Actor Tom Pelphrey (BFA’04) and art director Larry W. Brown (MFA’98) are each nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award this year.
Pelphrey is nominated for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series for his buzzed-about performance in Season 1 of HBO’s Task, from the creator of the hit Mare of Easttown. The show stars Mark Ruffalo as Tom Brandis, an FBI agent and former Roman Catholic priest, and Pelphrey as Robbie Prendergrast, a garbage collector who burgles “trap houses” run by drug gangs.
“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. NPR called Pelphrey one “of the many standout actors” in the series, set in Delaware County, aka Delco, Pennsylvania, like its predecessor. And according to British GQ, “Task’s Tom Pelphrey is quietly giving the TV performance of the year.”
Brown, a veteran of art direction teams for such projects as Stephen Spielberg’s 2021 film West Side Story, as well as TV shows like Steven Soderbergh’s The Knick and Ugly Betty, is nominated for an Emmy Award for Outstanding Production Design for a Narrative Period or Fantasy Series for HBO’s The Gilded Age.
The awards will stream on Peacock and air live on NBC at 8 p.m. September 14.