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DTF St. Louis might have been in a categorical pickle if it weren’t a limited series. As anyone who’s watched the seven-part HBO series can attest, it can be both devastating and deliriously funny. That’s not easy to pull off. Unless, of course, you’re Linda Cardellini.
In some of the series’ more memorable moments, Cardellini is swimming in an oversized umpire’s uniform. It’s something her character, Carol, wears for the part time job she’s taken to make ends meet — providing physical comedy to a woman navigating a lost marriage and a troubled son in a manner that keeps things from ever getting too dark.
Cardellini’s eclectic career has been punctuated by quite a few tragicomic performances: Dead to Me’s Judy Hale, perhaps the most notable. But in DTF St. Louis, where she’s one point of a love triangle that also includes Jason Bateman and David Harbour, she treads an even finer line. This is something Cardellini quite enjoys. “I feel grateful that I’ve had a career for this long, for sure,” she says. “But the idea that I’ve been able to do this for many decades, and things are really fun right now? I’m especially grateful for that.”
During a recent conversation with The Hollywood Reporter, Cardellini spoke about her work on DTF (she trained with a real umpire!), the movie that most frequently comes up when she’s stopped by fans and why she’s got two horror projects lined up.
