It was a summer day when Brad Ingelsby opened the door to his home in a quiet cul-de-sac of Berwyn, Pa. This is where the screenwriter crafts dark dramas from a sunny office.
On his desk sat Arthur Miller’s All My Sons and other plays (a genre he hasn’t yet tried to produce, but loves to read) next to several marble composition notebooks, full of scenes that he writes by hand. Behind his chair, towering shelves display family photos, mementos from TV sets, a framed invite to the 73rd Emmy Awards, and many accolades recognizing his 2021 hit Mare of Easttown.
Ingelsby’s life has changed dramatically in the years since Mare premiered and catapulted him to national recognition. The Hollywood spotlight was exciting, but his success led to an unconventional decision: to leave Los Angeles for Berwyn.
There’s a hint of hometown pride in his voice as he explains that he now lives about a mile away from his parents’ home, the same place he grew up. There were personal reasons — after the pandemic lockdown, he and his Aston-raised wife, Lindsey Ingelsby, wanted their three young kids to be closer to family. But he was also motivated by a creative calling.
Mare proved that he could bring a prestigious HBO production (and A-list talent like Kate Winslet) to film a Delaware County story in the very streets where it’s set, with Emmy-winning results. Representing Delco authentically on-screen felt like fulfilling a greater purpose, and he didn’t have to stay in L.A. to keep that momentum going.
This year alone, he has had three new releases: His latest HBO series, Task, another Delco crime thriller currently airing weekly; the Chester County-set film Echo Valley, starring a quietly fierce Julianne Moore and a manipulative daughter played by Sydney Sweeney; and The Lost Bus, based on the true story of a bus driver (Matthew McConaughey) and teacher (America Ferrera) rescuing children from a California wildfire, out this month.
“I didn’t really need to be [in L.A.] anymore … I had made good relationships, where if I had good material, I could get it in the hands of the right people,” said Ingelsby, 45. “I haven’t looked back.”
Making ‘Task’
One of those right people, in the case of Task, was star and executive producer Mark Ruffalo.
“This show started when Mark Ruffalo said ‘yes,’” Ingelsby told the audience on the night of the show’s premiere at New York’s Perelman Performing Arts Center, where the reception included cheesesteaks, roast pork, soft pretzel bites, a Rita’s booth, and a TV airing the Eagles-Cowboys game.
“It means you actually get to make the show, because Mark is an actor of a certain caliber, but it also means that you establish a certain culture on the show. When Mark Ruffalo is number one on the call sheet, everyone has to lead with kindness.”
Ruffalo plays Tom Brandis, a former priest turned FBI agent grieving his wife, who died after their adopted son pushed her down the stairs in a manic episode. He’s assigned to lead a task force to track down Robbie Prendergrast (Tom Pelphrey), a garbage collector stealing from a motorcycle gang. Family tragedy and the responsibilities of fatherhood weigh heavily on them both as they inch closer to the show’s climax.
Kindness is an essential part of Ruffalo’s character. In writing it out, Ingelsby took some inspiration from his Uncle Ed, a former priest from Drexel Hill, who is “very compassionate, empathetic, and inclusive.” The writer leaned on his uncle for input on scenes where the protagonist struggles with his faith.
Finding the right actor for such a specific role was a challenge.
“It’s tough to think about actors who are of a certain age, who you believe would be a priest,” said Ingelsby. “Who can have that kindness and compassion? But also you could believe him as a cop, and you could believe him as a deep thinker, a theologian … I just think [Ruffalo] possesses all the qualities of that character in a way that I don’t know that any other actor could.”
Fans of Mare might have expected to hear Ruffalo’s version of the Delco accent, but it didn’t fit Ingelsby’s vision of the character (and Uncle Ed doesn’t speak like that, either). His counterpart Pelphrey, from Howell Township, N.J., took on that challenge, along with others in the cast who learned from dialect coach Susanne Sulby, the same accent expert behind Mare.
“We weren’t trying to separate Task from Mare. In fact, we were actually going the other way and saying, ‘No, it’s OK to use the same streets,’” said Ingelsby, who worked with production designer Keith Cunningham and costume designer Meghan Kasperlik on both series. “If there’s something architecturally that can connect the two worlds, let’s wrap our arms around it.”
It’s all part of the Ingelsby cinematic universe.
Made in Delco
“Investing in authenticity” has become a mantra of sorts for Ingelsby’s local productions, an approach that drew director Jeremiah Zagar to Task.
“We’d been talking about meeting for a long time, because there aren’t a ton of us from Philadelphia in this [entertainment] space,” said Zagar, who directed the 2022 basketball film Hustle. “He was so genuine … I thought, ‘I could make a show with this guy.’”
The pair spent weeks meeting up at Watkins Street Studio, a garage where legendary Magic Gardens artist Isaiah Zagar, Jeremiah’s father, once worked. (The Zagar family, including Isaiah Zagar carrying his mosaic-ed cane, attended the Task premiere, too.)
In the colorful, mosaic-covered space, Ingelsby and Zagar worked on storyboards. “We would act out the cops-and-robbers stuff — like me on the ground with a gun,” Zagar recalled. “I don’t know where those pictures are, but I’m sure they’re really embarrassing.”
They filmed in South Philly, Chester and Montgomery Counties, and all across Pennsylvania, with more than 100 set locations. It costs more to shoot locally, but Ingelsby says the investment is worth it, not only for authenticity but also because it brings jobs to the region with film crews who “take such pride in showcasing this area.”
“There is value in shooting something where it’s set — it will bring something to the production, to the characters, to the emotion that you just can’t emulate somewhere else,” he said.
Other productions have echoed a similar approach, with a slate of new crime shows this year not only set in Philadelphia but filmed in the region as well, including Dope Thief, Long Bright River, and Deli Boys. Ingelsby hasn’t watched all of them, but he welcomes more attention to the region through different perspectives (and he insists Task is not a Philadelphia story).
Mark Roybal, Ingelsby’s longtime collaborator who executive produced Mare and Task, believes the Berwyn writer has led the way for this trend.
“The Philadelphia crime thing — I say this with some humility — I think it started with Brad and Mare‚” he said. “Philadelphia is incredibly colorful, [with] unbelievable people and characters. Brad knows that, because he’s from there, and it’s in his blood, so he writes about them beautifully and poetically and truthfully.”
Ingelsby hopes local audiences will feel as represented by Task as they did with Mare. (For the latter, he said, the door is always open for a second season.) He’s eager to continue working in and writing about his hometown region.
He didn’t really like L.A. anyway.