBO says you’ll never do another show, which I don’t know how they got that.

DEADLINE: I mean, you had a pretty good experience the first time you did an HBO show.

RUFFALO: Yeah. Yeah. I think because I Know This Much Is True was so hard that they thought that, oh, he’s not going to want to do it. But I met with them, and I think, you know, they were surprised. I was like. let’s do it.

DEADLINE: Getting ready for the role, are you putting much research into the character? Are you talking to experts, or do you just kind of let Brad segue your way?

RUFFALO: Brad really helped me with the priest. I had played a priest, a Jesuit priest, so I had done a lot of research for that. So, I understood that. Scott Duffy was our TA from the FBI, and he was just fantastic. He was with us all the time, so I found myself spending a lot of time going to him, because, you know, the priest part of his life is sort of behind him, but the FBI was so present with him, and so that became where I was getting most of that information. But I mean, it’s really a family drama. I mean, it has the policework, and it has all that, but that’s where all the tough work was.

INGELSBY: Oh my god, I know. Some of those scenes.

DEADLINE: Oh, with you mean the daughters?

INGELSBY: Yes. Yes.

DEADLINE: So, wait. Did you shoot Crime 101 before or after this?

RUFFALO: Crime 101 was after this.

DEADLINE: Like, if you’re jumping from one cop role to another, did that screw with you at all when you moved on to Crime 101?

RUFFALO: I kept saying, Bart [Crime 101 director Bart Layton], I just played this role. We don’t want to repeat the same role, you know?

INGELSBY: I know they’re very different.

RUFFALO: I was like, they’re different, but they’re … you know, it’s a bit of an arc that’s similar. He’s like, I want you to put on a bunch of weight. I was like, Bart, I don’t think you want me to put on a bunch of weight, you know?

DEADLINE: And he knew nothing about this?

INGELSBY: We actually met him on this. We had gotten Jeremiah, and then we talked to Bart about coming in and directing a couple episodes of the show.

RUFFALO: And he loved the show.

INGELSBY: Yeah, he did. He was very, very impressed.

RUFFALO: But he wanted to make his movie. Basically, he was prepping for it.

DEADLINE: He didn’t want any, like, crossover.

RUFFALO: Except for me. [Laughs]

RUFFALO: As the cops in his show, but yeah, I play a lot of … it’s funny, because I’m the least likely cop I can think of.

DEADLINE: Now, this show doesn’t work without Tom Pelphrey, do you agree?

RUFFALO: One thousand percent.

DEADLINE: Brad, did you have Mark and Tom meet together first, or did you wait for the day they shot together? I’m kind of curious because even though they only have those couple scenes, I still feel like, from a distance, you needed them to have some kind of connection.

INGELSBY: I think Tom wanted to stay away.

RUFFALO: He did. He stayed away from me. I’d see him and be like, hey … and he would just keep going.

INGELSBY: Yes, it’s so true. He wanted to make those scenes when they intersect to be really charged, I think.

RUFFALO: Michael Mann would do something similar. When I was doing Collateral, I came to set one day, and he kicked me off set because I walked over to say hi to Tom [Cruise], and [Mann] saw me, and he’s like, get him off. Literally, I got the hook. Michael Mann did the same thing with Heat, with [Al] Pacino and [Robert] De Niro — he wanted to keep them apart the whole time.

INGELSBY: Yes. Exactly, but yeah, I just feel like [Pelphrey] just kind of like encapsulates … it’s almost a more important one, just because there’s so much that he is doing that … the cause and effect of it all. Yeah, he’s driving the plot more, and as Mark’s character has to react to, he’s driving the plot. I think I told you this story, Mark, but we got an audition from Tom, and I was on another set at the time, and I pulled up the audition tape, and I got, like, half a minute into it, and I heard Tom laugh, and I was like, man, this guy’s got something special. Even before I got done with the audition, I got a call from Jeremiah. He’s like, this is the guy. As soon as we saw Tom’s audition, we hired him, and it was Mark and Tom, and I think we got Emilia [Jones] next, right?

RUFFALO: Yeah. Yeah. She’s incredible

DEADLINE: I was amazed how this show could’ve had four spinoffs. Even like Jamie McShane’s Perry Dorazo and Sam Keeley’s Jayson Wilkes had their own thing going, where I never felt like I was confused, but you have these layers where it’s the family. It’s Tom’s team, it’s your team, even the Martha Plimpton stuff to the side, she kind of gets her own thing. When you’re doing that, does that just come naturally and organically, or do you go in thinking it would be nice where everyone kind of gets their moment and their own mini show?

INGELSBY: I think that was important, and something we talked about, I think, was, try to make every character feel like they had an arc in the show, [that] they had a reason… I would always say, like, they have to earn a seat at the table. Why are they here? You know, why is every character here? And I meant that in a way that just wasn’t about the plot, but in an emotional way, and I think that’s what the sixth episode does, and everyone arrives at. We were talking to [director] Salli [Richardson-Whitfield] about it and I was saying, listen, it’s a plot episode where all these people collide, but we’re paying off all the arcs at the same time, you know? Mark gets in a fight with Jamie, and you know, Jamie kind of embarrasses him earlier, then Mark–

RUFFALO: He has a rage.

INGELSBY: He has a rage, yes. We just talked about that. This is where you explode and come into your own. You’ve been holding it. All this pent-up frustration comes out, and you punish Perry. So, I think, you know, we wanted everyone to earn a seat at the table and have an arc in the show. It’s a testament to the actors that we got everybody in such a good place.

RUFFALO: And it’s a testament to the writing. It’s true. It’s true, and everyone … the comment that I keep getting, and people are only into three (episodes), but they’re like, what’s amazing about this show is that every character feels so true and so original and so authentic and no one feels like a cliché. No character’s tossed away purely for a plot point, and that’s great writing.

DEADLINE: When you finally do have the scene with Tom, what was that like getting ready for that? First of all, you’re doing the sequence in a car, and it’s so different. How did you go into planning that?

RUFFALO: You know, it was just the locomotion. You know, the train was so on the tracks at that point, and your story’s building in you as you’re acting it, and you’re piling the scenes on, and you’re living in your character’s story. And so, by the time Tom and I got to that, we were pretty well near the end of shooting … We didn’t know each other at all, and so, when I got into the car, we were two strangers in that car, really. It was also baking hot and so uncomfortable. It was, like, 100 degrees outside, and we’re in the car, and they put an AC in there, but we could never run it while we were shooting, right, and those were the longest driving scenes. So, we were baking in there. It was uncomfortable. He sweats. Like, he was very uncomfortable, and it was also tense, you know, but it all fed into it. We’re feeling each other out. But it’s interesting because we’re not face to face, and so, it just plays so differently. If you’re face to face, you’re kind of feeling things out.

INGELSBY: You also can’t really read the body language.

RUFFALO: Yeah, you can’t. So, you’re listening and sensing each other, you know, and he’s behind me, and I can’t see his face. I don’t know what he’s doing, but again, the writing is so … we’ve earned it. We’ve earned that moment from months and months of shooting.

DEADLINE: So In terms of shooting, did you have that sequence, and then you get into the big river shootout scene?

INGESLBY: Yeah

RUFFALO: There were places in the way they scheduled it that really was smart, because, as actors, that really helps us. If we got that scene first, then everything else is like butter, you know? You have the weight of the story pushing you through it, and now we’ve developed … so, we’re two actors in that car, sweating our asses off, you know, suffering, and we’re developing a relationship that way, and by the end of the time, we’re loving each other, you know? Then we stop the car, and he sends him off on his way.

DEADLINE: Yeah, you couldn’t have shot that last scene without doing the first.

RUFFALO: Never. Yeah, it wouldn’t have worked.

INGELSBY: You wouldn’t want to.

DEADLINE: As for the episode 6 shootout, what were you and Salli talking about as you were kind of prepping to go into the actual shoot?

INGELSBY: Well, I love the ending of the fifth episode. Like, it gets me every time I watch it, and I usually can’t watch anything. When I look back on that, I always think, wow, you know, when he drops him off and says, you know, “I can’t go home,” I love that scene. That was so good. I just remember being on set that day, and once in a while, you have a feeling of, like, wow, that was epic, epic. But you know, what happened to me, Justin, I think there was a little bit of fear, because suddenly as I was writing the scripts realized, wait a second. This whole show is leading up to this confrontation. If the whole show is inching these parties closer, you have to pay it off in a really epic way. You have to reward the audience because they’ve been waiting, waiting, waiting, and then you have to pay it off, and so, when I got to the end of the fifth episode 00 and I did have some ideas for what happened in the sixth — but I remember saying to Salli, who was directing it … and to HBO, and God bless them, they went along with it, was like, guys, we have to make this epic se- piece. We have to find a bridge that looks out in the middle of the river and it needs to pay off, because we’ve been leading the audience up to this. If it’s not a great shootout or it’s not scary or tense or it’s not emotional, the audience is going to feel let down, and so, we were very, very strategic in all the things that had to happen in that sequence, Justin, and had to feel equal parts exciting and devastating and still leave some questions in the audience’s mind as to what was going to happen next. So, I just felt like, man, we have to go really big in the sequence, because I don’t want the audience to turn on us, you know?

DEADLINE: So, the resolution comes, but what I appreciate most is that you give the audience time to take it all in. Like okay, the case is closed, but the stuff with Brandis and his family — it felt like those scenes were as equally important as the case coming to a close. Did you guys discuss that resolution, because it did feel like everyone was happy, even though what ultimately happened is sad.

RUFFALO: We did talk a lot about it and how to wrap it up without it feeling like we were rushing it, but also not lose the momentum of it. Like, how to close each piece up but still keep the audience going. That was something we talked a lot about in that last episode.

INGELSBY: I remember having these conversations and I don’t think I ever told you this, Mark, but even in the edit, we got a little bit of pushback from HBO being like, hey, you got to have Tom keep the kid, and I was like, but that’s not what the show is about. He’s on a journey to take his son back in, you know? So, we had that ending in mind, and we were pretty passionate about keeping the ending. Even though the audience wants to see Sam with Tom and they see how much they like each other, I always felt like, well, that wasn’t really what the show was about. It was about, like, getting the house ready to welcome his son, and obviously, forgiveness. You know, getting rid of his anger and being able to forgive. So that was always the ending, and we never strayed from that. Although we were always thinking how do we keep momentum?

DEADLINE: So, my last question is, you seem to have loved this time together. Is there a chance we get to see Agent Brandis again for another season?

INGELSBY: I’d love to do that.

RUFFALO: I’m sure Casey would love it.

INGELSBY: I’d love to do it. I’d love to do it. I mean, we get along so well.

RUFFALO: We had such a good time.

INGELSBY: We had such a good time. [Mark] is the best to have on set and I love working with this guy. I would work with him as much as I … and I think we have … you know, there’s a lot of stories.

RUFFALO: Does that character have more stories to tell, you think?

DEADLINE: I think so. I wouldn’t hate it.

INGELSBY: Him and Martha maybe. I mean, I love that.