{"id":1829,"date":"2025-09-22T16:52:29","date_gmt":"2025-09-22T16:52:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/filmfreeway.com\/articles\/?p=1829"},"modified":"2025-09-22T16:52:30","modified_gmt":"2025-09-22T16:52:30","slug":"task-director-hbo-interview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/filmfreeway.com\/articles\/task-director-hbo-interview\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Task\u2019 Director Jeremiah Zagar Wants to Make Things That Mean Something"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Directing major projects like HBO\u2019s crime series \u201cTask\u201d and the Adam Sandler\u2013led sports drama \u201cHustle\u201d was actually Jeremiah Zagar\u2019s backup dream.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI wanted to be a video store clerk. But I was dyslexic and worked in the mail-order section of my video store, and it didn\u2019t go so well,\u201d the Philadelphia native says with a\u00a0 laugh. \u201cSo they fired me, and I thought, Well, the only thing left for me to do is to become a director. And so I did. I was not very good in school, and films were a refuge for me, and continue to be.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Zagar began his career making short films and documentaries, including the 2008 doc \u201cIn a Dream\u201d about his father, mosaic artist Isaiah Zagar. Then, in 2018, he earned many new fans with his narrative feature debut, \u201cWe the Animals.\u201d Since then, the filmmaker has found success in staying close to home, beginning with \u201cHustle,\u201d the 2022 movie in which Sandler plays a scout for the Philadelphia 76ers, and now \u201cTask.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Created by \u201cMare of Easttown\u201d mastermind Brad Ingelsby, the limited series puts two men on the opposite side of the law on an impending collision course. Mark Ruffalo stars as Tom Brandis, an FBI agent dealing with a recent family tragedy; but he\u2019s called back into the field to lead a task force investigating a string of violent robberies in the suburbs of Philly conducted by family man Robbie Prendergrast (Tom Pelphrey).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here, Zagar discusses his work as director (he helmed four of the seven episodes) and executive producer on \u201cTask,\u201d as well as his search for meaning.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"
Director Jeremiah Zagar Credit: lev radin\/Shutterstock<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

What drew you to \u201cTask\u201d and what Brad was cooking up?<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Brad had one script written when HBO contacted me, and it wasn\u2019t done or what it became. I drove down to Philly to meet him\u2014because you\u2019re working on such an intimate level with a creator and you never know if they\u2019re going to give you the space to do your own thing and take your ideas; I didn\u2019t want to just be a director for hire. So I met Brad, and he was just the best dude.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Coming from film, how much of a relief was it to get paired up with a creator like that?<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Because Brad was so collaborative, I was able to direct my episodes as if they were a movie. The only difference was that Brad was on set every day; so I could say, \u201cWhat do you think of this?\u201d or \u201cShould we try this?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the original pilot script, the speech that Lizzie (Alison Oliver) gives outside the screen door didn\u2019t exist. One day before [shooting], I said to Brad, \u201cI need something to fill that space, because Tom (Ruffalo) is going to be in the house watching her.\u201d And so that night he wrote that for Lizzie, and it was meant to be background, but she and the speech were so incredible that it became a set piece.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And we were able to do that throughout. Every week, we would get together and go over notes for the script and ideas, and we\u2019d hang at my dad\u2019s studio and act out the action sequences, like pretending to shoot each other. The coolest thing about a director-writer collaboration in TV is that you have equal power on set, and, if you are of like mind, that power can create a really beautiful kismet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Being from the area, how did you want to infuse Philadelphia and its culture and people into the show?<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Because Brad and I are from Philadelphia, we don\u2019t think about it that much; it just is part of you. Anybody from Philadelphia feels a connection to the city that is debilitating in a way. [Laughs<\/em>] It follows you everywhere. So when you\u2019re working on any project you do, Philly just happens to creep in. In terms of the locations and accents and authenticity of the characters, they were people that we knew\u2014whether they\u2019re people in Brad\u2019s family or people that live around the corner from me\u2014so it was just organic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Did you have any particular cinematic inspirations or influences?<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

We talked a lot about Jonathan Demme. He made a crime film [\u201cThe Silence of the Lambs\u201d] with such heart and love for all the characters involved, especially the bad guys. And our ethos was a very Jonathan Demme ethos: There should be no bad guys, no good guys; it should be all grays; and you should feel the pathos and pain of these people.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There were sequences that we would rip off from other directors. There\u2019s a lot of Wong Kar-wai in Episode 2. The musical cuts and the listening to music on the headphones is very much influenced by the early Jacques Audiard movies. For the color palette, we talked about deep greens and leaning into something warm and summery, and I was very moved by an Italian film, \u201cThe Eight Mountains\u201d [from Felix van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch]. You steal as much as you can, but it always changes on the day.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"
\u201cTask\u201d Credit: Peter Kramer\/HBO<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

What was it like working with Mark and Tom and putting them on separate tracks headed toward each other?<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Mark and Tom are wonderful people and actors, and very different actors in terms of their process. Mark lived in the world of the task force, and then Tom\u2019s team was Emilia Jones, Ra\u00fal Castillo, and the kids. I tried to create activities for [the groups] to hang together beforehand, like bowling or improv games, so that there\u2019s a sense of camaraderie. And Tom intentionally separated himself from Mark, which is not something that I demanded.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tom is such an electric actor; he\u2019s got electricity in his veins, and I think he\u2019s holding it in a lot of times. And so I think part of his process was waiting to meet Mark so that it could explode within the scene. And maybe he was right to do that, because, when they did meet, it worked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For nearly the first 20 years of your career, you worked on shorts and documentaries, and now you\u2019ve transitioned into narrative features and TV series. Has that been a natural evolution, or is it something that you\u2019ve consciously pivoted toward?<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

I never even thought of [filmmaking] as a career. I just thought I\u2019d be broke for the rest of my life and fighting to make weird little movies. And then stories and opportunities come along, and you meet somebody like Brad, and you think: Man, this guy\u2019s great, and he wants to tell the kind of stories I want to tell. And you end up devoting a year or two of your life to it, and you\u2019re lucky that it\u2019s a joy because it\u2019s a gamble every time. I\u2019m gambling on him, and he\u2019s gambling on me.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The only thing that dictates the decisions I make is that I want to challenge myself and excite my creative bones and do new things and things that seem to matter. More and more I feel like stories are void of meaning\u2014at least [in] a lot of the scripts I get. It\u2019s very important to me that there\u2019s a deep meaning behind these things. And I don\u2019t mean a political or prescriptive meaning or a lesson. I mean that there are human beings who are grappling with things that we\u2019re grappling with. I want to tell stories that make us feel less alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The filmmaker reflects on his path from making shorts and documentaries to narrative features and television.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":75,"featured_media":1832,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1829","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nFrom Video Store Reject to HBO Director: Jeremiah Zagar\u2019s Unconventional Path to \u2018Task\u2019<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The filmmaker explains how getting fired from his dream job at a video store led him to directing\u2014and why he gravitates toward projects that \u201cmake us feel less alone.\u201d\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link 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