8 min readIF YOU'VE BEEN watching HBO for the last decade or so, you've seen some really good television. You've seen dark, gothic mysteries. You've seen hilarious, absurd comedies. You've seen subversive fantasy lands and speculative science fiction.
And yet you've almost certainly never seen anything like DTF St. Louis, the network's newest star-studded limited series from creator Steven Conrad, centering on the star-studded trio of Jason Bateman, David Harbour, and Linda Cardellini. The three, respectively, play a weatherman, his on-air ASL interpreter, and the interpreter's wife, who wind up in a love triangle that would make Sigmund Freud and all of his acolytes tremble. At its core, DTF St. Louis is about relationships—marriage, male friendship, illicit affairs, et cetera—with a bit of intrigue and mystery sprinkled in when someone winds up dead at the end of the first episode.
Every time you think you know the direction things are going, you will quickly be proven wrong. When you're expecting a dark twist, you'll actually start to laugh. When you're expecting to laugh, you'll suddenly gasp. When you think a major breakthrough is just around the corner, you might wind up in tears. For the three leads—all of whom have starred in hit, beloved television shows before—that's the whole point.
"I’m always a fan of subverting genre," Harbour tells Men's Health. "When I see somebody with a sniper rifle, and it says, like, 'Agent Number…' I’m like, Oh no."
Bateman jumps in with an idea. "Make it a musical!" he says, as the the trio all laugh.
"Well, yeah, make that guy do something stupid! Otherwise I’m going to know," Harbour continues, explaining why the unique nature of DTF St. Louis inspired him. "We set it up like a murder-mystery or a noir, and then we have all this intimate, weird, male friendship, and color, and emotion, and inappropriateness. I keep watching as a result of that."
Feeding into that noir nature, Cardellini's character, Carol, initially serves as something of the show's take on the femme fatale. When the deadly nature of the show becomes clear, her intimate positioning between the two male leads make her a certain suspect. But as with the rest of DTF St. Louis, there's more to it than that.
For Cardellini, who's well-known for playing good-hearted characters in shows like Freaks and Geeks and Dead to Me, this marked yet another fun subversion of expectation (something she'll continue later this year with her role as Mrs. Voorhees in Peacock's upcoming Friday the 13th prequel series, Crystal Lake). "I don’t know if you’d call it a 'girl next door,' but I had this nice thing going on for a while," she says. "Carol is more complicated than you believe she is in the beginning. When I got to episodes five, six, and seven, I thought Oh. Why did I have those feelings about her? What made me have those feelings about her? Why did I assume these things about her?"
As DTF St. Louis approaches its final few episodes, Men's Health sat down with Bateman, Harbour, and Cardellini to talk about the show, its exploration and subversion of modern relationships, and what it all means at the end of the day.
MEN'S HEALTH: David, DTF St. Louis was originally a different concept you were working on with Pedro Pascal. Can you explain how it evolved from one thing into another?
DAVID HARBOUR: It’s been four years in the making. Steve and Pedro and I had talked about various ideas around relationships, and with the hook of a crime story, a murder, and the way these structures might play out. We developed it for a long time, and we went through many different phases of development on it, and then Pedro left years ago. Luckily, we still worked on it, we changed it around, and Jason came on, and then Linda came on, and then it was time to go. It all came together.
I have been with this for a long time, and the thing that’s remained very consistent about it has been [Creator Steven Conrad's] peculiar, and particularly enjoyable, vision of people. And I can’t believe I’m saying this as I’m promoting my own HBO show, but I love White Lotus. I love shows like White Lotus, and want to make television that has these strong hooks, but with lots of colorful characters, lots of fun details about life, and lots of humor. That’s remained consistent, and the iterations of that have gone all over the place. But I think we ended up with the best version possible. Jason and Linda are phenomenal, and it couldn’t possibly be a better project because they’re in it.
MH: We have this affair at the center of everything, and it gets pretty raunchy. Jason and Linda, how did you approach that aspect of the show?
JASON BATEMAN: I remember reading in the script—Steve very clearly wrote in the script, for some odd reason—and I’m paraphrasing a little bit, “They are totally nude.” [David and Linda laugh.] He wrote that repeatedly in those scenes. So one of my first conversations with him was like, “Hey, guy, how are you planning on doing this level of nudity and sex in this thing?” Because I’m a shy guy! And he said “Oh, disregard that,” as if someone else had written it. He was very fair and easy and put no pressure on anything, and he didn’t have any sort of nudity or exploitative agenda at all.
It’s maybe going to be disappointing for some folks tuning into this thinking it’s going to be some sort of sexcapade, because there’s hardly any nudity in it. There’s some photographic stuff, but it’s not really a show about sex. There’s not that much in it! That was a bit of a relief, because I’m not a rom-com star. I haven’t had a lot of love scenes, so that was a potential discomfort for me, but it didn’t end up being [a concern].
LINDA CARDELLINI: It was really handled with care all the time, and really well plotted out. He would show you storyboards of what you would see, what part you would see, when you would see it, why you would see it. You never felt like it was gratuitous or a free-for-all. We all trusted each other, too, and so we agreed to speak up if we didn’t like what we were feeling or doing. It was a lot easier than when you first read it. I had the same thought as Jason—I was like, Oh god, What do they see, what do they do. Like, Do I have to work out tonight?
JB: Usually in sex scenes, it’s all about the physical expression of two characters really coming together, and there’s a great deal of passion in that. That can be a bit daunting, thinking about OK, they’re going to show this passion with this person who I don’t even really know, and we’re going to have to fake that, and act,' and that’s a whole different kind of acting. With this, the characters are very uncomfortable with having this sex with one another, and you can use that.
DH: That being said, the actual encounter might be uncomfortable, but there are some really sweet, enjoyable moments of the two of you in that hotel room just looking at each other. Like, just scantily clad and gazing at each other. That is sort of sexy and sweet, in a nice way.
LC: Aside from with her son, it’s some of the freest you get to see Carol, too. It was fun to have those be her freedom scenes. That was different.
MH: David, you kind of got at something interesting within the show—Clark and Carol’s affair is, yes, illicit, but it also kind of feels like a healthy relationship. Did you see it the same way?
DH: It’s funny, one of our executives at HBO, the extraordinary Franny Orsi, she was congratulating us on the show, and she said “You made a show about true love.” And I was like, that’s so brilliant that she puts it that way. Floyd really loves both of them. Floyd was constantly a welcome surprise. He would just constantly react to things in the weirdest, sweetest ways, and I really deeply love him for that. It was just a joy to play that kind of free, unfettered love of your friends and your spouse.
MH: David, earlier you talked about the running theme of male friendship, and there’s so much of that throughout the show. But I wanted to specifically ask about the scenes with the two of you and that bicycle. I’ve never seen a bicycle like that before.
DH: [Pointing to Jason] You ride it a lot more than I do.
LC: He was the best at it, I feel.
JB: There was a camera rig they would put on it often—that was kind of challenging. Because that kind of screwed up the balance, because that thing is barely balanced. It’s so perfectly made, any little bit off-center messes up the genius of that thing.
DH: [Laughing] Genius…
JB: It’s a cool little character piece for my guy. That’s his mode of transport, and it’s the first image that we get in the show, and certainly of Clark. It does send a signal—you almost think that this might be a bit of a farcical show. A bit broad. And then it’s not. It kind of signals, well, be careful what you assume on this show.
DH: Riding a bicycle should have a handlebar that goes like this [motions hands in front of him], but unfortunately these things have, like, two little joysticks on the sides of them that do the wheels like this [Grabs at his sides]. Your brain never gets used to it. It’s just constant terror.
LC: There is more visibility, as Clark likes to say. [All laugh]
JB: Oh my god. I love how earnestly my character pitches it.
LC: He loves it! It’s so obvious that Clark loves it.
JB: He’s so serious about it.
LC: He wants everyone to try it!
MH: David, Floyd’s career is as an ASL interpreter. How did you prepare for that broadly, and then later when he provides the ASL interpretation while dancing on stage at a music festival?
DH: I had an ASL coach. I had a couple of ASL coaches—one basic ASL, normal sign language, and another who does that work at concerts, or big events, or newscasts or things like that, which you can be a little freer with. I worked with her as best as I could for a couple weeks, and he literally had Todrick Hall come on and just do that song, and I was just up there and got to do it twice, maybe. Just do the full number twice, and that was it. It was very nerve-wracking, because I’m not a professional ASL person. But it was exciting.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
