By Emilia Jones,Michael Tanenbaum

Copyright phillyvoice

Eric Kenney, the Philadelphia apparel designer known as HeavySlime, got an email from the costume department of HBO’s “Task” in early 2024 requesting to use some of his distinctive T-shirt designs on the show. He was happy to oblige and had the shirts mailed out.

Then came a more specific request.

MORE: While ‘Task’ creator Brad Ingelsby is ‘disarmingly sweet,’ his deeply flawed characters pack a punch

“Hey Eric, are you OK if we have one of our characters get murdered in your new ‘if it ain’t broke, break it’ T shirts?” he said the ‘Task’ team asked.

HeavySlime’s style, which often features spindly skeletons and dark twists on Philly sports fandom, is a natural fit with Brad Ingelsby’s gripping Delco crime drama. The shirt requested for the murder scene depicts the Grim Reaper riding a motorcycle. The costume team pegged it for a member of the Dark Hearts biker gang, a foul-mouthed woman who gets shot by Cliff during the botched trap house robbery in Episode 1.

Cliff wears another HeavySlime design in Episode 2 that features a cigarette-smoking skeleton carrying a scythe. The text on the shirt says, “When I die I’ll go to heaven because I’ve spent my time in Philadelphia.”

“It’s a huge honor,” Kenney said of his artwork landing on HBO. “Especially because it’s a show that I would have watched anyway. I think it’s a cool Easter egg for people from the Philly area.”

The wardrobes used in “Task” are peppered with subtle references from across the Delaware Valley. Beyond the obvious nods to Rita’s water ice and Wawa coffee, there’s a T-shirt for Kensington’s Forin Cafe, a hoodie promoting Delco’s Victory Cleaners chain and clothing from Havertown Bicycle Shop.

For “Task,” Ingelsby brought back “Mare of Easttown” costume designer Meghan Kasperlik to dress a new cast of characters. Kasperlik had already conquered the unique challenge of dressing down an actress as glamorous as Kate Winslet. This time around, she felt the need to bring a different flavor to a familiar world.

“Brad lets me really contribute in a way that I feel part of the storytelling,” Kasperlik said.

When a colleague on Kasperlik’s team kept wearing HeavySlime hats and shirts to work, she knew his stuff matched the aesthetic of “Task” and would plausibly be worn by some of its characters.

“Originally, it was just going to be the one shirt,” she said. “Then it led to a couple shirts just because I was loving the graphics so much.”

HeavySlime created a custom Dark Hearts shirt of the Grim Reaper riding a motorcycle beneath a splintered lightning bolt. Gang leader Jayson, played by Sam Keeley, wears the shirt under his vest in Episode 3. Everyone on the costume team loved the shirt so much that HeavySlime tweaked the design slightly and printed a batch exclusively for the show’s crew.

“I look at them like songs, like each design is a song,” Kenney said of his graphics, which he’s been selling at his online shop for a decade now. “(They have) the right amount of tough guy style but without being horror art. There’s a fine line of making it kind of fun, but still a little punk rock.”

Robbie’s Allen Iverson tattoo, Tom’s body suit and Maeve’s mullet

Kasperlik’s work on “Task” reunited her with several familiar faces. She had worked before with Tom Pelphrey, who plays Robbie Prendergrast, on the Netflix miniseries “A Man in Full.” She confirmed a Reddit theory that Robbie’s neck tattoo, which features the Chinese character for “loyalty,” was inspired to match Sixers legend Allen Iverson’s ink in the same spot.

“That is something that Tom and I talked about when we discussed the overall look of the characters,” Kasperlik said. “Tom loves Allen Iverson, so he went to our tattoo team for that.”

To make the Dark Hearts’ vests and boots look authentically rugged, Kasperlik turned to ager-dyer Troy David, a longtime colleague who’s worked with her on other jobs including the HBO series “The Watchmen” and the movie “Civil War.” A post on Kasperlik’s Instagram, which has multiple behind-the-scenes tidbits about “Task” wardrobes, breaks down the “harrowing process” of perfecting the vests one at a time for about 60 bikers who appear on the show.

Kasperlik’s biggest challenge was putting together Mark Ruffalo’s look as FBI agent Tom Brandis. The leading man threw the costume designer a last-minute curveball.

“In the middle of a fitting, he said to me, ‘You know, I feel like I wish this character was a little bit fuller and thicker.”

Kasperlik’s team ordered a foam latex suit for Ruffalo to wear on set, giving him the appearance of a man carrying an extra 10 pounds.

“That was probably my number one stress every day, that I was trying not to stare directly at him,” Kasperlik said. “I was looking at every angle to make sure it wasn’t so noticeable.”

One of Kasperlik’s favorite cast members to work with was Emilia Jones, who plays the fan favorite Maeve. Kasperlik went on an internet deep dive to research the look – a mix of punk and tomboy with a maybe a hint of former goth girl.

“I’m still one of those people who use Pinterest,” she said. “I find a few images and just keep on searching around. It was really the hair. I found a few images of someone who had a shaggy mullet. I couldn’t make her too soft, but I couldn’t make her too hard because of the life that she was leading.”

Kasperlik was concerned Ingelsby might be scared off by the shag cut.

“He was willing to go there, and then he showed it to Emilia and she was all in about everything,” Kasperlik said.

The gummy bear necklace Maeve wears was a pickup from the children’s section of a Kohl’s. Maeve also wears a custom silver necklace – not seen on screen – that Kasperlik had engraved with a saying among her own friend group: “Is that all there is?” Meave even wears a few shirts from local bands, including one for psychedelic rockers Ruby the Hatchet, and a shirt from Delco apparel maker Phillygoat that depicts the mythical Schuylkill River Mermaid.

“She can put anything on and look amazing,” Kasperlik said.

‘Little references’ to Philly area

When Kasperlik first came to Delaware County for “Mare of Easttown,” she said she sat in the parking lot of an Aston Wawa people-watching for three hours.

For “Task,” Kasperlik sketched out the look of characters like Robbie and Cliff by adjusting her gaze to quieter spaces in the more rural outskirts of Delco. She tries to avoid taking creep shots of random people in public, instead trusting her memory and the faith Ingelsby has in her judgment.

“If I say something, he’ll understand that I want to put it in the show,” Kasperlik said. “I literally saw a guy that could be Cliff or Robbie in their work wear – with the baggier jeans and sweatshirt and boots. I sent it to Brad and was like, ‘Cliff and Robbie are following me around the grocery store.'”

Kasperlik even picked out the skeleton devil and wolf masks that Robbie, Cliff and Peaches wear during their drug house robberies.

“I got them all on Amazon or places like that,” she said. “It was very important to me that it was something they could obtain anywhere, not custom masks. That’s not what it would be. They’d get them at a Halloween store or something like that.”

Kasperlik said people in the Philly area can find plenty of local references in the show if they look carefully at what the characters are wearing. There are nods to DeWitt Fabrication and Welding Co., a metalwork company in Bucks County, and Elverson Supply Co., a materials and hardware shop in Chester County. Cliff wears a sweatshirt for Glen Mills-based Mahoney and Mahoney Landscaping.

“I love all the little references to Philadelphia-area stuff,” Kenney said. “It’s fun to pick up on and it’s like the Leonardo DiCaprio meme of him pointing at the TV snapping his fingers, like when you hear the show mention the Wissahickon or other things. People watching all over the world aren’t going to pick up on those references, but it’s fun for us to see.”