TVLine’s Performer of the Week: Tom Pelphrey

THE PERFORMER | Tom Pelphrey

THE SHOW | HBO’s Task

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THE EPISODE | “Nobody’s Stronger Than Forgiveness” (Sept. 21, 2025)

THE PERFORMANCE | As we learned with Mare of Easttown, creator Brad Ingelsby isn’t interested in writing cookie-cutter good guys and bad guys. His good guys have plenty of flaws, and his bad guys have their redeeming qualities, too. In Task, Tom Pelphrey’s Robbie may be a thief and a killer, but he also tugs on our heartstrings, thanks to Pelphrey’s deeply felt performance. This week, he commanded our attention as Robbie dropped the tough-guy persona and opened up about what’s driving his latest crime spree.

Pelphrey wasted no time in laying Robbie’s emotions bare. In a powerful scene that opened the episode, with Robbie in the car with his niece Maeve, he plainly laid out why he targeted the Dark Hearts: to get revenge for them killing his brother Billy. Pelphrey’s eyes watered and his voice quaked as Robbie recalled the men responsible for Billy’s death daring to show up for his funeral: “Jayson shook my hand with the same hand he used to beat your father’s brains in.” Robbie saw the stolen drugs as a just (if insufficient) payment for his brother’s life, and he exploded with rage when Maeve suggested Jayson would come after him next, with Pelphrey tapping into a primal energy, pounding on his chest and bellowing, “Let that motherf–ker come and shake my hand!” But when Maeve reminded him he still had a life worth living, Robbie visibly softened, Pelphrey’s eyebrows arching in surrender as Robbie confessed how exhausting his existence had become: “I’m f—king tired of that life.”

Later, Robbie worked hard to unload the drugs he suddenly had on his hands, and Pelphrey let us see the absolute mountain of pressure weighing down on Robbie’s shoulders. Then his eyes got wide and dreamy as Robbie opened up to Cliff about his dreams of escaping to Canada. But we keep coming back to that scene in the car, which just underlined how fascinating a character Pelphrey has created in Robbie — and how damn riveting Task has become each week.

Scroll down to see who got Honorable Mention shout-outs this week…

HONORABLE MENTION: David Giuntoli

Between his work on Grimm and A Million Little Things, we’re used to Giuntoli playing the kind of character you can’t help but root for. Heck, the guy has even voiced Batman in a number of animated projects. But his latest turn as High Potential’s mysterious Game Master (real name Matthew Clark… allegedly) required Giuntoli to employ a few new tools in his belt, resulting in the kind of unnervingly excellent performance from which you can’t look away — not that we’d want to. His initial confrontation with Morgan in Tuesday’s episode was a masterclass in intensity, even through a two-way mirror, and he kept us guessing for the remainder of the hour. Even during the episode’s climax, as the cracks in Matthew’s facade grew to a full-on break, Giuntoli never wavered in his performance, leaving the viewers (and perhaps even Morgan) hoping for a rematch in the not-too-distant future. — Andy Swift

Which performance(s) knocked your socks off this week? Tell us in the comments!

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