Brad Ingelsby Is Redefining Great American Storytelling

This story contains spoilers for Task episode 5.

We're in the dog days of the streaming wars. So, when we're treated to a singular episode of television—one that slices through the algorithm and tells the Is It Cake?'s of the small screen to take a damn seat—you better take notice. Whether you're a Delco devotee with your phone in one hand and a Yuengling in the other, or a West Coast-dweller who nary knew a water ice, know this: Task episode 5 is a masterpiece.

It's all thanks to the pen of series creator Brad Ingelsby, whose stellar HBO series tracks the collision of an FBI agent and a drug-house-raiding garbage man hellbent on a better life. After four episodes of slow-burning tension in the streets (and backwoods) of the Greater Philadelphia Area, this week finally sees the collision of those two men: The fed Tom Brandis (Mark Ruffalo) and his blue-collar adversary (Tom Pelphrey). The result is such a compelling Rumble In the Jungle-level bout between two heavyweight actors that you almost forget the plot twist earlier in the episode. Fabien Frankel's Grasso is the mole that Ingelsby patiently teased all season.

So yes, Task has reached its peak during peak fall TV season—much like Ingelsby's last victory lap. In episode 5 of Mare of Easttown (Ingelsby's other hit HBO drama set in Philly), Evan Peters's shocking death brought the house down. What is it about Delco that brings out the best in him? Well, when I called Ingelsby on Zoom last week, it was resoundingly clear that as Mississippi is to Faulkner and California is to Didion, the Delco area is not only the TV creator's hometown, but his muse.

"If people respond to Task and keep responding to Task, I'd love to tell more stories about this place, because I love writing about this place," Ingelsby tells me. "I do feel like I have more stories to tell."

Now, that doesn't mean the 45-year old is snubbing the rest of the country. He's enjoyed a long career as a screenwriter, penning the scripts for Apple TV+'s Echo Valley this past summer, as well as the upcoming Matthew McConaughey-starring The Lost Bus, which depicts the 2018 wildfire that devastated Paradise, Texas. He also wrote 2018's Our Friend (which is based on an Esquire story), as well as Ben Affleck's underrated basketball drama, The Way Back.

Of course, it's 2021's Mare of Easstown that launched Ingelsby into the small-screen stratosphere. The Kate Winslet-starring drama announced Ingelsby as a storyteller deeply fascinated by ideas of loss, community, faith, and forgiveness. But if you ask him, he's just writing what he knows. He's also more than happy to keep on doing so, as long as America's newfound obsession with Wawa doesn't die down anytime soon.

"I'd love to have a chance to do another season of Task," he says. "What I love about TV is just how many characters you get to explore. I really see myself as a character writer and not a great plot writer. And so what I love about TV is that you get to explore the Grassos, the Lizzies, the Aleahs. If I was to do a movie, unless I was Robert Altman, I just wouldn't be able to tap into that many characters."

Below, Ingelsby sounds off on Task's game-changing fifth episode, his urgent call to action in The Lost Bus, and the uncle who inspired Ruffalo's surefire Emmy-nominated priest-turned-FBI agent.

"We played a little bit with the mole," Ingelsby says of episode 5’s big reveal. "I felt like Grasso was the right character because he’s sort of a lapsed Catholic who still wants to believe."

ESQUIRE: Brad, how are you feeling at the midseason point? How are your family and friends responding to the show?

BRAD INGELSBY: I feel really excited about it, Brady. Listen, I live here in Chester County. I could throw a stone and hit Delco. It's literally across the street. So maybe the response is a bit louder here because there's a vested interest from the people in this community to watch the show.

I've always felt like this episode is really the symphony where everyone's operating at the peak of their powers. The worlds are colliding and intersecting in ways that are intense, scary, and thrilling. This episode has always been the one where I hope audiences watch it and go, Holy shit. This is about to explode. Quite literally. The ending shot is the two of them with their guns drawn. I just feel so good that people are responding to Tom [Pelphrey], Emilia [Jones], and Mark [Ruffalo]. I always feel most happy when the characters are resonating.

It almost feels weird to say, but with IP ruling everything, these are your characters. They’re not a superhero that someone else created. They came from you.

It's a weird thing, Brady—you spend so much time keeping them all to yourself. Sometimes I forget, because I've lived with the characters for so long, that people are experiencing them for the first time. I have to step back. When I do, I get more excited about what's to come because I have to realize everyone's experiencing all these scenes and sequences for the first time. Whereas I've seen them a gazillion times at this point, you know?

It's so uncanny watching your work because—even me, coming from across the state in Western Pennsylvania—it’s true to my experience and the people I know. I dip back into my accent when I talk about Task.

I was just in L.A. over the weekend, and somebody asked me at the bus stop, “Oh, do you miss L.A.?” I'm like, “This is home, man.” I feel so comfortable being home. It's a weird thing, but I've never felt more like I'm where I'm supposed to be. I had a good time living on the West Coast. But there’s a great sense of home here, with all the O's and hoagies and all that. I always say it's the blood in my veins, you know?

Was there ever a moment where you were at a crossroads of either living in L.A. or laying down roots back home?

We came back to shoot Mare of Easttown, and we lived [in Delco] for a year. Honestly, in my heart, I always knew I would eventually move back, but I didn't have an expiration date on L.A.. But once we came back and did Mare, the kids got to be with their cousins. I'm still really close to all my cousins and we talk all the time. On my side alone, there's 17 grandkids. When I was a kid, I felt incredibly lucky that I had my friends in school, and I had a great group of friends who I'm still friendly with. But if things weren't going well with my friends, I always had my cousins, and it's so nice to see my kids able to do that now. My wife's from Aston. She's from Delco. And so to see that, we went, “Wait, why wouldn't we do that?”

"I was really intrigued by an FBI agent who comes to the job with a very specific view of the world—someone who was the head of a parish, who heard confession, who gave last rites—who could approach the job with a level of compassion," Ingelsby says of Tom Brandis.

I have to ask you about The Way Back—it was the last movie I saw in a theater before the pandemic. That movie deserved so much more.

You know what? I still think about that. It was the weekend where the world said, “We're all going to go back into our homes.” What bums me out about it is I just thought Ben [Affleck] did such a great job. The people who watched the movie agreed with that. It just didn't get out there in the way that we had hoped, Brady. It's a real bummer because I'm really proud of the film, and I'm proud of the way it subverts the typical sports genre movie and becomes much more about a character in crisis. I think that's why I'm always writing the next story, because if I stop to think about the what-ifs in life, I could just go down these rabbit holes. I think it’s one of the best performances Ben's ever given. I really believe that.

I watched The Lost Bus last night—it has an effect similar to The Pitt, where you’re learning about what firefighters actually do in a disaster situation.

With Delco stories, I feel like I can write with authority, but when I'm talking about people in Paradise, Texas, I'm an outsider. So I went there [and spent time with the real-life figures depicted in the film.] I said, "Hey, tell me what I'm doing wrong. How do I make it as right as I can here? No ego. The best idea wins." Approaching a story like that with the firefighters and the bus drivers is what I’ve found [is best] when I do true stories.

The movie is extremely visceral—we see people burning and hear conversations about people dying in their cars. It feels like a call to action.

There's a great line in the movie. The fire chief says, “It's going to happen again and we're all idiots.” It really hit so hard, especially in the wake of the recent L.A. fires. I was living in Irvine and we had a fire come half a mile from our house. We had to evacuate and go stay down at Dana Point for three nights. We were all like, “Is our house standing?” So I experienced it myself, rushing into the garage with my kids, grabbing the passports and the birth certificates, and throwing them in the car. I know how scary it is. We wanted to make a movie that was entertaining, but also scary. It's going to happen again. And what are we doing to combat that? How are we preparing?

I feel like that's why people responded to The Pitt, too—the show understands that it’s TV and it does need to entertain. But at the same time, you’re hearing about nursing shortages.

That's exactly right. If you get a show that can do both, it can be entertaining and say something about the world right now. If you can operate on those two levels at once, you're doing something right.

It feels like Task’s deeper level is faith—I live somewhere between Tom and Robbie’s existential crises. I grew up Roman Catholic, like you.

Oh, God. So you got that, Brady. You got the Catholic guilt. I struggle with it every day, my friend.

Every single day. Why did you explore faith in more of a head-on way in Task?

I think it's my own struggles with it. My dad wasn't a disciplinarian, but he was like, “If you live in this house, you're going to church.” There were so many things that I loved about the church and faith and there were so many things that confused the hell out of me. If God's all-merciful, why do these things happen? I consider myself a believer, but I'm always asking the questions. A big piece of that is that my uncle was an Augustinian priest. He left the priesthood. He married a woman. His idea of God has changed so much over the years from this ultimate arbiter in the clouds to some sort of life energy that exists in love between people.

I was really intrigued by an FBI agent who comes to the job with a very specific view of the world—someone who was the head of a parish, who heard confession, who gave last rites—who could approach the job with a level of compassion. I always say to Ruffalo, “Dude, you're not that great of a cop. But you're approaching the job with a level of compassion and empathy that we often don’t get to see from cops.” I felt really interested in exploring a guy whose faith is tested—and that's a response to my own constant questioning of faith.

In high school, I had the choice one year to either do religion class five days a week, or shadow a class with seminarians once a week. You’d choose the latter for a free period. It was so interesting to see the psychology of men so devoted that they were ready to give up everything.

It is. It’s why I get together with my uncle all the time to ask the questions. He's great because he's like, “Brad, I don't have the answer either, but I can at least tell you what I would have said if someone came into my confessional and asked me this.” The journey of Tom was inspired by my own journey to at least be asking the questions.

"Task is really about families," Ingelsby says. "It’s about Tom and his daughter. It’s about Robbie and his kids."

As far as episode 5 goes, it’s hard to start anywhere but the car scene. It’s a masterclass between Pelphrey and Ruffalo.

Oddly, it was a very tricky, technical day because we were doing all the car scenes practically. It wasn't on a stage. We're actually on the road and we're being towed. And there was a problem with one of the cameras. They couldn't secure it. So the camera was really shaking and noisy. This was the scene that we'd all been waiting for. Then, the car was insanely hot because we couldn't run the air. And Tom sweats.

But what became very apparent after just a couple takes was just how amazing these two guys were and how ready they were for this conversation. It was such a beautiful sequence because it's this slow acknowledgment of how much these two guys actually have in common. What I've always loved about it is when Robbie says to Tom, “Have you seen people die?” I always imagined Tom was a priest that was in hospitals giving last rites, so he'd seen so many people die. And Robbie says, “Were they scared?” Tom says, “Everyone.” When Tom is honest with him, there's a bridge between them where he realizes, Tom's not just bullshitting me to get out of this.

You can really see the high-wire act on the screen. I’m not sure if many other writers could pull it off where you actually believe Robbie and Tom genuinely relate to each other by the end of the drive.

This is an episode where I feel like the show ups its game. I felt that way about Mare in the fifth episode when we killed Zabel. I really was proud of Mare, but I felt like, Wow, in the fifth episode, [the show] becomes something a little different. I do feel that way about Task, too.

We learn the identity of the mole in episode 5, too. Why Grasso?

We played a little bit with the mole. I felt like Grasso was the right character because he's sort of a lapsed Catholic who still wants to believe. He's almost always asking Tom, “Hey, convince me. I've left the church.” Maybe [the church] let him down in a way. That’s what I always felt in Grasso—a guy that was striving to believe. But there's such a shame in him.

When I talked to my uncle about what it was like to be a priest in a parish and listen to confessions, he said, “You wouldn't believe the shame that people felt.” That's actually where I got [Tom’s] line. He said, “I never gave penance. Because people were beating themselves up on their own so much.”

Catholic shame really is a thing.

It's so true, Brady. I can attest to it. It's such a thing. Someone asked me the other day, “The show is about forgiveness. Are you good at forgiving yourself?" I was like, “Hell, no! I never forgive myself." I'll hang on to things I did that to other people might seem small. I'll be like, Oh, God, I didn't say thank you at the end of the dinner. I always felt like Grasso was a guy who wanted to believe again and had lost his way a little bit. It felt right that Grasso would be the mole.

Audiences are connecting with your work during a time when we have an overload of shows—and so many miss the mark. What actually connects with a viewer right now?

There are themes that people will always watch. One of them is family stuff. When I'm writing characters and stories [I ask myself], What are the access points that people have? I always felt like Mare had a number of access points. Everyone has a mom. That was a big part of the show. What worked about Mare? The procedural stuff, but I always felt like what connected with people were the relationships.

Task is really about families. It's about Tom and his daughter. It's about Robbie and his kids. Yeah, there's action and tense sequences. But what are the emotional access points? How do people who don't live in Delaware county, who aren't ex-priests, how do they connect with the show? It’s: I know what it's like to live in a family and have an issue with my daughter. Not that I always hit the mark, Brady, but I try to put enough relationship stuff in a show that people who aren't in Delco—who don't know this world, who don't really care about the little details—can still access it.