HBO’s new dark comedy, “DTF St. Louis,” chronicles a deadly suburban love triangle between middle-aged adults who hope to spice up their sex lives via a hook-up app (thus the title of the series), or with the spouse’s best friend.
It was inspired by a real scandal covered in the 2017 New Yorker article “My Dentist’s Murder Trial: Adultery, False Identities, and a Lethal Sedation …,” but its connection to common true crime plots and schemes ends there.
The seven-part limited series, which aired its second episode Sunday, subverts expectations at every turn, from its peculiar characters to the layered storytelling of writer-showrunner-director Steven Conrad to the nuanced performances of an enviable cast.
David Harbour (“Stranger Things”) portrays earnest ASL interpreter Floyd, a once hunky but now portly fellow who suffers from Peyronie’s disease, a condition that results in a bent penis, following a mysterious accident. Putting his heart and soul into his work, Floyd infuses hip-hop dance moves into his signing sessions to better serve the deaf and hard-of-hearing audiences (he learned the moves at his son’s dance class). Nothing, anywhere, is better than Harbour’s interpretive dance, side stage, at a pop concert.
Jason Bateman (“Ozark”) portrays WTGK weatherman Clark Forrest, who strikes up an unlikely friendship with Floyd. The bespectacled local celebrity seemingly has it together — riding his recumbent bike to and from work each day, drinking healthy green juices, playing board games with his family on the weekends. But look again.
Linda Cardellini (“Dead to Me”) plays Carol, Floyd’s pragmatic spouse. She has big dreams, like being able to pay the mortgage and send her troubled son Richard (Arlan Ruf) to a private school. But it’s not going to happen on her accounting clerk salary at Purina, let alone Floyd’s meager earnings. When Carol and Clark meet at a cornhole party, she discovers that Clark may just be her ticket out.
Harbour, who executive produces, started development on the series in 2022 with Pedro Pascal (also attached to star and executive produce), but two years later it was announced that Pascal was no longer involved in the project and the creative direction had evolved beyond the New Yorker article that inspired the series. “DTF St. Louis” also features Peter Sarsgaard as an unlikely hookup, Richard Jenkins as a seasoned detective and Joy Sunday as the young crimes officer he’d like to ignore — but can’t.
Harbour, Bateman and Cardellini spoke about how the series turns commonplace true crime themes of sex, love and murder into a smart, funny and empathetic whodunit. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Jason Bateman, Linda Cardellini and David Harbour in a scene from HBO’s “DTF St. Louis.”
(Tina Rowden / HBO)
“DTF” stands for something I can’t print here. How much fun did you have sending important work emails back and forth with that acronym in the subject line?
Cardellini: So much fun.
Harbour: It’s a provocative title … but Floyd [is so earnest] that he has a line later on in the series where he says, “DTF. That ‘F’ doesn’t have to mean f—. It can mean ‘Feel good together.’” [Laughs]
Bateman: You look at the title and think it’s going to be something salacious, something titillating. People want to hook up, they’re being bad, they’re trying to get away with stuff. Then it turns out to be the opposite of that: It’s not sexy, it’s actually uncomfortable watching the hookup scenes because they’re so awkward. But they’re charming and maybe even funny. Everything’s just so raw and human in this thing.
Particularly the character of Floyd. He could be described as a lovable loser, but he’s so much more than that. What was it like finding the nuance in a character that, in many other series, would likely be a goofy sidekick or punchline?
Harbour: I don’t know that I’ve had a better character to play in my career. I’ve played extraordinary characters, but there’s something about this guy that’s just so vulnerable. He’s just such an open heart, funny and tragic at the same time. There are character-defining moments throughout that make him an utterly unique soul. I adored him from the moment I read that first scene, which you see in the pilot, with me and my [step]son [at a therapy session].
“He’s just such an open heart, funny and tragic at the same time,” says David Harbour about Floyd, who is at the center of “DTF St. Louis.”
(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
The affair between Clark and Carol called for some fairly ridiculous, kinky and specific acts in a hotel room. He wants to role–play as a sex robot, for example. Then a pool boy. Was it helpful to have an intimacy coordinator?
Cardellini: I found it really helpful. Jason, I have said that big sex scenes have not really been a big part of our careers. So now I’m 50 doing the most sexual part maybe that I’ve ever done. But once we did that first scene, it freed me up. Like, OK, here I am. This is me. This is my body. It was a new kind of freedom that, being in this business many decades, was fun to find. And in the show, they’re trying to find this [sexual] freedom at a certain age. Things that you didn’t explore before, and you’re like, what if I do that now?
Bateman: Oftentimes in a sex scene, they sort of just turn on the camera, and are like, OK guys make out and be passionate. It’s super-embarrassing. But this was different. Steven was very descriptive about the shot or angle he needed. The acts that they’re trying do are very specific. [They’re] even described by my character, “I’m going to want you to do this.” It was all so clinical, so there was never the apprehension of freestyling, that camera is just going to observe, and the director will go, “That was really hot when you did such and such. Let’s do another like it.” That gets weird.
Cardellini: Every time we did it, there was something funny happening which immediately loosens you up, just as a human being. The robot, screaming “powerhouse!,” or whatever it is.
Can we talk about Floyd’s beyond-fluid dance moves? He buys a series of hip–hop dance lessons for his son. But his son won’t go, so he does. The moves are inspired, even with the prosthetic belly you’re wearing.
Harbour: I’ve been defined as a pretty physical actor by directors throughout my career, but I’ve always thought of myself as an intellectual. I went to a fancy college. I used to read a lot of books before the internet came along. In this [series], I really focused on the physicality. [Floyd] wanted to bring something special to this ASL performance he does, and there’s something about what he does with his hands that functions as intimacy for him in his work. And then on top of that, to have this appetite where he clearly is just eating all the time, burying his feelings in that, he’s very connected and then disconnected to his body. It was fun to just let loose, with a fat prosthetic belly, and have a good time and dance.
As Floyd, David Harbour gets to show off his dance moves in the series: “It was fun to just let loose, with a fat prosthetic belly, and have a good time and dance.” (Tina Rowden / HBO)
There’s many intriguing, slow reveals in “DTF St. Louis,” which makes it an incredibly engrossing whodunit.
Bateman: David’s character dies early on, so you know it’s going to be a murder mystery. There’s going to be crime and danger, but there’s not because it’s not really that tragic in the lives of these characters. Like no one ever really cries and it’s not upsetting. [The show] subverts the genre each time it approaches it. You think it’s going to be sexy, or comedic, or dangerous, it goes off into a different direction. It’s exciting as a performer, then as a viewer, to be constantly off-balance.
Cardellini: There’s a lot of mysteries, like the story about what happened to Floyd with the Peyronie’s [disease]. There’s smaller mysteries, bigger mysteries, and they’re all put together so well that it becomes like a tapestry. And at the end, that is really rewarding.
Bateman: It’s also really compelling to watch characters jump into something that they’re ill-equipped for yet they think they can handle it. Oftentimes what we see in these true-crime documentaries, people bite off a bigger chunk than they can really handle, and they get caught. There’s a vicarious sort of pleasure in watching somebody do something that you as a viewer think, “I’m way too smart for.”
“There’s smaller mysteries, bigger mysteries, and they’re all put together so well that it becomes like a tapestry,” says Linda Cardellini. “And at the end, that is really rewarding.”
(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
These characters are meant to be very disconnected with one another. Is it harder to create chemistry as actors when the characters’ own emotions or bonds are so buried?
Harbour: For me it’s so much easier to create chemistry when you have multiple layers like that. I used to do soap operas. I was on “As the World Turns” when I was a kid. It wasn’t a big part, but like a recurring so I was in it a lot. And occasionally you’d have a scene where it would end on you, having to stare off [flashes an intense, thoughtful expression]. But you’re really doing that thing where you think about whether you left the oven on or not. When a character is thin and just has a single intention, it’s hard to look into another person’s eyes and maintain that, whereas when I have multiple things going on, I can always search for, and play, different things in that moment. When you’re resting on really good material, you can just really live in it, rest in it, enjoy it.
You’ve all been in comedies, and some darker dramas. How did that prepare you for this series?
Bateman: What comedy equips you with is a comfort in playing flawed people. There’s nothing really funny about somebody who’s got it all together, and so that’s handy in this, because these people are not together.
A great example is when Clark initially flirts with Carol. He’s so out of his depth that he comes up with this ridiculous lie that he’s not just a weatherman, but the owner of an underwater demolition company, and his nickname is the Bang Master.
Bateman: I have played a lot of arrogant pricks that happen to be funny because they’re really not that underneath, but they know how to play that. But I thought it’d be a really hilarious thing to watch some guy just wipe out. Like, he’s freestyling right and came up with underwater demolition? God. This guy has no idea how to lie. As actors, we’re professional liars. We know how to pretend that we know what we’re doing, and this guy has zero skills in that. Clark would be the worst actor in the world. He just doesn’t know how to be full of s—, so I just loved that.
David, does any part of you relate with Floyd?
Harbour: The search for meaning at a certain point in life, especially in his friendship with Clark, sort of unlocked a certain [part of] me that had been dormant. While shooting it was fun to make these discoveries where you’re like, oh, this exists in me. This desire for male friendship because it gets harder as we get older. And like Floyd, I’d like to advance my hip-hop career.
