Spoilers follow Task final »A still small voice“
Tom Pelphrey does not appear in the final episode Taskbut this is not the same as being absent from it. Creator Brad Ingelsby's sequel to his hit 2021 HBO miniseries. Mare from Easttown tells the parallel stories of Robbie (Pelphrey), a sanitation worker who regularly robs the Dark Hearts, a biker gang responsible for the recent death of his brother, and Tom (Mark Ruffalo), a former priest turned FBI agent who reluctantly returns to active duty to investigate a series of home invasions.
Task keeps Robbie and Tom at a distance while building tension until episode five.”Tramps“, in which the pair meet when Tom's investigation leads him to Robbie's doorstep. After successfully bluffing his way into the house, Tom unsuccessfully tries to hide his reasons for being there, resulting in Robbie taking him hostage. Although the situation escalates with the potential for violence, the pair have a tense conversation in which they discover how much they have in common despite being on opposite sides of the law. In the sixth episode Robbie dies in the midst of brutal violence. confrontation with the Dark Hearts, leaving his children in the care of his 21-year-old niece Maeve (Emilia Jones). So the final episode, “A Still Small Voice,” becomes the story of what happens after Robbie's death, and how his family copes with the loss of a gentle, wounded family man brave enough to take outrageous risks but alarmingly short-sighted about their consequences.
We get to know Robbie very well towards the end of his life, but don't get much detail about his backstory. How much of this was in your head?
Always enough to help me flesh out what we need to do. I don't necessarily have to wander around and create a whole backstory just for the sake of it, because I'm a firm believer that everything we do should serve the script. But I thought a lot about Robbie's relationship with his brother Billy. What was it like when we were children, what did we watch together, how did we spend our time, was their father around or not? If not, then Billy was like my father, or certainly the person I looked up to the most. Things like that, when they fit into what we have to do in the story, become useful.
When we first see Robbie, he is carrying his son and touching him tenderly. At that moment, I felt like I knew a lot about this guy even before he said anything. Did you know when you read the script that this moment would be so powerful?
Jeremiah Zagar, our director, comes from the documentary world, so he's really interested in very specific behavior. Brad writes everything as specific and realistic as possible, especially when it comes to the way these characters move, how they live, how they express themselves. Jeremy's approach to what we did on set was the perfect embodiment of what I felt Brad was trying to express on the page. The remaining parts were discovered on the set. When I was home with the kids, Jeremiah created an atmosphere similar to the blanket fort of childhood: very safe, calm, happy. It was like, “What do you guys want to do? How do you want to lay on the bed? How would you pick him up? How would you touch his forehead? How would you touch his face?”
What was the process of creating this family chemistry?
Emilia and I got along easily. We ended up drinking three hours of coffee and had a lot to talk about. We also went bowling with the kids and their parents before filming began. Acting coach Noelle Gentile works with Jeremiah often and she is amazing with these kids, giving workshops on very simple acting. She invited me and Emilia to go, so we had to get involved and start exploring what the relationships between the characters could be. Children will always be truthful, so you never want things to get too rash if it gets in the way of them just being who they are.
Caring for his family is a defining characteristic of Robbie in many ways, but there is a point. in the first episode where he tells Maeve, “I didn’t realize you were so unhappy.” Could he really be so focused on his own path to achieving his family's happiness that he misses her pain?
Yes, I think you can. You also get a clue in another scene where she says, “I'm 21.” And Robbie says, “When did this happen?” Her behavior will change a lot when her father dies, and you may begin to accept this as the new normal for her. She's unhappy because she lost her father, and then it lasts longer and Robbie is very engrossed in what he's doing. In a sense, you lose track of time. When she tells him, “I'm not happy because I'm here,” it's like: wait, what? I thought you were a little sad about your dad lately. Are you unhappy because you live here? And then it's like: oh damn, what do you want to do with it? It was easy for me to see how this could be missed. You can easily attribute it to something else.
In the first episode, it seems like Robbie is at the center of a story that, little does he know, is about to be interrupted when a home invasion goes wrong. He is thinking about online dating and making plans for the future. In a sense, he is ready to move on to the next stage of his life.
Robbie's positivity is accompanied by a feeling that everything happens for a reason and everything will work out. He is not obsessed with details and shortcomings. Since the robberies are going well so far, he thinks that this will continue – against every time we do this we end up in disaster. We must do this a minimum number of times and then never do it again. He thinks No, we recorded it. We know how it goes now. I see it as the shadow side of what is truly beautiful about it. Sure, he wants to meet someone and move on to the next stage of his life, but he's not the kind of guy who spends a lot of time thinking about plan B.
This is an interesting contradiction. He keeps saying that everything happens for a reason, but in the big scene in the car between Robbie and Tom, Robbie talks about how he doesn't believe in the existence of God. He says that he has never felt God in his life. Was this contradiction something you explored with the character?
No, I got it. Robbie has a child's idea of God, the same idea one might get when a child goes to Catholic school. It's very detached, very much like “here's this guy.” What I liked about Robbie is that he lives with real faith – it makes sense to me that someone could live by the truth and not realize it. How God. You have Tom, a former priest, who understands all these things, who struggles with them because his heart is troubled and he doesn't believe things will work out. He has all the knowledge and expertise that Robbie doesn't have, but Robbie has this strange belief that everything will work out. Oddly enough, in this car, Robbie is the one who has living faith, and Tom is the one who is looking for it.
Since you didn't know that Tom and Robbie were dating until very late in the series, how did you feel about those scenes? In a sense, the entire series was built on their meeting.
I really felt how much momentum had built and how high the stakes had become. Violence at the end fourth episode it's terrible and all these wheels start turning and all the different storylines start coming together. He then spends almost half the episode on two guys sitting motionless in a car talking. [Laughs.] When I first read this I thought: damn, that's brave. There are a million other ways Tom and Robbie can interact. I thought it was so beautiful and so perfect. It's a risk that not every writer will take, given everything else that's going on. Some may think that we need to keep the ball in the air.
You didn't use green screen for the car scenes, right? You were actually in a moving vehicle. What are the benefits of this?
Well let me tell you, I didn't feel like there were any any benefits on this day. It was damn hard. Brad said: “That was the only day on set where you looked a little heartbroken.” The operation of the installation was very noisy, objects bounced and metal clanged. When we did the first take of the scene, I didn’t hear what Mark was saying, and I sat like this: Oh damn. I wish we were on stage and could just focus on the words.. Eventually we started solving these problems because it had to be done in real time. We only have a day.
At one point – and I don't even know if this is in the show – a police car zoomed by with its headlights on, heading the other way on the highway. You'll never get that big of a surprise with a green screen. Another thing is that it's the middle of summer in Pennsylvania and it was damn hot. Just sitting in that car for a while—they had the air conditioning on because otherwise you'd just be cooking—it starts to get to you too. The heat and sun are closer to what it really feels like. At the end of the day it's is better. I always feel like the less we have to play, the better off we'll all be.
Was episode six as tedious to film as it looked?
It was exhausting in a good way. Because, again, this is Pennsylvania in the middle of summer. The hardest day was fighting Sam Keeley, who plays Jason. It was the longest day. We did a few more things that morning and then battled from lunch until they had to turn it off when the sun got too low. We wrestled with him for probably eight hours, and again it was damn hot. We both limped back to the van that day and I think we were both sick for a couple of days. He's a big boy.
Did you know before reading the script that Robbie would die in episode six?
I didn't know. Brad was kind enough to let me experience the story as a viewer. And I like that I have it. It was heartbreaking and beautiful at the same time.
It's interesting to me that Tom isn't trying to perform any last rites or offer a religious form of comfort. He's just holding Robbie. I read this as respect for Robbie's words about God.
You know, he very subtly crossed me on my forehead. I don't know if they used that take. The reason I know this is because after one of our takes, I sat down and looked in the mirror and there was a bloody cross on my forehead. He got blood on his hand trying to hold me back, and then as he silently crossed my forehead, he put a bloody cross on my forehead. It was strong.
You're not in the finals, and what do you think about how Task ends?
I thought it was really nice to see Tom regain his faith in a sense, believing that he could let little Sam go and that he should, and have an open heart to forgive his son. Obviously, what happens to Grasso is a great ending to this character's story, this redemption. Personally, I'm very glad that Maeve and the children are okay. I think everyone felt the same. It was like enough people had enough bad endings on this show. Leave these kids alone! Don't touch these kids and don't touch Maeve!
A director friend of mine had this job that someone offered him. He had the script and he said, “If I'm going to do this, I need to see if Brad Ingelsby will say yes.” And I said, “Oh, why Brad for this?” And he said, “Because there’s not a damn heart in the script.” And I thought: Yes, Brad has heart and he deserves it. It's not fucking stupid. He has a real heart for people and it shows in his writing. I think episode seven was a really great example of how it doesn't shy away from it by not tying everything up neatly with a bow and not answering all the questions.
