In the HBO limited series Task, a drug robbery goes very wrong for Robbie Prendergrast (Tom Pelphrey), resulting in dead bodies and a missing child. FBI Agent Tom Brandis (Mark Ruffalo) is brought in to lead a task force to find the perpetrators but faces numerous challenges from various elements of the local community, all converging together in unexpected and irreversible ways.
Awards Buzz spoke with Jeremiah Zagar, who directed the show’s first, second, fifth, and seventh installments, about partnering with Mare of Easttown creator Brad Ingelsby:
“I got the script and I read it and I loved it, and I talked with Brad and Mark and Nicole. And then I met Brad. I drove down to Philly and I met him, and we had lunch together and he was just the best. He was just the kindest, sweetest, most decent human being I’d met in a long time and I thought, I could make a show with this guy. And luckily, I got to… What Brad does so well is takes a genre that we’re familiar with and he lets you feel comfortable with that genre and then he does surprising, incredibly moving, quirky, strange things.”
Zagar acknowledged that this show may not feel that much like his previous projects, We the Animals and Hustle:
“There’s a lot of DNA of the other things that I’ve made in this project. I think the big difference is the genre. People said the same thing when I made Hustle. The thing that unifies all these projects is that they feel grounded and true. My goal is to make work where the acting and the cinematography and the mise-en-scène of the whole thing feels honest. I hope that’s the DNA that runs through the whole thing.”
All seven episodes of Task are streaming on HBO Max.
