{"id":204246,"date":"2025-10-06T02:11:17","date_gmt":"2025-10-06T02:11:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/204246\/"},"modified":"2025-10-06T02:11:17","modified_gmt":"2025-10-06T02:11:17","slug":"raul-castillo-breaks-down-his-task-twist-in-episode-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/204246\/","title":{"rendered":"Ra\u00fal Castillo Breaks Down His ‘Task’ Twist in Episode 4"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\t[This story contains major spoilers from episode four of Task<\/a>].<\/p>\n

\n\tSoon after Ra\u00fal Castillo<\/a> read the first script of Task<\/a>, he got on a Zoom call with show creator Brad Ingelsby<\/a> to walk through the narrative beats of the show<\/a>. It was a standard meeting for an actor deciding whether or not to sign on for a new project \u2014 save for the reveal that Castillo\u2019s character, Cliff, would be tortured to death by a biker gang in the fourth episode. \u201cI knew that the show was going to take us to some pretty intense places, but it was then that I had to figure out if that was something I could commit to,\u201d says the actor. \u201cBut it felt inevitable. Like, oh shit, I have to do this thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tCastillo stars in Task (Ingelsby\u2019s follow-up to Mare of Easttown<\/a>), which follows two longtime friends who launch a drug-house-robbing scheme in order to get back at a local biker gang responsible for the death of a loved one, and the FBI crew assigned to break the string of robberies. In the fourth episode, which aired Sunday evening, Castillo\u2019s Cliff and Tom Pelphrey\u2019s Robbie are outsmarted by the biker gang while attempting to sell off their stolen haul. Cliff, in a long and harrowing scene, pays the deadly price. Here, Castillo chats with The Hollywood Reporter about creating the character and how they made Cliff\u2019s final moments so realistic.<\/p>\n

\n\tHow did you first hear about this show?<\/p>\n

\n\tJeremiah Zagar, one of our producing directors, and I have collaborated a few times. We did We the Animals years back, and I made a small cameo in his feature, and we\u2019ve been friends for a bunch of years. When he told me he was signing onto the new Brad Ingelsby show<\/a>, I was sold from the get. I was a big fan of Mare of Easttown. Jeremiah talked to me about a couple of different characters, but he sent me the script \u2014 this was quite early, before the strike and before Mark was attached, or at least before he was attached in any way that Jeremiah could tell me about. I read it and Cliff just felt right for me. There was something about his loyalty to Robbie and his tenacity that felt familiar. The first scene that grabbed my attention was when Robbie and Cliff are taking a break from work and are discussing dating life, and I was enamored with Cliff\u2019s acerbic quality. Even though he\u2019s distrusting of a lot of people, he gravitates to Robbie. It felt really truthful.<\/p>\n

\n\tLet\u2019s talk about that loyalty. Obviously, Cliff ends up being the victim in Robbie\u2019s scheme \u2014 is he a victim of Robbie\u2019s grand ideas? How much autonomy does he have here?<\/p>\n

\n\tI definitely never saw him as a victim. I see him as very free-willed, and I think there\u2019s some backstory that we as an audience don\u2019t learn in words or plot points, but there\u2019s a sense that these guys have been there for each other in the past and that they\u2019ll continue to be moving forward. There\u2019s a shared history by the time we meet them. Brad is a very economical writer; he gives you these little nuggets of information, but there\u2019s a lot to mine from that information. So I always felt that Cliff was not strung along or forced into any situation.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\n\tHow did you find this very specific northeastern PA accent?<\/p>\n

\n\tI was a little afraid of accents, to be truthful. I didn\u2019t study to be an actor; I studied to be a playwright, so I\u2019d never worked with a dialect coach before. But Suzanne Selby was amazing, and I found that rather than it being a hurdle, it was actually a great way to find my way into Cliff. It took me out of my own rhythm and cadence. She actually took me to a couple of DelCo bars before we started filming. It was before I\u2019d made the physical transformation into Cliff, so I still looked like myself, and was dressed like myself, so I stood out like a sore thumb. I was getting glances. I wasn\u2019t treated rudely, but it was enlightening to be in that environment.<\/p>\n

\n\tCan you talk about that transformation into Cliff?<\/p>\n

\n\tWell, Tom came to Pennsylvania with that post-strike look. (Laughs) It was perfect for Robbie \u2014 that long ass beard, and the long hair. And then Jeremiah and I talked and agreed that Cliff should look and feel different from that. He should have his own distinct silhouette, and that\u2019s where the facial hair came in.<\/p>\n

\n\tI had a moment when it was time to create the prosthetics for Clint in episode four, where I was like, \u201cWhat have I gotten myself into?\u201d I flew down from Philly to Atlanta, where Bill Johnson, the makeup effects artist, has his studio, so that they could do a cast of my face. You have two little holes to breathe out of, you can\u2019t speak and you can barely hear. It felt like being underwater. And I\u2019m extremely claustrophobic. It was vulnerable, but they were as comforting as you could be in those circumstances and I think it paid off. The effects look incredible \u2014 I\u2019m nervous for my mom to see the episode because it\u2019s so realistic and quite intense.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen you watched the final version of the episode, what did you think about most?<\/p>\n

\n\tI remembered the four hours that it took for them to apply all those pieces. Usually, you sit in chairs with the rest of the cast, but before that scene, they thankfully had a little tent for me to be by myself. I needed to be in a meditative state. Once you have makeup like that, you almost don\u2019t have to do any acting, because people are reacting so strongly to what they\u2019re seeing on your face. The set got extremely quiet, and people were walking on eggshells around me. It was really intense, and it was also my first time in front of the camera with Sam Keeley, who played Jason, and the rest of the bikers in that scene.<\/p>\n

\n\tHow many times did you have to film that torture scene?<\/p>\n

\n\tIt took a couple of times to get it right. There were all these technical components in place, specifically for when Cliff spits in Jason\u2019s face and when the plastic wrap goes around Cliff\u2019s head. They weren\u2019t working, and it was frustrating because Sam and I would work up to that big moment and then the spit machine wouldn\u2019t work the way it was supposed to. And there was a little plastic tube to help me breathe when the plastic wrap went around my head, and the camera would catch it and it was too obvious. There was one point where Sam took Sally [Richardson], our director, over to the corner to talk. I could only see out of one eye because of the prosthetics, and I was watching them whisper to each other and I was like, \u201cI hope he just wants me to do the spit gag myself.\u201d And that is what they wanted. So they put some fake blood in my mouth and we worked up to that moment, and I spit in Sam\u2019s face and his real reaction to me hawking a loogie is what you see in the show.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe same thing with the plastic wrap. I asked them, guys, I\u2019m an excellent swimmer and I can hold my breath for a long time, can we just wrap my face and if I feel at any point like my safety is jeopardized I can just rip it open. My hands were free. Thankfully, they trusted me, and I trusted them too, and that\u2019s the take we used.<\/p>\n

\n\tSo, how do you come down from a day like this?<\/p>\n

\n\tTaking off the prosthetics took a couple of hours, so they put on my music and brought me tea and I just calmed down that way. It wasn\u2019t my last day of work, but it was one of my last days and it was certainly one of the darkest things I\u2019ve had to do as an actor. It was emotional saying goodbye to this character. <\/p>\n

\n\tDo you have the itch to do any of this again? <\/p>\n

\n\tI\u2019m dying to work with Tom Pelphrey again. He was so incredible, and it felt criminal that we could only do one season of these characters. I fell in love with Cliff and Robbie\u2019s dynamic and I wish we could explore more about who these guys are. I\u2019d love to work in Philly again, too. I love that part of the world, and the way we were embraced by Pennsylvania is not lost on me.<\/p>\n

\n\tDid everyone in town know you guys were filming?<\/p>\n

\n\tThey didn\u2019t know at first, since these aren\u2019t the same characters as with Mare of Easttown. Tom and I are not people who are getting recognized left and right, but blending in made our storyline even better. But, people did start to catch on to the fact that we were making a new show from the writer of Mare, and we got a lot of love for sure. And we had a lot of Rita\u2019s Water Ice. It\u2019s like paying homage, right?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"[This story contains major spoilers from episode four of Task]. Soon after Ra\u00fal Castillo read the first script…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":204247,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[87457,88,1035,117486,54848,92],"class_list":{"0":"post-204246","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-brad-ingelsby","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-hbo","11":"tag-rau00fal-castillo","12":"tag-task","13":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204246","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=204246"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204246\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/204247"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=204246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=204246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=204246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}