Tom Pelphrey, our guest on this episode of The Hollywood Reporter’s Awards Chatter podcast, is an outstanding actor who has been doing impressive work on the stage and screens big and small for more than 20 years, picking up along the way two Daytime Emmys for his portrayal of Jonathan Randall on the CBS soap opera Guiding Light and Critics Choice and Primetime Emmy nominations for his turn as Ben Davis, the bipolar brother of Laura Linney’s Wendy, on the Netflix drama series Ozark.
But Pelphrey is currently experiencing unprecedented levels of acclaim — and Emmy buzz — for his extraordinary performance on the HBO drama series Task as Robbie Prendergrast, a single father and sanitation worker in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, who is mourning the murder of his brother and robbing the biker gang responsible for his brother’s death, which puts him in the crosshairs of both that gang and an FBI task force.
Over the course of a conversation at the L.A. offices of THR, the 43-year-old reflected on his path to acting, and how his career only really began to take off after he got sober on Oct. 1, 2013; how he landed on seasons three and four of Ozark, and how his work on that show led to other high-profile opportunities; why he was so drawn to — and personally effected by — playing Robbie on Task, which Esquire has described as “the role of a lifetime”; plus more.
