When the third season of Ozark arrived in March 2020, plunging locked-down audiences back into the blistering, blood-spattered lives of the Byrde family, the thriller was already well established as one of Netflix’s biggest ever hits. Critics couldn’t get enough of this normal family who broke bad, and the show, pitch-black and visually sumptuous, was an awards darling from the off. Then, Tom Pelphrey entered the scene as Ben, the bipolar brother of Laura Linney’s Wendy. The actor was a relative unknown, but he portrayed Ben’s inner turmoil with such staggering realism that Ozark was elevated from a brilliant series to a full-on streaming phenomenon.
“Everybody and their mother just kept promising me that I would be nominated for everything,” says Pelphrey, letting out a big whoop of laughter. But he wasn’t.
That year, Emmys announcement day coincided with Pelphrey’s birthday (for what it’s worth, nestled in the middle of summer: 28 July). No nominations came. Though something else did arrive at the door. “I guess Netflix was so sure that I would get nominated for an Emmy, so I had a gigantic package from them congratulating me,” the 43-year-old says with a chuckle. While fans were up in arms about the snub, Pelphrey didn’t mind – the experience of working on the show was more valuable to him than any award. But a year later, Pelphrey did get shortlisted for appearing in flashback scenes in the show’s fourth and final season. Cracking up, he does an impression of an apologetic imaginary Emmys member. “Hey, listen. We heard about the Netflix box. That must have been awkward. Let’s just get you in here. Then we can say we did it.”
Well, the Emmys might come calling again for his next role, another tightly wound and incredibly violent thriller, set by a series of beautiful lakes. Task is the new Philadelphia-based Sky drama from Mare of Easttown creator Brad Ingelsby, starring Pelphrey as a young father on a revenge mission that gets wildly out of hand, and Mark Ruffalo as the grieving FBI agent on his tail. It is set to be the thriller of the autumn, and Pelphrey brings as much intensity and heart-pinching pathos to the role as he did to Ozark’s Ben; resembling a young John Malkovich, his face is a knotted story of confusion and desperation, the actor deftly balancing his character’s terrible violence with an almost childlike uncertainty.
After shooting Task each day, Pelphrey would rush home and scoop his daughter up in his arms, relieved to not be in the shoes of his character Robbie. (He shares a two-year-old daughter with his fiancee, Big Bang Theory star Kaley Cuoco.) “Everything is different now,” he says, over video call from New York. “Obviously as actors, all we have is ourselves to some extent, and now I understand the intensity and the depth of that feeling [of being a parent].” He loves “being able to bring that to a character, in a way where I’m not guessing – I know in my bones that I would do anything for my child”. The actor, clad in the kind of double denim so stiff that it looks like it might snap, his hair slicked back, is a thoughtful talker, switching naturally between earnest introspection and big, booming laughter.
Now, he feels he has so much more life experience to pour into his performances than he did as, say, a teenager. “So much of doing this job, I think, is living a life,” he says. “I mean, you look at Anthony Hopkins, he’s always been good. And now [aged 87], he’s just sublime. He glows to me.”
Task is set in Delaware County, only an hour or so from where Pelphrey was raised in New Jersey. The actor instantly connected with the script because its characters shared the “blue collar vibes, humour, ethos, and values” he had grown up with. He felt especially at home with the way Ingelsby, a Pennsylvania native, had depicted how people from that part of the world rib each other. “It’s how they express love,” he says. “I still operate this way now… On the page, if you didn’t understand it, some of it can come off kind of rough. But that’s the way you talk to the people you really love. For sure, it makes me instantly feel calm and in a good space if people are joking roughly with me.”
When Mare of Easttown hit screens in 2021 to huge acclaim, British lead Kate Winslet made headlines for her impressive grasp of the unusual and unpredictable “Delco” accent. Despite growing up so close to the area, Pelphrey had to put serious work into his accent, too. “I had to retrain my brain,” he says. “There were so many sounds where I was like, oh man, you know, I’m saying sound A, B, and C how I normally do, but D, E and F are completely different.” He spent hours talking about football on the phone with a colleague’s cousin, just to listen to his natural Delco lilt. “The accent was definitely getting a lot of my focus. That was something that, in the early days, was keeping me up at night.”
You learn it’s not always the right time and the place to empty the f***ing chamber
Pelphry knew he wanted to act from the age of 15. He studied acting at Rutgers University and did local theatre in New Jersey, before training at London’s Globe Theatre. Soon afterwards, in 2004, he made his TV debut as villain Jonathan Randall on the CBS soap opera Guiding Light. Ever since, work has been consistent, with roles in the US series As the World Turns, Banshee and Iron Fist, as well as the David Fincher movie Mank (he played screenwriter Joseph Mankiewicz). Ozark, though, was a big step up. “It totally opened doors and had a big impact on my career,” he says. “I was a fan of it before I was on it, you know, and everyone was watching it. They were doing something that was, I think, very hard to do – walking this line of incredibly high-stakes drama with the best dark comedy. They really walked the razor’s edge with tone.”
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He knew Ozark could be his big break, and so he put everything into it. Sometimes, a little too much. During one scene, where he wasn’t even supposed to be on camera, he punched his hand through a wall. “Basically all they needed was the sound of me losing it a bit,” he says, laughing. “I just got a little carried away.” When he snapped out of it, the showrunner Chris Mundy was staring at him, worried. “Then I look in his eyes and I get concerned! But look, these are the lessons you learn. You learn it’s not always the right time and the place to empty the f***ing chamber.”
Ozark didn’t just transform Pelphrey’s career – leading to main parts in the sci-fi show Outer Range and the crime drama Love & Death – it became a turning point in his personal life, too. He met Cuoco, to whom he’s now engaged, at the show’s season four premiere. “As Laura Linney said to me shortly thereafter, ‘Pelphrey! Ozark! The gift that keeps on giving!’” he says, whooping with laughter again. They were set up by their shared manager, who’s been working with Cuoco for decades.
It can be “a little hard to juggle” both of their careers and their relationship with raising a daughter, says Pelphrey, “but any of the negatives are far outweighed by the positives”, and they take turns doing big jobs where they can. “We’ve both been doing this for a while, we’ve lived a certain amount of life, and our priority is our family.”
He is thoughtful about the challenges of raising a child in 2025. “I’m sure every generation feels this way,” he says. “The way that technology is growing and advancing, it’s like, who the hell knows what it’s doing? I still don’t think we fully understand what having the internet has done to our brains, let alone social media, and now we’re getting into AI. What I feel pulled towards is more connection, like the desire for time spent with my daughter, connecting.”
For Pelphrey, happiness is not about awards or any of that Hollywood stuff. It’s all about life’s natural pleasures. “I’ll tell you what we do a lot,” he says, grinning. “Take our shoes off, and go in the yard with the dogs.” He lets out a satisfied sigh. “There’s a lot of that in our house.”
‘Task’ is coming to Sky and NOW on 8 September
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