Task’s Fabien Frankel Worried He Hadn’t Earned the Right to Play Grasso

Spoilers follow for Task finale “A Still Small Voice.”

In Task, every character’s life is presented as a series of moral choices. Until the finale, “A Still Small Voice,” Fabien Frankel’s Anthony Grasso makes all the wrong ones.

In the first half of Brag Ingelsby’s series follow-up to Mare of Easttown, Grasso is a slick operator who shifts between tough-guy posturing and a besotted romance with new colleague Lizzie (Alison Oliver). But Grasso has been leaking information about his task-force team’s investigation into Dark Hearts leader Jayson (Sam Keeley), and when his treachery inadvertently gets Lizzie killed, Frankel replaces Grasso’s rakish grin and self-assured lean with forlorn eyes and drooped shoulders. In the finale, Grasso gets a chance to redeem himself, betraying the Dark Hearts and racing into the woods to rescue Maeve, a young woman being targeted by the biker gang, all while bleeding from a bullet wound of his own. By killing Jayson, Grasso saves Maeve and gives them both a second chance.

Some Task viewers will recognize Frankel from two seasons on House of the Dragon; in that other buzzy HBO series, he plays Ser Criston Cole, a Kingsguard knight who turns increasingly villainous as his loyalties and motivations conflict. Both characters struggle with the weight of their guilt, but where Cole has fallen deeper into cruelty, Grasso takes the first step on a path to redemption. Frankel isn’t sure he would describe Grasso as heroic, but says he sees a future for the character in a role once held by his boss, Tom Brandis (Mark Ruffalo), in another bit of masculine mirroring that Task does so well.

Much of what drives Grasso is the guilt he feels over his lapsed Catholicism. Did you pull anything from your personal life for that?
My mother is Catholic, but I’m not personally religious. Brad grew up Catholic, and there were elements of his own life and his own questions about religion that felt pertinent. He writes them so eloquently, certainly in the three scenes I have with Mark where we speak about religion. Actually, almost all my scenes with Mark are about that, right? Mark is the voice of authority as someone who spent time in the priesthood. Brad and I talked a lot about Catholic guilt and the idea of repenting and confession.

In the finale, Grasso admits to his sister that he was working as the Dark Hearts’ inside man. You have this wonderfully pained line delivery of “I can’t live with it no more. I’m suffocating.”
“I’m suffocating” was something I improvised only on that take. I remember feeling that was what he felt. It’s funny, because I shot that scene on my second day on set. I knew how important it was, and I was gutted that it was so early in the schedule, and I still feel like that — I can’t really watch that scene. But it’s so rare to have that combination of intricate scripts and the freedom to play. I remember saying, “I’m so stressed now that every job after this is going to be a nightmare, because you guys have made this experience so liberating.”

Why were you upset that scene was so early in the schedule? 
I didn’t feel like I’d had the chance to create the character. So much of Grasso felt informed by my time in Philadelphia, and at that point, I’d been in Philly five days. I was like, Oh my God, I don’t even know who this person is. I was a Brit working in America on a show that was so specific to a certain place that I’d never been to. I didn’t feel like I’d earned the right to do that scene.

I hope those feelings changed over time. 
It changed day-to-day, you know? I was there for six months. You eat in the restaurants and you drink the drinks and you hang out with the people from New Jersey and Philadelphia. By the time you got to the end of filming, you felt like you understood them. Not that you were one of them, but you were closer to understanding who they were.

You worked with the series’ dialect coach, Susanne Sulby, to adopt the Delco accent. How did you approach Grasso’s physicality, how he carries himself? 
You have an idea of how you think someone is going to walk or comport themselves. I sit with my legs crossed a lot; I knew he wasn’t that kind of guy. A lot of that comes when you put on the costume. Having a gun in your holster on your back makes you sit more upright. I spend a lot of the show eating food and smoking cigarettes, and those things all inform his idiosyncrasies.

Actors often say eating is one of the hardest things to do in a scene. Do you agree? 
I find eating quite relieving because it takes the acting out of it. When I was at drama school, there was an actress in my year who was really struggling with a scene. A director had her make up the five beds onstage — the scene was set in an asylum — over the course of this monologue. It took her completely out of her head. She ended up delivering this incredibly natural monologue that had otherwise been quite tricky for her, because she wasn’t thinking about how to deliver the lines. She was thinking about making the bed. The physical things, smoking and eating and drinking, help me. I will say, there’s only so many Philly cheesesteaks you can eat in a scene. [Laughs] After about six takes, that first bite is much better than the 16th.

Later in the finale, Grasso has a final conversation with Tom in his hospital bed. He asks, “Aren’t you going to give me my penance?” to which Tom replies, “People beat themselves up enough on their own.” Tom had previously told Grasso he suspected him, and now he’s offering Grasso a bit of absolution. What do you remember about filming that with Mark?
It was one of my last scenes. We shot it in an old hospital in Delco. I remember asking them if I could stay in the bed between setups, because there’s a certain feeling when you’re in a hospital, a sort of restlessness but also an exhaustion by proxy of lying on your back the whole time. Your mouth gets very dry when you’ve got oxygen going through. Those two things really inform how you feel. The dry mouth was a big thing for me — I refrained from drinking water for most of that day because I wanted that.

This scene follows from episode six, when Tom comes to Grasso’s house after discovering his duplicity. “You say all your Hail Marys and your Our Fathers, and then what? All these sins, they just disappear?” You and Mark are doing such great work in that scene, digging into what religion means for each character.
Brad wrote that scene three months into production. That was one of the last scenes, and probably the last major scene that was inserted in the script. It’s very rare that you get to do a six-page scene opposite one of the greatest actors in the world. Mark and I did not speak about it at all before, other than, “Oh, shit, we’ve got that big scene we’re shooting.” That’s what it was, this governing feeling of, This scene is coming. It was certainly the scene I felt the most nervous to shoot. We didn’t rehearse it. We got there and we shot it, and it was kind of magical in that way. It was important for that scene that Mark and I kept our cards close to our chest, to some degree.

That moment where you ask, “Do you mind if I smoke a cigarette, Tom?” is so right for their conversation, because it feels like Grasso is giving into vice right in this moment where he might also confess. 
I think it’s a defiance more than anything — almost a last stand. As soon as Mark pulls out the photograph, maybe even before that, he knows the game is up. Smoking that cigarette is his last attempt at defiance.

Tell me about working with Alison Oliver. So much of Grasso’s guilt in the finale is tied to Lizzie’s death in the sixth episode. How did you two break down that scene together? 
Ali is one of the most wonderful co-stars I’ve ever had. I care about her as a friend, and I felt a genuine sense of sadness in that scene. I remember being like, Oh, this is a really sad scene, isn’t it? It’s really sad that you die. Not to sound trivial about it! But we didn’t talk about that scene much. There were other scenes we spoke a lot about, especially their scenes early on — the bar scenes, the dancing scene, the scene where they’re in bed. We dissected them in great detail. Whereas with these scenes, especially when they’re more instinctive and physical, there’s only so much talking you can do. You’ve got to surrender to the circumstances. We were in the woods for a couple of weeks in the summer in the sweltering heat. It was the longest sequence to shoot in the show.

I also remember great joy. Playing hacky sack with the camera department and the grips. Being away in a hotel somewhere — I can’t remember where it was, I don’t even know if it was in Pennsylvania! Drinking beers with everyone in this restaurant at this hotel, and going to a quarry and swimming with Brad and (executive producer) Mark Roybal. I hung out with the cast and crew a lot. Everyone I knew in Philadelphia was someone I met on that job, or my tennis teacher.

Have you thought about what happens to Grasso after the show? 
I guess he’d end up in prison. I have ideas of what life might look like if he isn’t incarcerated — I could imagine him as a father. Funny enough, I can imagine him quitting the police force and joining the priesthood.

That is exactly what I thought. If he were to go to prison, he could become a prison priest. 
It would be a super-interesting turn if he leaves the police force and ends up working in the priesthood. It’s basically Mark Ruffalo’s character’s career, but the other way around.

Is there anything you can tell me about House of the Dragon season three? 
I sadly can’t speak to anything that he’s doing. I wish I could give you some kind of cool spoiler or something, but really, I’ll get shot.

What can you tell me about his haircut from last season, which I thought of as his Alicent-breakup chop? 
His hair hasn’t changed from season two. He’s still rocking that Caesar haircut. That was my decision entirely, that haircut. I cannot blame that on anyone else. [Laughs.] Having long hair and going to battle seemed incredibly nonsensical to me on a practicality point. If you’re doing hand-to-hand combat, I can’t envision having long hair. Look at the UFC, at any cage fighters — 90 percent of them have almost zero hair, and those who do have spend their entire careers having to tie it up and put it in pigtails and braid it and whatever else. I figured, He’s going to war. He should look like he’s going to war.