‘Task’ Episode 4 With Mark Ruffalo, Tom Pelphrey, Brad Ingelsby, and Salli Richardson-Whitfield! Plus, ‘One Battle After Another’ Is Timely and Timeless.

10:11Andy Greenwald:Because there are moments, especially early in the movie, where it's so actually throughout the movie, I'll just say it. One of the most electric aspects of seeing this movie is the vibe you only get when an artist is both truth-telling and telepathic. He has been working on some sort of spiritual adaptation of the Pynchon novel Vineland for over a decade. I think on the big pick, I think he said 20 years he's been sort of kicking it around. He filmed this a year and a half ago more. He did not know what it would feel like to be in America in 2025, but he absorbed it or precog. What's the minority report thing?

10:53Andy Greenwald:Yeah. To feel art that is absolutely in sync with the moment in which it is released is such a rare thing. And it was exhilarating and at times like almost oppressive in its immediacy. Yeah. And I love that. And I think that that also might be why there were certain moments when, And again, he does his very PTA things, which is why I love him in the first place, where it becomes it steps backward almost into silliness or repeat certain beats or lingers a little bit too long or is dismissive of something that another filmmaker would turn into an entire meal. Like the shootout at the at the at like the gas station near the end that I found myself like almost yearning to grab the wheel.

11:37Andy Greenwald:And that's not something you do in a PTA movie. so the fact that there's so much left on the bone for me to like get to once i've gotten those first viewing jitters out makes me really really excited but also makes me feel almost like talking about it as an incomplete my like my reactions yeah i don't want to get into spoiler

11:54Salli Richardson-Whitfield:territory because obviously like i hope that a lot more people see the movie and we just like don't need to go through beat by beat um i did your point about it being timely i also thought it was timeless you know i was spending some uh time driving this weekend and i was trying to sort of like map out the timeline of the movie because there's a time jump in it and you know some of it takes place 15 years prior to like the main action of the film i think but i was also like so that would make that this year that year and then this goes up to like our current moment and i was just It's like, why am I trying to...

12:30Salli Richardson-Whitfield:Solve it. Yeah, why am I doing the Weyland-Yutani chronology for a PTA movie that is largely a work of adaptation and imagination? But I just, I feel like I'm really grateful about it. And I can't wait. And it's also kind of seeped into my consciousness in a way that really, you only get like once or twice a year where I've listened to the Johnny Greenwood score a bunch of times, listened to playlists people have made of the soundtrack.

12:59Andy Greenwald:Johnny blacked out on the score.

13:01Salli Richardson-Whitfield:Yeah, yeah. And I started even listening to music like the music that's in it. I want to dive into Vineland again, which I read, but I think read too young, maybe.

13:16Andy Greenwald:My copy of Vineland spent a lot of quality time with me in London in the first part of the year.

13:20Salli Richardson-Whitfield:Two pages in? Yeah, but it sat in the window.

13:23Andy Greenwald:I think it had a nice view of the neighborhood.

13:25Salli Richardson-Whitfield:You know what's funny? I've been reading mostly novels this year, and you and I both have been on this Oliver Harris kick, who's a British spy novelist that we're really into. So because I was reading these spy novels, I decided to read a book called The Ghost, which is a biography of James Angleton, who is a very famous, infamous U.S. spy.

13:48Andy Greenwald:He's the one who basically ran an endless mole hunt. Yes. He's the most paranoid man in the history of intelligence.

13:55Salli Richardson-Whitfield:Yeah, is honestly like the character in the Bureau who...

14:00Andy Greenwald:J.J.A.

14:01Salli Richardson-Whitfield:J.J.A. is named after him. It's really funny to go to nonfiction after reading almost exclusively fiction and just how matter-of-fact dudes will just be like, and he was a fascist. I'm like, all right. If you say so.

14:17Andy Greenwald:But that's actually a really interesting way to consider one battle after another also, which is, and I wonder if people, like casuals who are seeing it, if casuals are seeing it, if it does get what I think everyone in the industry, outside of the industry is hoping. It's funny to note, just as a side note, that like, it used to be that like on opening weekends, Rival Studios would be like on deep background to Paul Derogarabadian or whatever and being like, that's a shit opening. Like this movie's doomed. And now everyone in town is like, give it time. It's got legs. We need this to succeed.

14:50Salli Richardson-Whitfield:Although we have seen over the course of the summer with Sinners of Weapons that there's, you know, usually you get a Marvel movie and then it's like 63 % drop off the next weekend now that the geeks have seen it. And this is like, I think people are hoping that word of mouth spreads.

15:04Andy Greenwald:Also, judging by me and my colleagues at the Vista, the geeks have also seen this early. But anyway, I was just going to say that this movie is fiction in a very, very, like, intentional way. Like, the names are very Pynchonesque, you know, the ones that he made up and the extravagances of it and the imagination of it. And it's fiction in a way that I find incredibly engaging and thrilling and exciting, but isn't really the way a lot of mainstream art is intended or crafted or received these days, right? There's a lot of, there's a lot of like, well, it wouldn't really happen that way. Or like, let's solve for this, right?

15:44Andy Greenwald:And I think that this movie is so aggressively fiction in a wonderful way that some people might not be used to that. I think that's good for the world to have something like that out in it. And just a couple other bullet points. Where would you rank this Leo performance in your personal pantheon? I don't, you don't need to, I'm not going to hold you to it. I'm just putting you on the spot here. I was talking to my daughters about this on the way they were asking me what I thought about the movie.

16:08Salli Richardson-Whitfield:Your daughter's big Shutter Island heads.

16:09Andy Greenwald:My daughters are like, these posters for them are like, I'm trying to think of an example of like Dorian Gray shit. Like they're so horrified that Leo is a 50-year-old man because they've seen Titanic and some of Romeo and Juliet that like this is an abomination to them. And I was like, get ready. Get ready for the rest of your lives, girls. But they were, and they were, of course, they were like, well, Titanic is his best performance. And I was like, let me show you the Quaalude scene from Wolf of Wall Street.

16:40Salli Richardson-Whitfield:Yeah, I think for me, probably sentimentally and personally, Departed is my favorite Leo performance Wolf Once Upon a Time in Hollywood Body of Lies

16:55Andy Greenwald:I thought you were going to say The Beach I think I don't know what the first movie that kind of introduced this kind of like broadly goofy Leo into the world is whether it was Don't look up maybe He's not goofy in Django, but he is arch.

17:17Salli Richardson-Whitfield:That's actually, that's top three for me.

17:19Andy Greenwald:His performance in Wolf, his performance in Hollywood, but especially this one, like this is top three for me already. I think it's an astounding performance. I think it is so, so, so funny. I'm obsessed with the fact, and this is also something that I think would be rewarded in rewatches, that the hero of the movie, the nominal hero of the movie, Bob, does nothing, succeeds at nothing, accomplishes nothing, except he's a hashtag good dad.

17:48Salli Richardson-Whitfield:Yeah. I've seen people say that. I push back on that a little bit.

17:53Andy Greenwald:You think he's a problematic parent?

17:55Salli Richardson-Whitfield:No, I think he accomplished it. I mean, I think he does a lot.

17:58Andy Greenwald:But I just mean in terms of his role in the French 75, his role in society during the 16 years, even when he is chased out. He's a passenger, yeah. He's a passenger among everyone else. And I kind of, I found that to be very, it felt like a very personal movie in that way to PTA and I found that really fascinating and you know I think you saw this coming for me because you saw the movie before I did but the end wrecked me like the end is and we won't spoil it but the last two lines of dialogue like Adam bombed my heart and I'm not recovered from it like that's the new want to have a catch dad as far as I'm concerned and as a hashtag girl dad Like, there's no going back for me from this movie.

18:39Andy Greenwald:And the fact that a movie like this contains that much note-perfect sentiment, and also Saturday Night Live legend Jim Downey of Jeff Epstein with The Island, I would have heard, coining the phrase, semen demon. Yes. There's something for everyone in this film.

18:58Salli Richardson-Whitfield:Being a girl dad is a great segue to this episode of Task. Should we take it? Well done. All right. So, episode four, All Roads. This one's written by Brad Inglesby and directed by Sally Richardson-Witfield. It is, we can go two directions for this conversation. We'll get to both of them. But do you want to talk about the human drama moments or do you want to talk about the crime thriller moments? Because I have stuff for both.

19:25Andy Greenwald:I think we should probably start with the crime thriller stuff because that is the noisiest part and in some ways the most confusing part. And we should say again, And our talk now is going to be followed by the talk we had with the creators and actors last night. We didn't get in the weeds with it so much.

19:41Salli Richardson-Whitfield:Yeah, it's somewhat artificially capped because you've got the person who wrote the series and someone who directed half of, almost half of it. And you've obviously got the performer. So the conversation taking place basically at the midway point in the season caps what they can say about what the piece itself meant to them or whatever.

19:59Andy Greenwald:And also the nature of the event last night kept us from saying, no, but really, Brad, how did he get the phone?

20:06Salli Richardson-Whitfield:Well, let's talk about how did he get the phone.

20:07Andy Greenwald:Because we love the show and we have faith in his vision as a creator. And I also am fairly confident, having not watched ahead, that the next episode will make some of those beats clearer. But it is worth noting that in the sense of the masterful navigation thus far through this thicket of characters and themes and betrayals has been really, really clear. And this was the first time when I had to rewind a couple times and still feel not entirely. I think I understand what's essential to understand about a mole, perhaps moles have diverted the phone, put the phone in the hands of the dark hearts, and thus exit cliff.

20:50Andy Greenwald:Let's break it down.

20:51Salli Richardson-Whitfield:In the beginning of the episode, when the task force is having a larger meeting with some other law enforcement who are going to be assisting them with this bust at the park, or this prospective bust at the park, Aaliyah is holding up Ray's phone. In an evidence bag. In an evidence bag. And she's like, we have been communicating with Cliff as a prospective drug buyer. So he thinks he's meeting us tonight. We're all going to be there three hours early. We're going to be in place. There's a possibility that the kid Sam is going to be in the car. So it's a live wire situation. we have to also approach this as also a rescue as well as a bust.

21:34Salli Richardson-Whitfield:Right. Okay. Throughout the episode, but especially in subsequent scenes like really early on in it after that briefing, we are getting hints and lingering shots and we have sort of broken there's a very thin wall that crime shows have where it's like, and we've talked about this a lot, whether or not the characters on the show are at the exact same place as the audience or where the audience is outpacing the characters and this is one of the hardest things there is to balance as a writer i'm sure as a novelist you know as a filmmaker

22:08Andy Greenwald:whatever it is not a non-fiction writer they know more and they're fascists

22:14Salli Richardson-Whitfield:very declarative so early on we get a i would say a couple of oh that's why they cast martha plimpton shots because she is obviously an incredibly accomplished actress and a well-known person. So casting her as Kathleen McGinty to just be like, I'm too old for this shit three times seems like a waste. So it's not a huge shock that at least we are being tipped towards the idea that McGinty is in some part the leak on the law enforcement side leaking information of the dark hearts.

22:47Andy Greenwald:And that is, the thumb is on the scale for that as well because in the van outside at the park like where, in Tom's little control center where she is as well There's a line of dialogue, and I'm sure I noted it down, but I didn't highlight it in my notes, where there's some comment about there being a mole or there being some mistrust, and then... She dismisses it. Not just that, the edit cuts to her. Like, this is... Sally and Brad talked a lot about the collaboration.

23:12Salli Richardson-Whitfield:It's essentially the crime thriller version of Jim Halpert face. You know, it's like, instead of selling the joke, you're selling it could be her. Now...

23:20Andy Greenwald:And Sally and Brad did talk about the work they did, extensive work they did in the edit on this episode to help shape it and help guide the audience where they wanted the audience to be.

23:29Salli Richardson-Whitfield:This is a delicate thing. So it could be a misdirect. Everybody wants it to be a shock, but they also want the shock to make sense. To feel earned, yeah. And there's one way of doing that, which is, forgive me for spoiling usual suspects, but it's the Kaiser Soze reveal. I don't get the reference. Where it all happens at the end, right? You're watching it the first time through and you're just like, oh my God, who's Kaiser Soze? Who's Kaiser Soze? Is it another person that we haven't seen? And it turns out it's not. and that all of that is sort of re-contextualized. You want me to spoil it? No, no.

23:58Salli Richardson-Whitfield:Let's let people enjoy Kevin Spacey and Bryan Singer's work. Just, you know. Wow.

24:05Andy Greenwald:The best possible way to spoil it by celebrating two of our great icons of cinema.

24:11Salli Richardson-Whitfield:Or you can be the camera lingers. And this is an interesting choice that they made where Ruffalo's character, Tom, leaves the room and we stay with Kathleen McGinty and get her calling saying, hey, we got a problem now. She could be calling her contractor. I don't know. I think we know.

24:32Andy Greenwald:The question is how many people are.

24:34Salli Richardson-Whitfield:Yes, because I have a hard time believing that the person who is largely, like, seems to be in charge of Philadelphia law enforcement is going to also be rooting around in evidence lockers right at this crucial moment.

24:47Andy Greenwald:Yes. So thus the cloud of suspicion has not lifted off of the other members of the task force, particularly Aaliyah, who is the last one we see with the phone.

24:59Salli Richardson-Whitfield:She's the last one we see with the phone and we have spent the least amount of time with her personally.

25:03Andy Greenwald:And Grasso remains a suspect for a number of reasons, one of which being he tells Tom that he was interviewed by some lady, which connects them.

25:11Salli Richardson-Whitfield:But also pretends like he can't remember her name, which seems unlikely.

25:14Andy Greenwald:Seems unlikely. and then two, his sudden crisis of faith.

25:18Salli Richardson-Whitfield:He is the reverse semen demon. He is.

25:21Andy Greenwald:Actually, I think the reverse semen demon would be something else. That's right. And we probably shouldn't cover that on this podcast. However, I might bring it over to our friends at The Big Pick. It's a much safer place to discuss.

25:32Salli Richardson-Whitfield:If somebody skipped the one battle part and just jumped to that, that would be confusing. What I mean is he suddenly has this, I guess you could say kind of sweet and consistent with his character, crisis of conscience where he's like, but kind of old fashioned and a bit odd where he's like, I don't want to have our first time, meaning his and Lizzie's first time having sex, in your marriage bed. Yes. Which is fine, but odd. And I read that personally as this guy knows that he is engaged in betrayal. And sin. And doesn't want to further complicate things.

26:12Andy Greenwald:I felt that as well. But I also credit the show for doing the legwork to make that kind of crisis of faith, of confidence, plausible within the bounds of Grasso, who's casting around about faith. He keeps asking Tom questions about being a priest or not being a priest or how he felt about it, how he feels. So, you know, he is in the midst of his journey, too. Yes. not to step on it, but Brad gives a very, I thought very insightful and interesting answer in our conversation that you guys will hear later about where he likes to engage with characters on their own internal arcs and journeys and that tracks.

26:51So it's the best scenario.

26:53Andy Greenwald:It's good on both sides.

26:55Salli Richardson-Whitfield:Is there any part of you that, see, this is honestly not the most interesting part of the show to me is like, who's the mole? Totally. I remember having this conversation, maybe I actually wrote about it when The Night Of came out. And the first couple of episodes of The Night Of, you're just like, I cannot believe the world of New York that this show is building and how amazing the depth of feeling and the depth of perception that this show has. And then it becomes like, whodunit, who really did it then? And that's fine. All shows need to arrive there. All crime shows eventually need to solve their crime in question.

27:35Salli Richardson-Whitfield:um i i honestly you can make a case for any one of these people like grosso i can understand lizzie um it would be strange at this point but also like she is kind of like at once very gifted but also vulnerable because clearly her life is sort of spinning out of control on the outside alia we just don't know a ton about other than her monologue last week that even i think we broached the idea that that could have been performance in some way. In any case, that's happening. And on the flip side of it, the dark hearts are slowly making their way.

28:12Andy Greenwald:Not so slowly. This whole show has happened in four days.

28:15Salli Richardson-Whitfield:I was just going to say slowly making their way through the huge amount of volumes of photo books that motorcycle gangs keep.

28:23Andy Greenwald:They're very nostalgic people. That's incredible.

28:26Salli Richardson-Whitfield:It's true. This is like Stringer Bell. Like, are you taking notes on a criminal conspiracy?

28:31Andy Greenwald:It's like, hey, we're having a gang meeting.

28:33Salli Richardson-Whitfield:Are you taking lots of group photos? Get together. Get together.

28:36Andy Greenwald:Should we take our guns off? No, no, no, no, no. I want to see them in all the pictures.

28:39Salli Richardson-Whitfield:If they got RICO charges, it would just be like in evidence, the collected photographic evidence.

28:46Andy Greenwald:And they're all in like the folders that they used to give you at the drugstore that says like, Coda Color on the front.

28:51Salli Richardson-Whitfield:Reading Rally. The site of a shooting that we participated in.

28:56Andy Greenwald:It's just a bunch of guys being like, oh, over a dead body.

28:59Salli Richardson-Whitfield:In any case, Perry is searching for his own mole. And he seems to have at least started to arrive at it by finding a picture at the very end of Maeve with Billy and Billy holding his holster in the gun that was used in the shooting. And I don't think it's belaboring the point

29:16Andy Greenwald:to just say again that all serialized dramas are to an extent puzzle boxes with something to be solved. The best of them, and I would, through four episodes, put Task in that category, hide that. You know, they build on, if the puzzle box part is the skeleton, like the muscle, blood, sinew, all that other stuff is literally, in my tortured metaphor, the meat of the show. And so to your point, like I don't really care who the mole is. I don't have odds on FanDuel about it. I'm really excited to see where the story takes us and what we gain from it.

29:55Salli Richardson-Whitfield:I also like whether it's intentional or not what it says about how hard it is to just do one thing

30:03Andy Greenwald:one task if you will

30:05Salli Richardson-Whitfield:because think about a conventional show or another version of this show would be Robbie and Tom on this kind of like we are just going to collide at some point we're the best at what we do Robbie's not the best at what he does he just fucked up basically the biggest deal of his life and you know by trusting cliff and cliff's contacts but also just in general like i think he's got pie in the sky ideas and almost childlike ideas about going to canada and living on an island and and having swiss family robinson up there and tom is like kind of barely holding it together his home life is coming apart and now he's got to worry more about who from his side is leaking information yeah than just finding this kid which is supposed to be his job i'll take

30:53Andy Greenwald:it a step further. He's so far from the best at what he does that in the world in which McGinty is a mole or has a second allegiance, she put him in this job on purpose because he isn't.

31:09Salli Richardson-Whitfield:This guy's handing out pamphlets at trade fairs.

31:11Andy Greenwald:If you extrapolate it further, there's the possibility that this task force was put together to serve the Darkheart's interest to find out with the full engine of the state behind it, who's robbing them? Yeah. And then to make everything go away.

31:27Salli Richardson-Whitfield:Well, that was actually, that's a very good point. Because you would say she sure put the, she identifies its dark hearts for him.

31:35Andy Greenwald:Yeah.

31:36Salli Richardson-Whitfield:You know, and then Grosso gives him a certain amount of information. And we have a couple of outside law enforcement people who say very important things like don't trust anyone. But I don't know how on the ball Tom is with this stuff. Because he's obviously got a lot going on.

31:51Andy Greenwald:It also ties into, I think, one of Brad Inglesby's main themes in this work, if not all of his work, is that all society is a collection of systems and that kind of work in concert with each other, good and bad, cop and criminal. Robbie, as a sort of noble loser, failure, is a wild card. He's the radical in this. And both sides need that stamped out, unfortunately. And particularly, unfortunately, because it's like, you know, man, he just and I brought this up again with him in the thing we did last night. So I'll let him speak to it that when I say him, I mean, Brad, but like he does not let up in his storytelling like a more enjoyable, not enjoyable, but like a more a lighter entertainment version of heat, which would get a, you know, a 10 star rating.

32:51Andy Greenwald:five-star rating for you on Letterboxd, would be all about the action, comma, the juice of the pursuit. There wouldn't be time, because I think everyone watching the show is like, I don't think this is going to work out awesome for Robbie. We don't actually know what's going to happen, but this doesn't seem great. We wouldn't have spent this much time on the father-daughter dance practice. You know, like, they just wouldn't have done it.

33:15Salli Richardson-Whitfield:That was like the, I mean, like, we're starting to get into the tragedy aspect. We've lost Cliff in a brutal, brutal way.

33:21Andy Greenwald:Can I talk about that for a second? Okay. Finish your thought.

33:25Salli Richardson-Whitfield:I just think that everything now is starting to point in the wrong direction for people.

33:30Andy Greenwald:Yeah, that scene was devastating. It was beautifully shot by Sally. It was Tom Pelfrey sadist eyes in the biz. Yeah.

33:37Salli Richardson-Whitfield:Really like an incredible... That must have been an awesome, awesome episode as an actor. because you get to have a prologue moment, still sad because his wife is sort of drifting away from him. We don't really get to play the other version of himself. Yeah, he gets to play the younger version of himself. We get to see him with his brother. We get to see him in happier times, more or less. And then we get this moment where he, both where he thinks, you know, everything is going to be okay because, you know, we've decided we're going to go to Canada. Then that got shot down by Maeve with some like really basic follow-up questions.

34:13Salli Richardson-Whitfield:and he gets this Grayson moment with his daughter, but feels very, it's starting to feel a little McBaney, you know?

34:21Andy Greenwald:Unfortunately so. Speaking of McBaney, Cliff, I think, I don't think anybody had odds that Cliff was coming out of this episode. Yes. On two feet.

34:31Salli Richardson-Whitfield:And it's a little confusing because like obviously there's this car stealing situation and Cliff steals a car that looks a lot like the car that eventually gets rushed. If I were, you know, they're both white sedans, I think.

34:43Andy Greenwald:Oh, you mean the car that people are looking for their dog?

34:44Salli Richardson-Whitfield:Yeah, and so there's a lot of misdirection, and I don't know how much of it is conscious among the criminals versus what the show did to just sort of throw us off. Right. And then on top of that, when did the bi get changed from the park to wherever they're meeting somewhere? Right, and that's the... Off the Wissahickon somewhere, you know?

35:08Andy Greenwald:And the inference is that it changed when someone else was pretending to be Ray.

35:12Salli Richardson-Whitfield:Yes, that they were like, actually, meet me over here. Meet me here.

35:15Andy Greenwald:Okay, I have to talk about Cliff. Great actor, great performance. Raul Castillo. Raul Castillo. I'm in a zag. Kind of got off easier than I thought, to be honest with you.

35:32Salli Richardson-Whitfield:His head was, his brains were like coming out of his head. Yeah.

35:36Andy Greenwald:But he was alive. Uh-huh. You know, we've seen, he could have just gone into the blue tent for a little bit.

35:40Salli Richardson-Whitfield:I gotta say getting saran wrapped is like one of my top ways I don't want to go out.

35:45Andy Greenwald:Listen, I don't want to tell. It's like shark. Go for it.

35:50Salli Richardson-Whitfield:I think like any kind of skydiving accident where I'm like, I have like time to think about what's going to happen.

35:58Andy Greenwald:Oh, you mean every time I'm on an airplane? Don't say that. That's just what I think about. I'm not saying it's going to happen.

36:05Salli Richardson-Whitfield:That I don't mind. I know.

36:07Andy Greenwald:You ride the waves up there. You're like Garrett on 100 foot wave. in the sky chasing the big ones it's beautiful for you um maybe i should be more like cj next time i get on a international flight yeah this is where this is where nature's taking me um no i'm not saying that he had a pleasant exit on a three-inch screen we got intended um it's more that far be it for me to tell jason how to do his job i have never been in management

36:38Salli Richardson-Whitfield:let alone

36:40Andy Greenwald:the very stressful position I think he's a move fast and break things kind of guy it's just that I feel like Cliff had more to tell him you know what I mean?

36:49Salli Richardson-Whitfield:with advanced interrogation I don't know where we're at it's like I don't know what do you guys have like a if I put this guy through this much pain I get this much information?

37:00Andy Greenwald:no I'm gonna go galaxy brain on you here and say I don't think it's about doing Sicario to people or doing the Zero Dark Thirty. Yeah. One thing that I learned, and I think it's true I didn't learn, but one thing that was illustrated by one battle after another, and this is, I don't think it's a spoiler. If it is, hit 10 seconds. People seem resigned to their own fates at different times when being confronted with the opposing forces or being interrogated. But as soon as the interrogator is just like, how's your sister doing? Then they spill, right? As soon as it becomes, you're responsible for other people who didn't choose this life.

37:34Andy Greenwald:So I'm just saying, just making a note look broadly speaking Dark Hearts there's a more relatable workplace comedy there I think that I don't believe we're going to get

37:45Salli Richardson-Whitfield:into Dark Hearts can't be broken but like

37:47Andy Greenwald:we learned in this episode that Perry you know has the autonomy to go around interrupt people's dinner wrap chains around his hands and punch his direct reports in the mouth but even he's got a boss I love that

37:59Salli Richardson-Whitfield:I love that little moment I did too I also love that guy being like my thing about this motorcycle club is I drive a car. That's how fucking bad I am. He probably doesn't even take photos. I've gone all the way back around to having a Cutlass, you know?

38:14Andy Greenwald:Because it's like two motorcycles with a nice chair.

38:18Salli Richardson-Whitfield:It's like when you put two single beds together. It's better. Yeah. That guy really cracked the code. European hotels right there.

38:25Andy Greenwald:Why do they still do that? I don't know. Do you remember when last year we went to Norway for the media festival? We had a very nice time but one of the most confounding things about the uh uh the the the hotel in bergen was that it was like many european hotels like two twin beds that you could join if you wanted company but there were a few oh no it wasn't it was one queen size bed but two individual

38:49Salli Richardson-Whitfield:blankets two individual that's just that's how scandies do it though so why would you share a blanket because it's like inefficient they think i think it's just like it's inhumane that people have different body temperatures.

39:02Andy Greenwald:Yeah, but you can flip off part of it. Like, I feel like the whole point of like sharing a bed with someone is like you share the whole experience. You can't like half-ass it.

39:09Salli Richardson-Whitfield:Share the whole experience. I think that ultimately, like I like the way they do things over there.

39:14Andy Greenwald:Well, some things seem to have worked out. Like, absolutely, you got me on the social contract.

39:20Salli Richardson-Whitfield:There's nothing like a ton of dried fish for breakfast, you know?

39:24Andy Greenwald:Kaya, do you want to weigh in on this? Like, do you feel, you've traveled in Europe recently. Do you have a preference?

39:30Tom Pelphrey:The double duvets is not just a Scandi thing. That was very...

39:33Salli Richardson-Whitfield:European.

39:34Tom Pelphrey:Yeah, I think it's just a European thing. I personally love a double duvet. Me too. I think America should adopt that. Wow.

39:41Salli Richardson-Whitfield:Yeah, just like you can have your blanket. You want to strip it off and throw it over there.

39:44Andy Greenwald:Just a couple of NIMBYs standing in the way of my abundance agenda.

39:47Salli Richardson-Whitfield:I don't really think it's the overproduction of duvets that's going to put this planet in the dumpster.

39:53Andy Greenwald:Well, first of all, the way tariffs are going on duvets from Europe, we'll never be able to have this conversation in good faith. but second i'm just saying like i believe in more of a communitarian what if we for for america we

40:04Salli Richardson-Whitfield:should just make one big blanket that we all sleep under in this country honestly we should

40:08Andy Greenwald:make one big saran wrap and just all go out like cliff together because that's what it feels like every day haven't you heard that's how we treat covid now well look where we've ended up just another week of podcasting in the books oh it's monday um can i also make a point uh Well, you know what? No, I'll save it because this came up in our conversation with the gang.

40:31Salli Richardson-Whitfield:Okay.

40:33Andy Greenwald:Do you have any thoughts about, without saying whether it's like an admission of guilt or anything, but that Grasso and what's her name? Lizzie. Lizzie's date is happening after the botched.

40:49Salli Richardson-Whitfield:I just note with interest that if that meeting was supposed to happen at 11 p.m., it looks like it was cold and wet outside. Lizzie's got that hood up. Yep. Then cut to there at a bar, and she's showered. She's got, like, her hair has been straight, and she's done her hair. So that would mean, and Bagrasso was referring to, man, that really fucked that up. That went crazy, yeah. I assume that's the same night. So that would mean, like, they have gotten home, showered, then met back up again, and stayed out for several beers. That's pushing Philly. Philly's like a 1.30 a.m. last call, right?

41:27Andy Greenwald:Yeah, but you know what? I'm just going to let them have a pass on this because they're young people and they're able to have a different work-life balance than I am. Like, when you said went home and went out again, my eyes glazed over. Like, that is psychopath behavior. Why would anyone ever do that?

41:42Salli Richardson-Whitfield:I'd love to be in a world where I did that.

41:45Andy Greenwald:We used to do that. Look at us now. Can't remember a thing.

41:49Salli Richardson-Whitfield:I was, you remember when we used to start going out at 10 p.m. in New York City? What would we do until then?

41:55Andy Greenwald:Not eat dinner, I'll tell you that much. I mean, play PlayStation?

42:00Salli Richardson-Whitfield:Play PlayStation, yeah. Read Vineland?

42:03Andy Greenwald:God, that's so sick. Wait, now you're making me yearn for it.

42:06Salli Richardson-Whitfield:Why did I pronounce Vineland like Grantland? Vinland?

42:09Andy Greenwald:Yeah.

42:11Salli Richardson-Whitfield:Yeah, I noted that.

42:12Andy Greenwald:I noted that with interest. Just the other thing before we get into the conversation. the show I don't know if everyone's having the same reaction to the show as this specifically but like we talked last week about how the longer running times just for me anyway hit different like I just enjoy I'm enjoying the pace of the show and one of the reasons why I enjoy the pace of the show is that this episode for example is shaped a certain way you're expecting fireworks at the end which don't actually come in the way you predict that they're going to come but even so Brad is so talented at I think feeding people either what they want or what they don't even realize they need tonally so that we're building up all this anticipation for the park stakeout and then not only do we get the misdirect with the couple and the dog we get Lizzie saying you know how do I get cool patches and I'm going to call you bullseye yeah which is just such a nice like mood lightener in that moment it's just being conducted very well and I think that kind of execution comes from not to be infer too much from like one evening with these people but i think that you can draw a straight line from the balance and the rhythm of the show to the

43:24Salli Richardson-Whitfield:way these people clearly collaborated i think also like the even the moments where you could say uh it seems like robbie could have called bartos the the truck driver it's a sick name that seems like a text message like cool can you meet me i'll venmo you whatever but it sets up first of all robbie i think they don't know who to trust yeah they're they're trying to do this as much in person as possible and b he's not thought this through like he's got this kid with him and he doesn't really seem to know exactly what to do as this kid's caretaker. This kid is now becoming wise to the fact that there is something very strange going on.

44:12Salli Richardson-Whitfield:He saw some stuff. And on top of that, I thought that whole situation where he disappears and then this guy sees like a kid in the creek and is like, you know, what the hell is going on? Brought out a different side of Robbie than the one we've seen. And obviously this dude has like a rage streak.

44:29Andy Greenwald:Do you think that Maeve would have been more on board with the plan? if Robbie had said, this guy Bartos is a truck driver. He's going to drive us to Canada. And then instead of pulling out a pamphlet, he pulled out a large leather-bound book of photos of Bartos, Bartos' truck, of like all the rest stops between there and Canada. And one of them labeled escape route in case of trouble. Right. Like, do you think that would have helped?

44:52Salli Richardson-Whitfield:I love that Mavis was like, I don't want to do that. That sounds dumb. I'm not, I didn't do anything that requires me to leave like this. Like, if anything, I want to go to fucking Brooklyn.

45:03Andy Greenwald:By the way, that is literally what my older daughter said to me last week when I suggested mini golf. Like this, leaving this house was not part of our negotiation. I refuse.

45:15Salli Richardson-Whitfield:Anything else on task this week?

45:17Andy Greenwald:No.

45:17Salli Richardson-Whitfield:On Thursday, I think we'll do a little bit of a slow horses catch up. Sure. We could do some lowdown. Anything else that you're enjoying watching? It's really about you.

45:28Andy Greenwald:Well, we haven't really talked about it, but I think English Teacher has been great so far this season. I mean, so far they dumped the whole thing. I've only watched a couple. And you sneaky guy, you jumped Platonic. That was the show that Kaya and I covered.

45:43Salli Richardson-Whitfield:I know, I couldn't handle being left out.

45:44Andy Greenwald:And then you finished the season. I haven't even done that yet.

45:46Salli Richardson-Whitfield:My wife was just homesick one day and was just like running through all of Platonic. It's a dream show for that. And I was like, this is pretty fun.

45:52Andy Greenwald:Great show.

45:53Salli Richardson-Whitfield:All right, so let's get into our conversation that we had at Vidiot's last night after screening of the fourth episode. You'll hear from Brad Inglesby, the creator-writer of the show, Sally Richardson-Whitfield, who directed three, four, and the upcoming sixth episode. And of course, Tom Pelfrey, who plays Robbie, and Mark Ruffalo, who apparently was the Hulk. And I was surprised to see a lot of people asking him to sign stuff. And I was like, are you guys Zodiac fans? Like, what's going on? And I was like, oh yeah, that dude is in eight of the biggest movies of all time.

46:25Andy Greenwald:You didn't see the guy with the Funko Pop of Mark Ruffalo and you can count on me. I know. It's like young Mark Ruffalo on a park bench. Sign my spotlight jacket.

46:34Salli Richardson-Whitfield:No, Mark Ruffalo. These guys were all great. I hope you enjoy it. I think you can also watch it, right? You can also watch it. The crew is awesome to come out and film and record all this. We will be back on Thursday running through some other shows that are on and we'll talk to you soon. This episode is brought to you by the Active Cash credit card from Wells Fargo. That's a mouthful, but that's because it packs a lot in. Earn unlimited 2 % cash rewards on purchases with it, big or small. So whether it's buying tickets to the game or grabbing a coffee, it earns unlimited 2 % cash rewards on purchases.

47:05Salli Richardson-Whitfield:Say it with me. The ActiveCash credit card from Wells Fargo. Be a 2 %er. Learn more at wellsfargo.com forward slash active cash. Terms apply.

47:15Brad Ingelsby:This episode is brought to you by the Focus Features film Hamnet from director Chloe Zhao and producers Steven Spielberg and Sam Mendes.

47:45Salli Richardson-Whitfield:This episode is brought to you by Volkswagen. It can be hard to do your own thing when everyone else is following everyone else, but that's what some of the best films are about. An outcast striving to make their own way in the world. And this is your sign to be that outcast. From us, from VW, from the other outcasts out there, take a chance. Make the most of every day and don't be afraid to veer off course every now and then because if you don't do it now, then when? Learn more at VW.com. This episode is brought to you by Tax Act. Like analyzing plot twists, Tax Act guides you step-by-step to make sure you get your maximum refund.

48:25Salli Richardson-Whitfield:Get tips along the way, add expert assist to talk to tax experts, or let our experts do your taxes for you with expert full service. Tax Act helps you find the deductions and credits you deserve so you can get them over with. Visit taxact.com to learn more. Conditions apply. See taxact.com for details. I'm Chris Ryan.

48:45Andy Greenwald:Oh, I'm Andy Greenwald.

48:47Salli Richardson-Whitfield:Thank you so much for coming out for this special screening of TASC. Without further ado, let me bring everybody out here. First of all, the creator of TASC, Brad Inglesby.

49:02Salli Richardson-Whitfield:The director of the episode you just watched, plus several others from the season, Sally Richardson-Whitfield.

49:12Salli Richardson-Whitfield:And of course, the stars of this show, Mark Ruffalo and Tom Pelfrey.

49:26Brad Ingelsby:Thank you.

49:28Salli Richardson-Whitfield:Guys, thanks so much for doing this. Thanks for coming out. What an amazing show. Give yourselves a round of applause, everybody, for everybody involved at TASC.

49:37Chris Ryan:Thank you for having us, guys. It's really, I really appreciate it. This is sort of unique.

49:41Salli Richardson-Whitfield:We don't usually get to do like a mid-season screening, check-in with the cast. This is kind of awesome. It's usually for a first episode or a last episode. It makes asking questions a little bit difficult because we don't want you guys to feel like you're in spoiler territory. So I'll keep it broad with you, Brad, to start with. It's such a balancing act, I would imagine, in assembling the show in terms of its structure because you've got a whodunit, you've got two characters on a collision course, multiple mole hunts now, but you've also got all these human character beats that I think is what is bonding people to the show in the first place.

50:16Salli Richardson-Whitfield:So can you talk to me a little bit about assembling something that's got all these genre elements, but also this human drama?

50:22Chris Ryan:It's something that we struggle with sometimes in the edit, really, Chris, is trying to keep a balance. But it really is always about the characters. And I think whenever we're in the edit or even in the writing process where you feel like the plot is overwhelming the show in some way, I always have to stop and check myself and say, what is the show really about? It's about these characters, and it's about the emotional arcs of the characters, and never letting the plot have to take over that part of the show. And yet we also have to move the plot along. There needs to be an engine. There needs to be a moment where the audience gets to the end of the episode and they want to keep going.

51:05Chris Ryan:And so I think it is a balancing act, and I think I have to put myself in the viewer's shoes in the edit, in the writing process and say, you know, what is the right amount of emotion and plot? And I have to ask myself, you know, am I able to care about these characters and are we servicing the plot? So it's kind of a bit of trial and error really of just saying, are we on the right path and are we not losing sight of what the show's really about?

51:33Andy Greenwald:That said, Brad, you may have tipped your hand a little bit in this episode and I'm sure Philadelphia eagle-eyed viewers would notice that over the course of this season, when things were going relatively decently for the characters, they were drinking yingling. This episode, they seem to exclusively be drinking Rolling Rock. So I'm wondering what you were saying about the emotional narrative power of our favorite watery domestic lagers.

51:57Chris Ryan:I didn't even notice that, Andy. I can't take any credit for that one. I really can't. Mark noticed, I could tell.

52:05Salli Richardson-Whitfield:For Tom and Mark, how crucial, I mean, this goes without saying, but how crucial was filming in Delco, filming in the greater Philadelphia area, not only to finding like the literal accents and voices of the characters, but also for building out maybe backstories, biographies. I mean, did you find yourself, you know, immersing yourselves in Philadelphia high schools and like learning a little bit about local history? How did that work? There will be a quiz after just to be quick.

52:30Brad Ingelsby:This is a quiz. You know, just, there's just something you can never get. by shooting in a place that isn't where you're actually located in a show. It's just everywhere you look, it's the light, it's the feeling, it's the cars, it's the stores, it's the people. And it's always, I mean, if you let it, it will always be informing you. And it's the food. I started with a fake belly and that just kept getting bigger and bigger as my real belly underneath it was getting bigger and bigger and my wife came to visit me and she said to my family well your father's eating his way through Philly

53:26Brad Ingelsby:so it's yeah that was my I did a tour of the Philly food and that ended up being my character's biggest. Anything particular you couldn't quit? What is it? A pork sandwich with broccoli rabe? That was great. That's the one I'm, oh, not in this episode, but in one episode I'm just plowing a sandwich. And that was just, I just had no idea the camera was running during that.

53:58Andy Greenwald:And Tom, you're not from Philly, you're from Jersey originally, which we'll forgive for the sake of this day.

54:06Andy Greenwald:Let's go!

54:08Mark Ruffalo:We all won today. I love it. I love it. When you live far enough north in New Jersey, everybody treats you like you're another borough of New York. And then you live far enough south in New Jersey and they think it's just an extension of Philadelphia. Like, we do have an actual state. We're all proud to live there. We're proud to be from there.

54:26Andy Greenwald:So, congratulations on Jackson Dart. but beyond that one of the crazy things about the show is discovering how many of the members of the cast are not from America at all and are adopting this accent I was wondering if you felt like a regional ambassador in welcoming people I did

54:44Brad Ingelsby:my entire task force was not American yeah

54:49Mark Ruffalo:that's true that's true yeah I mean it was it was it was amazing to your question about filming in the area it reminded me so much where I grew up, you know, like, and like the vibe on set was great. Like the crew is just constantly busting my chops, you know, like that's what I'm used to being the way of showing affection and knowing that you're safe is like, if, if, if you can make fun of me, then we care about each other. Yeah. You know, like this is a safe space. And that's like such a particular East coast thing. I remember taking that out West when I was younger and it didn't really go. It was a go-well.

55:24Mark Ruffalo:Yeah. Why is this guy such an asshole? Yeah, literally, literally like, wow, man, he's aggressive. It's like, oh, okay. I love you. Yeah, yeah, I love you, but, you know. So, and then, yeah, the Brit, I mean, they really caught it amazingly well, didn't they?

55:46Brad Ingelsby:My wife, who watches intently, could not believe that the entire task team was either British or Irish. More South African.

56:01Andy Greenwald:Sally, you arrived like literally into Brad's backyard to take on work on the show. I was wondering what the tone meetings were like between you. And was there a location that he took you to or a place that you visited that served as kind of a eureka moment for you to unlock your own understanding of the visual palette of the show?

56:20Tom Pelphrey:Well, I'd have to say that I've seen every piece of woods.

56:26Brad Ingelsby:In all of... In Philadelphia.

56:29Tom Pelphrey:Yes, all of Pennsylvania. That really was some of my episodes and later on really take place outside of the city and really had to explore. My DP, Ellie, is here for my episode. Ellie! And I'm pretty sure that we've lost a year or two of our life from the amount of bug spray that we had counter and poison ivy that we walked through. uh and ticks lime disease this one um but i think you know obviously and and oh i love to say that every single home we went to was either a relative of brad or a teacher who taught with them and so i think a lot of those people really welcomed me into the community very much and i really learned a lot about Philly from them and from obviously hanging around with Brad.

57:27Salli Richardson-Whitfield:But you had like that amazing moment in three with Maeve baptizing or showing Sam how to swim. And that's such a gorgeous moment. And that's the thing about Philly that's weird is like you'll be city, city, city, blink your eyes and you were in the like the middle of the woods.

57:43Tom Pelphrey:Be searched and searched and searched for that particular spot that turned out to be the perfect place. Yeah.

57:51Salli Richardson-Whitfield:That's one of my favorite moments of the series so far.

57:54Andy Greenwald:To Mark and Tom, so far you have not crossed paths on the show. How siloed were you during production? Were you checking for each other's dailies? Were you trying to track the other performance to meet each other midway?

58:05Tom Pelphrey:You're in deep competition.

58:10Brad Ingelsby:What's he up to? What's he doing in that? I would have played that differently.

58:18Brad Ingelsby:No way. He's amazing. We literally would be, I think we only saw each other in passing. We'd just be like, ugh.

58:32Mark Ruffalo:Mark told me the other day we had to do press for something. Mark told me the other day that before we even met, he watched me leave my trailer to go to set, and he could tell from about 100 yards away that I had ADHD.

58:47Brad Ingelsby:Yeah. He's patting the pockets. Where's money? Oh, fuck. Oh, I have it on.

59:01Mark Ruffalo:I said, you can tell. He goes, oh, buddy.

59:09Mark Ruffalo:I love this guy. No, it was never on purpose. We just kind of didn't see each other. We were in two totally different shows. I know. I know.

59:19Brad Ingelsby:What's crazy is we don't ever actually meet in the show. Spoiler!

59:25Andy Greenwald:But wait, without spoiling...

59:28Brad Ingelsby:Is Marvel watching?

59:32Andy Greenwald:But Brad, how much... Again, no spoilers, obviously, but did you feel pressure in crafting these two characters cross-scene?

59:41Chris Ryan:Yeah, so I think the whole show is really structured as a collision course. And I think, you know, what we talked about was if that's the structure of the show and that's the engine of the show and the tension of the show, and not just for these two guys in the show. I think it's for, if we've done our job, it was always our hope that you care about everybody in the show. And so the tension is, oh, God, I know this is going to be a collision and I'm scared. I'm scared to see what's going to happen. And if that's the structure of the show and every week you're telling the audience they're getting a little closer, a little closer, you have to pay it off.

1:00:15Chris Ryan:and the audience has to be satisfied with exactly what happens when the collision comes. So I felt immense pressure and Sally and I spoke about this. I won't spoil anything, but this is something we always talked about was if that's the structure of a show, we have to pay it off. If we've been leading the audience along that these two are going to meet eventually, it had better be worth the wait.

1:00:40Salli Richardson-Whitfield:Do they meet in a diner, just the two of them?

1:00:43Chris Ryan:Well, that was one that, I think that was one location we knew we had to avoid. Lanark Diner's right there. I have to admit. We shot at Lanark Diner.

1:00:51Salli Richardson-Whitfield:The way that this was described to me however many years ago when this was first starting to come around and somebody was just like, it's heat in Philly. And I like had to check that there were not hidden cameras around to make sure I wasn't getting punked. I want to talk to you a little bit about some of the genre elements of the show because this episode sort of concludes. in this really tense 20-minute sequence that involves the park situation and then also the road. I can't wait to find out where you guys shot the cliff stuff. But it's confusing. You know, it's confusing for the characters, and I think it's confusing as a first pass as an audience member, and you have trust in the show that it's going to resolve itself and everything.

1:01:30Salli Richardson-Whitfield:But, like, how do you guys, Sally and Brad, decide this is how much the audience knows, this is how much the characters know, and this is how much we have to keep held back until future episodes.

1:01:43Tom Pelphrey:I think that some of that came out in editing and we really spent the time to grab extra looks from people, other people, you know, thinking so that we could maybe come back and tease you guys a little bit. Is it her? Is it him? And I think that a lot of that is in editing, don't you think? I mean, obviously you've set it up, but just figuring out how we're going to lay it out later and having different, at least that's my job. Give Brad lots of different choices so we can figure out how we really want to weave this together at the very end.

1:02:19Chris Ryan:I think Sally's on to it and she does such a wonderful job of giving us tons of pieces. It's true, she has amazing storyboards and she's way ahead of us on set but I think that's the idea is to have more in the edit And so when you get to a sequence like this one, you know, you play it a few ways and then you put yourself in the seat of the viewer and go, is the viewer ahead of us? Are they behind us? Is the tension still there? It's the order of revelation. When are things revealed? And that's something we did in Mare a lot. And it's something we do in this show a lot is just when you reveal things as opposed to what you reveal.

1:02:57Chris Ryan:It's when you reveal them. and I think that this is a good sequence that explains that or is just like, you know, when do you reveal that Cliff isn't where he's supposed to be? And I think that's just watching it in trial and error and see which version of the sequence is playing. We did a lot of versions of this sequence. We did a lot. And sometimes you just got to watch it a few times and go, is this the best version of the sequence that's hitting the emotional beats and the surprises?

1:03:20Andy Greenwald:Do you have any extra footage of the couple who lost their dog? Yeah. Have you ever considered... I don't want to tell you how to do your job,

1:03:27Tom Pelphrey:I was very happy that people laughed at that because you never know

1:03:31Salli Richardson-Whitfield:I can't remember what do you think they talked about when they got home that night maybe dog ownership is not worth it

1:03:40Brad Ingelsby:they never found that dog damn shame what they did to that dog that's season 2 maybe season 2 HBO

1:03:50Andy Greenwald:one of my favorite things about the show and this is definitely a compliment to you Brad is that the show always validates the internal struggle of these two characters. They have had really, really, really wildly hard things happen to them. But the show also doesn't shy away from the actual consequences of that internal struggle, that there's a responsibility for that behavior. And without getting too into the weeds of preparation or ADHD, I wondered to both you guys, like Mark, as an actor, how do you bring Tom's home struggle, what's going on in his personal life, to work with him as he has to manage these kids in the workplace?

1:04:27Andy Greenwald:Like, just as an actor, how do you carry that into those scenes?

1:04:30Brad Ingelsby:It's just like our lives, we're always carrying our home life everywhere we go. Tom's home life is just, it's eminently part of his existence. And it's on the forefront for a long time until Sam is gone, until we realize that Sam's been kidnapped. There's a lot of duplicating. He's looking for this boy, and his boy is gone. And he's trying to hold together this task force of misfits, and his family's task force of misfits. I mean, Brad does this really beautifully, and it's constantly informing things. But by the way, Sylvie Vacari, who plays my daughter Emily, is here.

1:05:24Chris Ryan:Sylvia, stand up.

1:05:26Brad Ingelsby:Where are you, Sylvia?

1:05:28Tom Pelphrey:Stand up, Sylvia. Sylvia. Stand up, Sylvia. Yeah.

1:05:34Brad Ingelsby:Bravo. Amazing. So, yeah, and then she comes to work with me when I do. That's beautiful. She's here with me now.

1:05:46Andy Greenwald:and to you Tom I was wondering like one of the incredibly compelling things about Robbie is that he does have this almost sweet hearted belief in the future that he deserves and I wondered how much of that was tied to the fact that he's spent a decade or more hauling other people's garbage and yet he still believes that he deserves something better than that just curious how you balance that like the moment particularly we could talk in this episode that is so heartbreaking the dance you know it is agonizing to watch, but I wondered as you play it, do you have to play that he believes he's going to take her to the dance?

1:06:21Andy Greenwald:Yeah, he's got to get the million dollars in a trip to Canada.

1:06:24Mark Ruffalo:Well, there's two parts of that. One is, you know, this is how we all get out of bed in the morning, isn't it? We all hope that there's better days ahead. I mean, I hope we all do, for all of us, for ourselves, for everybody else. I think that's the reason that Robbie's so relatable is because we all have that, you know, even sometimes you have a bad day or maybe a bad month, but like it comes, it comes back around, you know, it's, it always comes back around. And, and as far as that dance goes, yeah, I don't know. I'll say this about it i got to become a father two and a half years ago yeah it's it's the wildest the greatest thing ever ever ever by a million times and um being around those kids now getting to play i've played characters before i have kids but like knowing what it means now um like the infinite depth of the meaning that you could only guess at before makes everything so rich regardless of what's happening in the show.

1:07:40Mark Ruffalo:One thing I never had a single question about was would you do this for your kids? The answer is fuck yeah. Oh yeah. Anything, you know.

1:07:51Salli Richardson-Whitfield:But there's an incredible balance to that scene which is the dance, which is the scene with Maeve where he kind of presents this Canada dream and she asks all the questions a parent would ask a kid who was like, guess what? I'm going on a road trip. And you're just like, okay, where are you going to sleep? How are you going to eat? How are you going to pay for gas? And it's like, she's just like, where are the kids going to go to school? Like, where are we going to buy groceries? And that's, I mean, you and Amelia have such an incredible thing in this series, but that moment, can you just tell me a little bit about playing that scene and Robbie's dreams kind of coming down to earth there?

1:08:23Mark Ruffalo:Yeah, you know, it's really interesting that you bring that scene up because that was truly actually one of the hardest ones for me. Do you remember? Do you remember how much I was tripping that day?

1:08:32Tom Pelphrey:Well, yeah, because you're trying to, well, no, you're just trying to balance, like, you have so many places that you need to get to. And where are we going too far? Am I giving too much up now? Sure. And how much do you fight? Exactly.

1:08:47Mark Ruffalo:Yeah, no, because obviously Sally was directing that day, and that was strangely a scene that I struggled a lot with in a way that I didn't with some other scenes. And to your point, yes. You know, it's so interesting sometimes, like, when you think about, right, like acting, I'd be an acting nerd right now, real quick. But you think about an acting relationship and it's not a literal thing. So Maeve's my niece, but my relationship to Maeve is often mom, which doesn't make any literal sense. But, like, when I'm playing scenes with her, I often just give over to what arises if I act like she's my mom.

1:09:29Mark Ruffalo:Yeah. You know? And that's what we do in life, too. We just don't think about it. Like, we have an acting relationship with people that's not the same as our literal relationship. So you really want to try and find that. The last thing I'll say about that is how fucking good is Amelia? She is. Yeah. She is so talented. She is so incredible. I mean, the way that girl works, the way she shows up prepared, and she's such a light and a delight, like so impressive. Yeah, those scenes pop for sure.

1:10:01Andy Greenwald:Sally, you've had a long career as a director and you've directed all kinds of genres, including Los Angeles basketball genre. I wondered how do you approach scenes like the ones we're talking about now just to stay with it in terms of directing intimacy and comfort? You know, it's very different than the scale that you're sometimes asked to do, even within a show like this.

1:10:24Tom Pelphrey:That's hard because, I mean, obviously Brad has set up, you know, the words are there. So sometimes it's actually kind of easy. I mean, I have beautiful words. I have two great actors who've done their job. And my job is just to sort of gently glide, you know, guide them to the right spot.

1:10:48Brad Ingelsby:Not always gently.

1:10:50Tom Pelphrey:Not...

1:10:54Tom Pelphrey:Someone doesn't like continuity.

1:11:01Salli Richardson-Whitfield:Is this another sandwich thing or what is it?

1:11:05Tom Pelphrey:That's Tom. No. But really, I mean, I was an actress for many years before I did this. So I really, I don't come to any scene with any expectations. and sometimes I'll have actors who will ask me for notes before they even start, not these people, but before they even start, say anything for me. I'm like, no, I don't know what you're going to do. And I really have to watch the performance and for me, it's a feeling inside and knowing if I feel it and if I believe it. A lot of times with Mark, he'd come up and go, what do you think? And he would always know because sometimes I don't know what to tell you, but I just know it's not right yet.

1:11:48Tom Pelphrey:And you know it's not right yet.

1:11:50Brad Ingelsby:That's why I was asking you.

1:11:52Tom Pelphrey:Yeah, I know. So we're both going. It's not right. It's not right. I don't know. Should we do it again? I think we should do it again. Okay, let's do it one more time. But sometimes that is it, or sometimes it's one word or asking a question. I think a lot of times I would just ask you a question.

1:12:10Brad Ingelsby:And I go, oh.

1:12:12Tom Pelphrey:Yeah, because by asking a question, then you start, oh, yeah, you're right. Okay, yeah, I haven't thought about that.

1:12:17Brad Ingelsby:Especially when the question is, don't you think that could be better?

1:12:22Tom Pelphrey:But I mean, it's just a very hard question. I think I just let them guide me and then I know what to tell them. And sometimes it's just simply, you know, can you do that faster? That was a big one for me. You like that note, don't you? Can you just do that faster?

1:12:37Brad Ingelsby:I know exactly what you want.

1:12:41Salli Richardson-Whitfield:I was asking Tom, I was saying to him outside of the theater that this seems like the kind of thing that if he wasn't in, he would be watching. Like it's the kind of like crime show, awesome, like piece of crime storytelling. And Mark, you were in one of my favorite crime films, Collateral, in Los Angeles.

1:12:58Brad Ingelsby:Thank you.

1:12:59Salli Richardson-Whitfield:I wish you'd bring that goatee back. It was sick. The slick back hair. It was awesome. I was wondering if you had any. That was me in Collateral. But anyone on the panel, honestly, if there were any reference points from whether it was other series or other films that you were like, this is the kind of thing we're looking for because the show has a very unique feel, but also has points where it echoes maybe some classic crime films. I think for me, structurally, Heat was an influence there.

1:13:31Chris Ryan:But I think the movie that spoke to me, and it's the reason we have a core, it was Breaking Away. I don't know why, but that's a movie that I grew up watching all the time. It still resonates with me. It's about friendship. And it's why we have a quarry in the show, is I've always wanted to tell a story like Breaking Away that was about friendship. And I really think Robbie and Cliff's story is a story of friendship. So I think that was an influence on me. In terms of the crime story, you know, Heat was there. I think The Town was another one that it kind of plays in a similar arena, I think. and then just trying to keep the emotion in the front of the piece so embrace the genre expectations while also trying to subvert it and I think that's what we did in Mare too we wrapped our arms around the whodunit but we also tried to go a little deeper with the characters and the relationships within the community so I think strangely breaking away was a big influence on me especially for the Robbie storyline That's awesome.

1:14:34Salli Richardson-Whitfield:I never would have thought that. That's great. They got a reboot breaking away, but the cyclists are robbing stash houses.

1:14:41Brad Ingelsby:I'm in. Who throws their pump into his spokes? Jamie.

1:14:49Andy Greenwald:So, Brad, on the...

1:14:53Salli Richardson-Whitfield:Sorry.

1:14:54Chris Ryan:I don't know that one. Oh, God.

1:14:57Andy Greenwald:On the podcast a couple weeks ago when the show premiered, I was, as we often are these weeks, finding different ways to compliment you in your writing. And there was one thing specific that I said on the pod that I'd like to bring up again here, which is I was reading a novel recently and there's a character who teaches literature and she says the advice that she tells her students is make it worse. Not in terms of quality, but like make everyone's situation the most extreme version of it so you can really see the stakes here. And you are exceptional at that. Everything is terrible. Without spoiling things, I wondered if you could talk a little bit about how you would grade yourself on how bad you made it in the episode still to come.

1:15:38Andy Greenwald:And you guys can chime in as well.

1:15:39Chris Ryan:Yeah, I mean, on the episode still to come, you're saying it.

1:15:42Andy Greenwald:Well, you could give us both sides, the A side and the B side.

1:15:45Chris Ryan:So I always think a question I ask myself when I'm starting to write something is, why are we dropping in at this point in a character? Why right now? And I think I can answer that for every character in the show, I think. I can say, why are we coming into Lizzie's life right now? Why are we coming into Grasso's? Why are we coming into Aaliyah's? And so I like to play that game. In the case of Tom and Robbie, they're both going through a crisis of faith in some way. Tom's is a more overt crisis of faith. He's quite literally lost his faith. Robbie's is he has a faith. It's just quite a different faith.

1:16:25Chris Ryan:And so I think I made things as painful for both of them as I possibly could. And I think what I like about that is, you know, is that it gives them a wider arc, I would say. And I felt that way about the character of Mare too, is that I had to start her in a place of a lot of pain in order to get some level of healing at the end. And I think I like to have big arcs for characters in a show. And so in order to get a greater distance, you have to start them in a slightly lower place. In this case, they're both, so I would say A plus for the pain I put on these characters, all the characters in the show.

1:17:09Tom Pelphrey:But I think that's what I loved about it was so much is that I feel like that's why people can relate to it so much. I don't find it that much different than people's reality. Maybe we don't have a murder happening, but we've all been through terribly awful things in our life and we're jumping into that in this film at that time. So I think that's why I enjoyed it so much that I feel it so deeply on an emotional level. And it was wonderful to be able to get such great words to direct.

1:17:44Salli Richardson-Whitfield:Tom, I mean, when it's this incredibly pivotal moment in a character's life, but also seemingly like every scene is he's going through like an absolute gauntlet. Like Robbie is like, are you almost like good? Let's just jump in it. Like let's, I don't need 10 scenes where I'm just doing exposition and walking around. Like I like being in this or is it daunting?

1:18:07Mark Ruffalo:I want to get in there. Yeah, I mean, when you're in there with Brad and with Sally and Jeremiah, you stay in there all day and you get in there and you're with people who understand what they're doing and understand that all of it is in service of the story and you do that and you leave it at work and then you go home in a good mood. You know, like everything about the process was a joy, even the painful parts. And that's what happens when you're around really talented people who know how to, you know, run the ship kind of. But no, I'll, you know, I'm comfortable there.

1:18:45Salli Richardson-Whitfield:I think we can wrap up there, guys. Thank you so much for participating in this tonight. Mark, Tom, Sally, Brad thank you so much for Andy and I thank you to everybody for coming out thank you to Vidiotz, KCRW and you can watch or listen to this on the watch feed tomorrow at some point Go Birds!

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