‘Task’ Star Tom Pelphrey on Finding Himself in His Devoted Dad Role — and Nearly Playing Professor X

[This story contains spoilers for Task season one.]

In 2020, Tom Pelphrey made waves on Ozark season three, paving the way for his first Primetime Emmy nomination the following season. The development came as no surprise to fans of his mid-2010s pulpy action series, Banshee. The New Jersey native had likewise joined that low-key critical darling during its third season, and his magnetic turn as Kurt Bunker quickly became a fan favorite — earning him a promotion to series regular ahead of the fourth-and-final season.

Months before he was cast on Banshee, Pelphrey got sober in late 2013, a turning point he detailed in his recent appearance on THR’s Awards Chatter podcast. Shortly thereafter, once Bunker came his way, the opportunity to depict a man who’s drastically turning his life around became a fittingly cathartic parallel to Pelphrey’s own recovery journey.

His sheriff’s deputy character didn’t necessarily struggle with substance abuse; he was a reformed white supremacist desperately trying to atone for his past. But he couldn’t afford to remove the visible tattoos that marked his former affiliation, and Pelphrey intricately captured the inner conflict of confronting one’s greatest regret every time Bunker looked in the mirror.

Banshee wouldn’t be the only Pennsylvania-set series to arrive at a watershed moment in Pelphrey’s life. When he first read the early scripts for Brad Ingelsby’s Mare of Easttown follow-up, Task, he had just become a father to a little girl, and the struggling single father of Robbie Prendergast struck a chord that would reverberate throughout production. 

Pelphrey welcomes those opportunities when his personal life and fictional lives align in ways he never could’ve imagined. 

“Sometimes, where you are spiritually, and what you’re stepping into as a human being, also comes to you in the work. There are times when it’s sacred, and something transcendently beautiful happens,” Pelphrey tells The Hollywood Reporter in support of his second Emmy-nominated role. “The heart of the Robbie character is his love for his children, and I would not have been able to understand that on the level that I did had I not just become a dad.”

In addition to being left by his wife, Robbie is actively grieving the murder of his brother at the hands of the latter’s Delaware County-based motorcycle club, the Dark Hearts. As a result, he’s not only raising his two young kids on a sanitary engineer’s salary, but he’s also looking after his brother’s 21-year-old daughter, Maeve (Emilia Jones), who’s been thrust into a maternal role for Robbie’s kids far too soon. With the help of his best friend Cliff, Robbie decides to take matters into his own hands by robbing the Dark Hearts’ drug-dealing operation in order to provide a better life for his children and to avenge his brother’s death.

Pelphrey believes Ingelsby is doing a great service by not shying away from the financial challenges of working-class people.

“Something Brad has succeeded in dramatizing is the reality of, How am I supposed to raise these kids without enough money? To make even close to enough money, I’ll never be home. How am I supposed to solve that problem?” Pelphrey asks rhetorically. “That’s the hard question Brad is asking, and it’s a question you don’t see dramatized a lot because it makes people uncomfortable. It’s a real question, and it’s a real problem.”

Banshee didn’t pop up overnight for Pelphrey. He’d been “grinding” since the early 2000s on soap operas, collecting two Daytime Emmy wins for his work on Guiding Light, while also taking on a string of indies, TV guest spots and plays. Thus, when he recently finished as the runner-up for Charles Xavier/Professor X in Jake Schreier’s upcoming X-Men reboot for Marvel Studios, he was able to better appreciate how far he’d come.

“To start from the bottom and then work my way up, I can see everything with a perspective that just leaves me feeling grateful,” Pelphrey reflects. “Now, when one door closes, another door immediately opens, and it’s really changed the way I feel about certain projects. So to have those [X-Men audition] experiences — and some of the other conversations and meetings I’ve had that haven’t been reported — it’s incredible.”

Below, during an FYC conversation with THR, Pelphrey also discusses the completion of Robbie’s tragic arc, Task becoming a Mare of Easttown crossover in its unexpected second season and the very practical reason why he’s relieved Professor X wasn’t in the cards for him.

Team Banshee is doing really well right now. You received an Emmy nomination for Task, as did Jonathan Tropper for his Apple show with Hoon Lee, Your Friends & Neighbors. Trooper has also written a Star Wars movie and is now writing Ghost Rider. I just saw Chris Coy and Ulrich Thomsen do phenomenal work on Chris Mundy’s new show, Lanterns. Of course, Antony Starr just wrapped up his run on The Boys, and Greg Yaitanes directs a new show every five minutes. Have you kept tabs on that crew at all? 

Yes, and I’m going to add to that. I literally just got back from Brooklyn where I’ve spent the last four months filming an action movie called Liminal for Apple …

I just spoke to your director Louis Leterrier. This is your first bad guy in a big-budget project, right? 

Yes, we had so much fun. It has a lot of fighting, and our stunt team is the stunt team from Banshee. So I had a very happy reunion with [supervising stunt coordinator] Dave Macomber, [stunt coordinator] Mike Wilson and Justin Eaton, who doubled me 13 years ago. Justin and I sent pictures to Antony while he was on the set of his surfer show [Breakers]. I loved Banshee. I loved every second of it. So I love all those people, and it’s very cool to see everybody doing well. I’m not surprised, honestly. If Banshee was on HBO, we would’ve had seven seasons. I just felt like people couldn’t find it.

Pound for pound, between Banshee and Strike Back, Cinemax was doing some of the best action on any screen at the time. But you’re right, it was the little show that could. 

It was the little show that could, which was both a blessing and a curse. With Cinemax being a little more hidden, we could probably do things that other people couldn’t do, but it was hard because we never got the full audience it could have had otherwise. Still, the people who did find the show love the show, and they’re amazing.

You turned your recurring fan-favorite role on Banshee season three into a series regular role on the final season. The decade-plus before Banshee, you paid your dues doing soap operas, guest spots, indies and plays. Thus, I think it’s a major feat that you were a contender for a comic book character that two of the most accomplished living actors have both played, Patrick Stewart and James McAvoy. I know the Professor X news is still relatively fresh, but are you able to look at it with those rose-colored glasses yet? [This chat took place on 8/12 before the X-Men cast was unveiled at D23 a couple days later.]

When it comes to opportunities like [Professor X], I am always of two minds. I am always a little torn in half. That’s a very long, serious commitment, and that makes me genuinely nervous because a lot of things can change in that time. So half of me thinks an experience like that could be cool and exciting, while the other half of me is a little worried about what could happen. But to be in the conversation for those kinds of roles, regardless of the specifics or how it plays out or why, it’s incredible.

To think about where I was ten years ago or even five years ago, it’s crazy the way this journey has unfolded. I don’t take any of it for granted. Like you said, I didn’t skip any steps to get here. I grinded for a long time, and my feet hit every rung on the ladder to get to where I am. I wouldn’t change any of it because I had to walk every single one of those steps to get here. I didn’t jump to the front of the line at any point or have one job that sent me into orbit. And thankfully so, honestly. To start from the bottom and then work my way up, I can see everything with a perspective that just leaves me feeling grateful.

Now, when one door closes, another door immediately opens, and it’s really changed the way I feel about certain projects. If something doesn’t work out and it isn’t perfect for everyone involved, great, because it’s probably perfect for someone else. That just means there’s something more perfect coming for me.