Alison Stewart: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. The HBO Sunday night streak continues with the series Task, which is about, one, an FBI operation to find out who is responsible for a string of burglaries outside of Philadelphia, and two, an examination of how to best take care of your family when you are the person who is hurting the most. From the jump, we learn that the robbers are a bunch of garbage men who break into houses looking for cash, but something goes wrong in episode one. People are killed, and a little boy who witnessed it, he's been kidnapped. An FBI task force is put together. It's led by Tom, who has demons of his own. His boss, played by my next guest, Martha Plimpton, gives him a chance.

I think, I don't know, we don't know because the finale of the show airs this Sunday. Martha Plimpton plays FBI lead investigator Kathleen McGinty. A Salon review called her work, "excellent". The show balances grace with grit. Joining us is Martha Plimpton via Zoom. Hey, Martha.

Martha Plimpton: Hey. How are you?

Alison Stewart: I am doing just great. Here's a question. If you had to describe Kathleen McGinty to someone who never met her, how would you describe her?

Martha Plimpton: Oh, boy. I would say, geez, straightforward. Let's put it that way. She's a woman who's had to work her way through the ranks to reach the position she's in. Like most women who are in positions of authority, after a lot of hard work, she's got very little tolerance for nonsense. That's what I would say. I would say she's direct.

Alison Stewart: How would Kathleen McGinty describe herself?

Martha Plimpton: Oh, geez. Oh, my goodness. I guess she'd say tired.

Alison Stewart: Tired?

Martha Plimpton: Yes. She would call herself dedicated, I'd say. She's dedicated to her job, and she loves her job, even though the people she works with give her a hard time. I guess you could say she's seen some stuff but she's dedicated. I think she would think of herself as a good friend.

Alison Stewart: I was going to actually ask that about Kathleen and Tom, who's played by Mark Ruffalo. It's interesting when they meet, he comes to her office and he brings her a bag of tomatoes from his garden. She's like, "Tomatoes. That's great." What do the tomatoes tell us about their relationship?

Martha Plimpton: think it tells us that that they're friends, that they're colleagues I think she's probably been to Tom's house for barbecues. They've probably hung out socially in that sense. She knows his family. She's aware of this horrible tragedy that has befallen him and his family. She knows that it's a big reason or it's the reason why he's lost his mojo a little bit, and he's been sidelined by the Bureau. He's working now as a recruitment guy at college job fairs.

He sits there at this table, and he brings out his folder full of brochures and business cards. He just sits there waiting for students to come up and seem interested in joining the FBI. I guess he's lost his way. He's a former priest. This tragedy has ripped his family to shreds. He's depressed. I think she sees him as needing something, some motivation, something to, in her mind, take his mind off things. You know what I mean? Which is, of course, absurd when you think about the circumstances, but that's where she's at with Tom.

Alison Stewart: That's why she puts him on the task force.

Martha Plimpton: Exactly.

Alison Stewart: Brad Ingelsby, the showrunner.

Martha Plimpton: Hello?

Alison Stewart: Hi. Are you there? Do you hear me?

Martha Plimpton: Yes.

Alison Stewart: Great.

Martha Plimpton: I'm here.

Alison Stewart: I'll tell people who I'm talking to, it's Martha Plimpton. She's in Task. She plays FBI agent Kathleen McGinty. It can be seen on HBO. Brad Inglesby, he's a showrunner. He did mayor of Easttown. We interviewed him for that. He's a really, really good writer. What does he do as a writer that is helpful to you as an actor?

Martha Plimpton: I tell you, the thing that I noticed the most about-- Can you hear me?

Alison Stewart: Yes. We hear you great.

Martha Plimpton: I'm here.

Alison Stewart: I see. There you go.

Martha Plimpton: The thing that I noticed most about Brad's writing is that he gives you a lot of space. I guess I heard him describe this once in an interview where he said he learned a lot about storytelling from journalists, and from a journalist friend of his who, who talked to him about the most important thing being how you reveal things and when. He doesn't write a lot of exposition.

There's not a lot of people talking about their feelings or about what they think of things. It's through their behavior and through their interactions with each other, how they respond to one another that reveals who they are. I think that's just really great because it gives the actor so much space, so much room to play within that. It's incredibly freeing. It's also incredibly good storytelling because you don't know exactly where you are in this world all the time.

Just people in life, we can't say this is where I'm at, this is what I'm feeling, this is what I'm doing. Life doesn't work like that. We're not sitting above ourselves mapping out our course as we go. We reveal ourselves sometimes by accident. Sometimes we throw people off, sometimes we create diversions in life with one another. I think he's got just a very clear and natural understanding of just how humans talk to one another and how things come out over time. That makes for really compelling storytelling.

Alison Stewart: There's a great scene, it's a shoot them up, chase them in the scene woods, FBI versus the bad guys versus the kidnapper burglar, guns drawn, shots fired. Could you tell us a little bit what goes into staging a scene like that?

Martha Plimpton: It's incredibly complicated. First of all, from the actor's perspective, you got to do a lot of weapons training and tactical training. How exactly do you chase someone in the woods when they could be coming from any and all directions, and you can't see and you're behind a tree and you're working in full 3D, 360. That part is really complicated. It requires storyboarding and a lot of planning and a lot of exercise for the actors.

Alison Stewart: I imagine that. Were you familiar with that kind of stage and that kind of big shoot them up staging?

Martha Plimpton: I'd never done anything like that before, really. I'd done one quick thing in a series years ago, but I'd never done anything quite like that. That was exciting. I feel like I want to do more of it.

Alison Stewart: Your character, she's in her 50s. She's a boss. What do you think is unique about your character, especially since she is in her 50s.

Martha Plimpton: It's not a role you see too many women playing. Sometimes you'll see women in authority, like in the FBI or the CIA, and they have these really fancy suits, and they dress in Armani, and they have really expensive haircuts, and they look really good. I think the reality is a little more banal and a little more run down than that.

When you really think about it, an FBI career, FBI person does not make a whole lot of money. Very often they work in an analog atmosphere, and things are very, very "fitting in". They get their suits at Nordstrom Rack. They have one piece of jewelry, usually a watch, or maybe it's an FBI medallion that they wear. They're not so slick. That's what I really like about Kathleen and about this character, is that she's not slick. She's not calculating.

Alison Stewart: She eats a lot, though.

Martha Plimpton: She knows what her job is.

Alison Stewart: She does eat a lot. I have noticed that one thing.

Martha Plimpton: She does eat. She's a stress eater, as she says. Absolutely.

Alison Stewart: We're talking to Martha Plimpton. She plays FBI agent Kathleen McGinty. Task is a drama that follows an FBI search for a kidnapper and reveals so much more. As we go into the last episode, I've watched every episode, and I think I've got it pretty clear. In Episode 4, she makes a call, and it's unclear who she's really talking to. It could just be a small moment. It could be a big moment. You're not going to tell me. I understand, because we have to watch. How do you play the part that which could be nothing, or it could be really complicated? When you're playing that part, what are you thinking about?

Martha Plimpton: To be honest with you, I'm not really thinking about much except what I need to do in the scene for Brad to say the line and say it in the way he wants me to say it. I let him do all that work, because from my Perspective, I feel like if I infuse it with too much knowing, mustache twisting, it's probably not going to be very effective. I let the camera do that, where the camera is and how the director chooses to light it. I let that go. I try not to put too much weight on it.

Alison Stewart: The slow has been a slow burn. It's been coming out weekly and people have told each other, "You should watch it, you should watch Task. Everybody should." At first, it was like, "Oh, HBO show," but then it really started to kick in about Episode 3. What do you think about the episodes coming out weekly?

Martha Plimpton: I love it. I absolutely love it. I think it brings me back to when we used to watch serials like Dallas or whatever. It's a different kind of show. It's a different kind of thing. I think the anticipation is really important. I know that a lot of people are waiting till the final episode is out so they can binge the whole thing because they get frustrated having to wait.

I like that. I like that you got to hang in there, and you got to wait, and you got to be patient and let things roll out. I'm a fan of it myself. I appreciate the binge. I definitely do, but who's got that kind of time? To me, that one hour a week where people get to talk about it, where you're doing that water cooler thing, if people still gather at water coolers, I don't know, we might have made those obsolete too now, when people talk about it. I get texts and I get messages all the time like, "Ooh, you're the mole," and all this great stuff for people just exchanging ideas about who they think did what and where they think the story's going. I love that. I think it's awesome.

Alison Stewart: At the premiere for Task, you looked great.

Martha Plimpton: Thank you.

Alison Stewart: You also had this beautiful necklace on that read ADHD. You got your diagnosis fairly recently. I'm curious, how did being diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, how did it change your approach to work?

Martha Plimpton: Wow. Nobody's asked me that. It's really interesting because over the years, I always thought of myself as undisciplined and frazzled. It was very difficult for me to learn lines. What I have to do is I have to write them out in longhand on a yellow pad. I've always thought that that was some kind of deficiency on my part because I'm not good at learning things by road.

I have to physicalize it somehow. When I got the diagnosis, everything just fell into place. All these previous things that were challenges for me suddenly made sense. It's definitely made me easier on myself when it comes to work. It's made me more relaxed about what my strengths are and where those strengths lie.

It's just made me appreciate the ways in which this diagnosis has given me a strange kind of superpower, in a way, because when I am on set, I am extremely focused and extremely present. Now I understand why it is that when I'm not on set, things tend to fall apart. It's been really liberating. It's just helped me really come to a kinder understanding of myself.

Alison Stewart: The name of the show is Task. Its finale plays this weekend on HBO. My guest has been Martha Plimpton. Martha, it's really nice to talk to you again.

Martha Plimpton: Thank you so much. It's great to talk to you, Alison. I'm really excited about this being the Animal Rescue Month, because my two dogs, they're rescues from Animal Haven in New York, and I love them. They've changed my life and made it so much better.

Alison Stewart: We love it. What's their names? Shout them out.

Martha Plimpton: Walter and Jimmy Jazz.

Alison Stewart: Walter and Jimmy Jazz. Have a great weekend.