by Gill Pringle in LA
Showrunner/creator Steve Conrad and the stars of DTF: St. Louis are down to chat about the morally ambiguous new series.
Cheating can be dangerous – especially when somebody winds up dead.
David Harbour, Jason Bateman and Linda Cardellini portray a “love triangle” of three adults experiencing middle-age sexual malaise – although can it even be called a love triangle if one person has no idea that they’re actually in a triangle?
That’s just one of many questions posed in Steve Conrad’s dark comedy mini-series, DTF: St Louis, the “DTF” standing for the name of a dating/cheating app called ‘Down to Fuck’.
Harbour’s Floyd Smernitch is a sign language interpreter who lives with his wife Carol [Cardellini], and her troubled teenage son Richard (Arlan Ruf). During a televised storm report, he protects Bateman’s meteorologist Clark Forrest from being injured, and the two quickly become close friends.
Also starring Richard Jenkins and Joy Sunday as local law enforcement, it’s a twisty series where every episode of the seven-part drama takes viewers in an unexpected direction.
Watching the friendship develop between Stranger Things’ Harbour and Ozark’s Bateman is irresistible, a male bonding that is rarely shown on screen.
“Right from the early discussions with Jason, I felt a camaraderie,” says Harbour. “He’s such a smart guy and so silly on one hand, but yet earnestly cares about what he does on the other. I just felt a camaraderie and a kind of fun with him.”
“It’s hard as a 50-year-old heterosexual male to make new friends. I’ve found it hard. But I started to really just let my guard down,” admits Harbour about his evolving friendship with Bateman.
“There was something on set where even that process of making a new friend in him or showing up or thinking, ‘I wonder what he thinks of me in the scene today?’ I would let those colours play on me as we played the scene. And it was a joy to do. I think the chemistry was very organic and I’m very pleased to see that it translates on screen so well,” says the 6’3” actor whose character has a secret past as a nude male model.
Likewise, Bateman, 57, returns his affections, “I have a lot of similar feelings about David and about how effortless the chemistry was. It’s just simply people skills. In any occupation, any work environment, it is a choice to have a connection with the people that you’re working with and so, when you’ve got people that aren’t jerks, it’s not tough,” he says.
Four years in the making, DTF: St. Louis series creator and show runner Steve Conrad (creator of show Patriot, and writer of movie Wonder among others) says that “David and I had started looking around for a show that would essentially be suspense and would have this sort of middle-age desperation as a driving force of emotionality.
“We looked at some articles, and started to try to conceptualise something based on stuff that we had looked at together and then decided that we would have a stronger show, a more comprehensive set of things to say if we just started from scratch on it,” he explains.
“So, we took this idea that there would be a set of middle-aged people in a suburban community who over the course of one summer – when each of their lives were falling apart in one emotional way or another – found each other and meanwhile started flirting with this dating app which is not quite a dating app, it’s more of a sexual hookup app, the likes of which were more common in 2018 when the show is set.
“And sites like this would promise all the excitement, none of the consequences. Married people could connect, cheat on their spouses and go home and resume their normal lives. And that promise just seemed not quite stable to me. So, I thought it would be a great place to start, and David and I agreed to make a series of suspenseful and tense events that might follow from grownups making mistakes and then trying to fix them, only to create greater mistakes, only to very serious desperation,” adds Conrad.
As Floyd’s wife Carol, the lone female at the centre of the trio, Cardellini says: “When I read it, I just was so moved by it. And I had not read anything like it. It doesn’t move linearly.
“Steve’s writing is so beautiful, but there’s a music to it. It was just so evident in reading it and loving his work and then loving David and Jason’s work I knew they were involved. And I thought, ‘well, you know, what a gift the role is’. I mean, she’s so complicated. I think you get to know the guys a little more easily than you get to know who Carol is – but there’s a lot to Carol that you only discover later,” teases the actress.
“It felt a little dangerous and brave for me compared to other things that I’ve done. And to be in the company of this cast was a real gift. And then being on set every day, I have to say it just was a joy. So, all of those things, I just am so grateful for the whole experience,” she says.
Naturally, a show called DTF is going to invite multiple sexual situations, and Bateman is grateful to Conrad for putting him at ease.
“I haven’t done a ton of intimate scenes in my career, so I was definitely a little apprehensive about it all, but looking forward to the challenge,” says the actor.
“Steve made me feel super comfortable early on when I had phone calls with him about what his expectations were regarding these scenes. Fortunately, my character is someone who’s not comfortable with it either. It is in the early stages of exploring this part and including this lane into his life potentially. But that’s what was really exciting about it. The superpower of this show is just that Steve constructed these three characters at the center of it that are at these varying levels of emotional and spiritual nudity, and it’s infectious to watch because it’s something that I think every human goes through.
“We all kind of learn how to wear these skins, these suits of capableness, if that’s a word, and these three just aren’t great at that.
“And the characters that Richard and Joy play are the audience, the people that know how to hide these vulnerabilities. And that’s why they’re so damn funny in it because they’re commenting on these three neophytes … And it’s just so vulnerable and human and it’s uncomfortable to watch these people experiment with becoming more dynamic in their life and it’s awkward and it’s ugly and it’s not sexy.
“It’s not a titillating show, but it’s equal parts tragic and humorous, and that’s what compels you to just keep watching minute after another minute after another episode, because these people are just so bravely diving off into the void,” says Bateman.
Ultimately, Harbour hopes DTF: St. Louis will be as bingeable as Stranger Things. “I wanna make great television – just truly enjoyable, pleasurable television. There’s something about sitting with your laptop, is kind of how I do it, in your bed with a group of characters for eight hours and just bingeing the hell out of it. That can be a truly pleasurable experience,” says Harbour.
DTF: St Louis is streaming now on HBO Max
