SPOILER ALERT! This story contains details from the season finale of Task on HBO.
Emilia Jones considers it a compliment that, while playing the emo niece of a criminal uncle in Task, no one realized that she previously played the only hearing member of a deaf family in the 2021 Oscar winner CODA.
“I went to the Rangers game last night and someone was like, ‘I didn’t recognize you without your mullet.’ And then someone else was like, ‘well, I didn’t recognize her with the mullet.’ So many people sent me text messages saying they didn’t realize it was me until episode three or two,” admits Jones of the CODA role that earned her a BAFTA nomination. “It’s such a compliment. That’s what I love about acting. I love playing characters you can totally disappear into. That was my goal and I feel very happy that people didn’t realize it was me.”
Here, the British actress who also played the title character of Reality in 2024’s Winner and Kinsey in Locke & Key addresses Sunday’s adrenaline-fueled finale and where she thinks her character took Robbie’s kids now that they’re free from harm.
DEADLINE Let’s start with the final episode. Talk about high octane.
EMILIA JONES It was so much fun because I love stunts and it was the climax of the show. We all worked together to make that scene so much more than what we thought it could be. Sam Keeley, who plays Jayson, gave me a look before we started shooting that sequence and was like, ‘let’s do this. Let’s just go for it.’ We slightly went off the script and had this back and forth fight. My adrenaline was so high the whole time and it was a really, really challenging but such a fun scene to shoot.
DEADLINE In the end, how do you think Maive felt about Robbie, played by Tom Pelphrey?
JONES I think Maeve is devastated, obviously, when Tom [Mark Ruffalo] tells her Robbie’s dead. Maeve has long been torn by his choices, and she saw the risks, the moral compromises, the danger that he brought into the family. But at the end of the day, he was still her uncle and he was deeply intertwined into her life. Although Robbie burdened Maeve with a lot of responsibility, she knew that she still had someone who was looking out for her. So it’s an absolute huge loss. I think that Maeve had come to the realization that Robbie’s heart was always in the right place. No matter what he did, he was trying to protect his family.
DEADLINE What was it like working with Tom?
JONES He’s such a giving actor. Building Maeve and Robbie’s relationship was such a joy with Tom because it’s a complicated relationship. There’s a lot of resentment there with Maeve and some conflicting emotions and anger, but at the same time, there’s so much love between them. Tom and I would hang out a lot in between filming. We would go to museums and dinners and we did this trippy room at the children’s museum and wore 3D glasses. We basically spent five hours laughing. That really helped us bond. It was easy, then, to play the anger and tough emotions because there was so much trust and love between us.
DEADLINE You were quite the kid wrangler in this. Have you ever worked with this many kids on a project?
JONES It’s funny, creator Brad Ingelsby, when I first spoke to him about this project, ended the Zoom before I read the script and said, ‘do you like kids?’ It was such a random question to ask. I was like, yeah, I love kids. Who doesn’t? And then I read the script and was like, oh, okay, I understand. I started acting when I was 8, so I saw myself in the kids. I remember when I was on set when I was young, someone would get me a present or something and it would just mean the absolute world to me. So I tried to do that with the kids. For Ben Doherty, who plays Sam, it was one of his first projects. He was just so happy to be on set. So I bought him a little Polaroid camera so he could take pictures of all the crew and cast to make a little scrapbook to remember everybody for the rest of his life.
DEADLINE Which kid called your character a chicken butthole, again?
JONES That was little Oliver Eisenson, who plays Wyatt. Wyatt loved saying chicken butthole just as much as Oliver loved it. It wasn’t improvisation, but he absolutely loved that he got to say it. A lot of those kind of scenes were improvised because Oliver is such a bundle of energy and he’s so perfect for Wyatt, so they just kept the camera rolling and let him do his thing.
DEADLINE Where would you like to think that Maeve and the kids went at the end?
JONES I have thought about that so much. I just hope that Maeve is able to get the support that she needs because for a lot of her life, she’s had to put things on pause and never put herself first. I would like to think that she’s living a happy life with Harper, Wyatt and the family that they are, but at the same time, being able to grow as a person and learn to do a few things for herself, because my goodness, she deserves it.
DEADLINE Was Task a game changer for you?
JONES I mean, CODA was such a game changer and I’m so grateful for it. It was a complete whirlwind. The whole award season was such an amazing experience and such an unexpected one. I felt so lucky to have been a part of that film. I was 17 and I’d never signed or sung before. For every skill that was required for that film, I had a big fat NO by every single one of them. And for some reason, the director Sian Hader took a risk and cast me. I’ll be forever grateful for Sian and for that film. CODA allowed me to be a part of Task and I’m so grateful. Task really enriched my life. Maeve came to me at a time when I really needed it. I found filming the show really cathartic and I learned a lot about myself.
DEADLINE What have you heard about the future of Task?
JONES I’ve caught wind of it [being an anthology], and I really hope that that happens. Brad is such an amazing writer and I think his characters are so layered and complex. The way he portrays moral ambiguity in characters is so intriguing and it’s what drew me to Task and to watch Mare of Easttown. I think it would be a shame not to keep this world alive.
