In HBO’s DTF St. Louis, the close relationship between weatherman Clark (Jason Bateman) and his ASL interpreter, Floyd (David Harbour), is complicated by an affair with Floyd’s wife, Carol (Linda Cardellini), resulting in a death investigated by two law enforcement officials, Donoghue Homer (Richard Jenkins) and Jodie Plumb (Joy Sunday).
Awards Buzz spoke with Cardellini about her trio of pitch-black comedies, starting with two Liz Feldman shows, Dead to Me and No Good Deed, and leading up to this one:
“I think it’s my favorite kind of place to be. I really love the intersection of something dark and something funny and something very human but also somehow elevated. I think Liz Feldman carved out her own genre with those shows and her sense of humor and her tone, and I feel like Steve Conrad, a very different but similar in the tone in the way that it’s his own perspective and tone and almost dialect, it’s just really got a personal stamp on it and I think they’re both really great creators, so it’s been fun to be to be a piece in those in those puzzles.”
She shared how her read of Carol wasn’t the same as what she eventually came to understand about her:
“It was so fun to read, because reading Carol like the audience, I thought, oh, she’s this. Obviously, I see her as this one thing and then as you continue to read and the character starts to crack open, you realize she’s different than what you initially believed her to be, and so that, to me, was really fun. She’s very opaque in the beginning and you crack her open as time goes on and you realize, I misjudged her, or I thought she did something that maybe she didn’t. She may not be a perfect person but she’s this incredible character with a lot of layers that I didn’t know she had. So that, I loved about his writing.”
Watch the video above to hear about the arc of her career and a show before Freaks & Geeks of hers that she recommends people check out.
DTF St. Louis is streaming on HBO Max.
