After the revelation that Anthony Grasso (Fabien Frankel) is the mole on last week’s episode of Task, the severity of his betrayal has now come to a head. During a tumultuous, action-packed series of events, Grasso is caught between his own FBI task force and the Dark Hearts motorcycle gang, to whom he has been feeding information. His decisions result in the death of his colleague and romantic interest, Lizzie Stover (Alison Oliver), and the suspicion of his boss, Tom Brandis (Mark Ruffalo), who has become like a father figure to Grasso. It’s a devastating, and, for some, shocking turn of events — though the show’s creator Brad Ingelsby says the seeds of Grasso’s true allegiance have been planted all along.
“You want to be able to re-watch it and go, ‘Oh, yeah, he was,’” Ingelsby says, speaking over Zoom. “There were things along the way so that when you get to the reveal it feels earned. One of the things we really wanted to lean into with Grasso was his loss of faith. He’s really disillusioned, in a way that Tom is as well. I think when [the reveal] happens hopefully the audience can see how the institutions have failed him in some way. The things he held as truth in his life have failed him in some way. I was trying to lay it in pretty early so that when we get there it’s not just a twist for the sake of having a twist.”
Frankel credits Ingelsby’s writing for the authenticity of Grasso’s circumstances, which will be further explored in the series’ final two episodes.
“He writes incredibly intricately woven characters and enables an audience to discover them in real time without ever feeling like he’s just laying in plot points,” Frankel says, speaking over Zoom separately. “He does it in humane ways, like developing the relationship with Lizzie, or developing the father-son bond that Grasso has with Mark’s character. All those things inform who he is. So when you find out he’s the mole, you already have an understanding of him and it just re-informs your understanding.”
The scope and ramifications of Grasso’s actions come to light early on in Episode Six. After a call from Tom, the task force heads out in search of Robbie (Tom Pelphrey). A showdown among the FBI, Robbie, and the Dark Hearts ensues, with several character ending up dead. The most tragic loss is Lizzie, a conflicted member of Tom’s task force who is nervous in high-intensity situations. She finally confronts her fears and is crushed to death by a speeding car driven by the Dark Hearts. Ingelsby calls the decision to kill the character “heartbreaking” and compares it to the unexpected loss of Evan Peters’ Detective Colin Zabel midway through his prior series Mare of Easttown.
“I said to Fabien, ‘Imagine you have a house of cards and you’re carefully tending to it and someone’s thrown all the windows open in your house and you’re trying to protect it,’” Ingelsby says. “[Grasso] needed consequences. He was able to very carefully handle this house of cards and steer the information this way. But eventually his decisions have to catch up with him. The consequence was that he was falling for this girl and he didn’t save her.”
“It will blindside the audience, and it will be a real sad moment in the story,” Frankel adds. “That’s the culmination of a ton of things that have gone wrong all at once, and a vast majority of them are Grasso’s fault, to a degree. Certainly he feels they’re his fault. So for me [on set] it was allowing the weight of that to happen. But you hold Alison Oliver in your arms after she’s been run over by a car and try not to feel a great deal of sadness.”
Shooting the elaborate sequence in the woods was physically challenging for the cast and logistically challenging for the crew. Ingelsby says they looked around Pennsylvania for the right bridge for months.
“I got quite nervous because I felt like, in a way I didn’t while writing it, that the whole show was leading to that moment,” he says. “That became more and more palpable as we were moving into it. Like, if the whole show is leading to this big confrontation, we have to pay it off. Every character is there for a reason, doing something for a reason. Aleah is the sharpshooter. It’s Lizzie’s moment of courage. It’s Grasso’s house of cards crumbling. It’s Tom finally coming out of his shell and beating up Perry. It’s Robbie confronting his brother’s killer, and ultimately dying at the hands of his brother’s killer. All the arcs are hitting at that specific time. Emotionally, it had to work.”
Unusually, Task hits its big climatic moment with two more episodes yet to air. But Ingelsby wanted the story to play out without culminating in an action sequence. “I felt like the show had to subvert expectations at times,” he explains. “As as a viewer, if I saw these scenes, I would get excited because I would go, ‘Oh, I thought those were going to be where the show was ending.’ It braces you for something completely different. Why not do something that’s unexpected and hopefully still emotional? Hopefully at the end of Episode Six, we still have enough investment from the audience to carry us through see what’s going to happen in Seven.”
Prior to Task, Frankel was best known for his role as Ser Criston Cole on HBO’s House of the Dragon. The actor hails from London and has an extensive theater background, which may surprise some viewers of Task. It certainly surprised Ingelsby, who says he was “literally blown away” by the very particular Philadelphia accent Frankel learned for his audition.
“I grew up a little west of Philly, but I spent a lot of time in the city, and South Philly was an area that I knew,” Ingelsby says. “And Jeremiah [Zager], our director, was actually raised in South Philly. So two of us had a very specific idea of what the character would look like and sound like. I didn’t know [Fabien] is British. His audition felt like lightning, where you just go, ‘Oh, my god. This guy he looks the part, he sounds the part, I believe him as this character.’ He was the perfect choice.”
“He is being very kind,” Frankel says. “I came in with a version of a New York accent that I did. I was just doing an impersonation of every New York cop/gangster thing I’d ever watched.”
After his audition, Ingelsby and Frankel had a “long, wine-fueled dinner” together in Philadelphia. It was then Ingelsby revealed Grasso’s arc to the actor. “We spoke at length about it,” Frankel recalls. “We spoke in great detail about what it was going to be and who he was. Brad had such a clear idea of this person. The opening line of Brad’s stage directions is something like, ‘Grasso puts out his big paw and shakes Aleah’s hand.’ I knew exactly who he was from that point.”
It was important to Ingelsby to establish Grasso as someone the audience likes. The creator gave the character several endearing moments, including when he defends Lizzie in the cop bar and the revelation that he previously performed at Catholic events as DJ Grassanova. Ingelsby hopes that despite Grasso’s bad choices, the audience still likes him the end of the show — or, at least, they can understand him.
“His actions have caused awful things to happen to Lizzie,” Ingelsby says. “But we tried to approach every character with that in mind, even Robbie. We don’t agree with all the things Robbie is doing, but why is he doing them? I felt the same way about Mare of Easttown. With Grasso, I want people to feel, ‘I don’t like what he’s done and the pain he’s caused and the devastation of his actions, but I can at least understand why he’s done these things.’ All the characters in this show, in some way, are trapped in trying to get out of circumstances they’ve been both complicit in and not complicit in.”
“If people hate Grasso by the end, then they hate Grasso,” Frankel says. “That’s what good television is, right? It’s polarizing. So if people want to dislike him, then they should, and they’d be in their right to. But if they want to feel the humanity in him, then they should. I don’t feel the need to defend him because Brad’s writing will do that on its own. When you watch Episode Seven, you’ll have a much firmer understanding of what’s behind the curtain.”
At the end of Episode Six, Tom confronts Grasso, accusing him of being the mole. Grasso refuses to admit his guilt and encourages Tom to come after him. The scene wasn’t in the original script; Ingelsby added it halfway through production.
“That’s what Brad does,” Frankel says. “Who writes a scene of that caliber halfway through filming a show? He goes, ‘I think we’re missing a scene between Grasso and Tom, and I’ve just written the scene.’ It was the best piece of writing I’ve ever gotten to deliver onscreen. In terms of the caliber of writing, I don’t know that I’ve ever gotten a scene like that. I can’t really envision how the episode was prior to that scene existing.”
For several episodes, Grasso has confided in Tom, a former priest, and clearly admires him. Ingelsby wanted there to be a scene where Grasso almost dared Tom take him down.
“We have to believe that Grasso has been at this for years,” Ingelsby says. “He’s not going to cave so easily, right? And there’s a reason he’s gotten away with this in the past. I wanted it to be a scene that was infused with betrayal and pain, but also Grasso digging in and saying, ‘All right, well, let’s see what you’ve got, Tom.’ I wanted to end the episode on a moment of tension. How is Tom going to go after Grasso, and how is Grasso going try to maintain his innocence or try to evade scrutiny? It’s its own little cliffhanger.”
Ultimately, Task is about the power of forgiveness — a theme that carries through leading up to the finale. Tom needs to forgive his incarcerated son, and Grasso needs to forgive himself.
“It’s such a freeing thing, the ability to forgive people,” Ingelsby says. “If we could practice it in our everyday life more, I often think about how it would impact the people closest to us and and our interactions with our kids. It’s such an important thing. It seems easy to talk about, but it’s really, really hard for people to forgive. So why not make a show about that? If it inspires someone to be more willing to forgive, then maybe we’ve done our job. To lead with compassion and kindness and to let go of the shame and the anger, then maybe we’ve done something right.”
