Emmy-winning Theater alum Tom Pelphrey (BFA’04) is starring opposite Mark Ruffalo in HBO Max’s buzzed-about new series Task, from the creator of the hit Mare of Easttown.
“A longtime TV journeyman, Pelphrey enters Task with a lower profile than a movie star like Ruffalo, but provides an equal counterweight to his more established foil,” critic Alison Herman of Variety said in the publication’s review. NPR called Pelphrey one “of the many standout actors” in the series, set in Delaware County, aka Delco, Pennsylvania, like its predecessor.
Pelphrey is especially fond of his time in the Rutgers Conservatory at Shakespeare’s Globe program, which launched in 2003 in London. While there, he studied with Oscar winner and three-time Tony-winner Sir David Mark Rylance (Bridge of Spies), the reconstructed theater’s first artistic director. The expanded, yearlong program, now called MGSA in London, sends acting students to Shakespeare’s Globe and design and production students to the Lyric Hammersmith.
“At one point, [Rylance] was trying to teach us about Shakespeare’s monologues, and he just, off the cuff, did ‘to be or not to be’ five completely different ways,” Pelphrey says. “It was, I mean, just stuff that makes your jaw drop. And at that time, he wasn’t somebody that I knew who he was. I was just obsessed with him because he was so talented. It’s like ‘who is this guy?’”
Read more about Pelphrey’s Jersey roots and his time at Mason Gross at NJ.com.
Watch the Task trailer.