Want to get to know the real Philadelphia? Watch a Brad Ingelsby show. That's the approach that Emilia Jones, star of the latest HBO series Task, certainly took.
While Philadelphia has been the home of films and series for decades, no one has captured the city on a community level quite the way Ingelsby did.
That is part of why Mare of Easttown, his previous show starring Kate Winslet, became a global phenomenon, earning Emmys. And it is that promise of authenticity that has turned Task into one of the year's most anticipated shows.
Jones, who starred in the Oscar-winning 2021 film Coda, tells The National that part of her immersion into the spiritual prequel to Task was practical.
"If I watched something else and I heard a Texas accent, it would totally throw me off. So, I just kept putting on Mare of Easttown just so the accent got into my subconscious,” she says.
But the repetition was about more than mastering an accent – it was a way of absorbing the rhythms and cadences of life in Pennsylvania.
"It's about understanding the world and that's all in the way he writes characters. Mare of Easttown is very, very community-based. It's about Mare and her friends and her family.
"Task, meanwhile, is opening up the world, which I think was quite exciting, because they're very similar but they're also quite different."
The show, being released weekly on OSN+, follows the intertwining stories of a former priest turned FBI agent played by Mark Ruffalo, and a criminal executing heists against local gangs, played by Tom Pelphrey.
Task also explores the lives of two young women, Maeve (Jones) and Emily (Silvia Dionicio). As the drama unfolds in suburban Philadelphia, the show explores anger, heartbreak and loyalty amid their respective families.
For Jones, more preparation involved immersing herself in the emotional layers of her character. “The hardest side of Maeve was the anger and the sadness. You are seeing someone at the end of their tether, completely stuck and slowly losing their sense of identity,” she says.
“She's so strong and confident in what she believes is right. That contrast made playing her so compelling.”
In the series, Maeve is the niece of Pelphrey's criminal character, while Emily is the adopted daughter of Ruffalo's detective.
Dionicio describes the complexities of her role, saying: “For Emily, there is a layer of anger and heartbreak, but she cannot really show those emotions because she has to be the good kid of the family. Someone has to remind the parents they made a good decision."
Jeremiah Zagar, who directed several episodes of the series, says that creatiing real intimacy was key to capturing the heightened feelings on screen. To make it feel real, he encouraged actors to spend time together off set, creating bonds that translated into natural on-screen interactions.
“I ask that all the actors spend time together outside of the workspace… so they feel comfortable screaming at each other or crying together. It is not just artifice – it feels like these people actually know each other,” Zagar says.
Music also played a large part in how they inhabited their roles. For Dionicio, Mon Laferte’s Chilean ballads express Emily’s longing and discovery, while Maeve’s energy is captured in the edgy rock of Arctic Monkeys.
But for Jones, Ingelsby’s deep knowledge of his hometown remained her north star throughout production, adding that his authenticity was infectious. “You can tell that it’s the people he knows and loves and where he grew up. There is such an authenticity in his writing. Every character has a why and a rich backstory.”
Why did it all feel so real? Simply because this wasn't just a world that Ingelsby had learnt – it was his own. Many times while filming, Dionicio and Jones felt like they were quite literally on a tour of his childhood.
"He been took us to the ice cream place he would go to after playing baseball. as a child. It was so exciting to be brought into his world with him, because once we were there, we felt like we knew it and we could collaborate," says Dionicio.
"It's not just that he knows this world but he really loves it, too. You can tell."
Task releases every Monday on OSN+ in the Middle East
