LOS ANGELES — Emilia Jones wanted nothing more than to book the role of Maeve Prendergrast after meeting with Brad Ingelsby about "Task," his upcoming HBO series. But one question he asked during their initial meeting left her puzzled: "Are you good with kids?" The actor, who broke out in the 2022 best picture Oscar winner "CODA," hadn't yet read a script for the crime drama, but she ...

Emilia Jones attends HBO's "Task" premiere at Perelman Performing Arts Center on Thursday, Sept. 4, 2025, in New York City.

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LOS ANGELES — Emilia Jones wanted nothing more than to book the role of Maeve Prendergrast after meeting with Brad Ingelsby about "Task," his upcoming HBO series. But one question he asked during their initial meeting left her puzzled: "Are you good with kids?"

The actor, who broke out in the 2022 best picture Oscar winner "CODA," hadn't yet read a script for the crime drama, but she enthusiastically replied yes to Ingelsby's question.

Once she started reading the script, Jones quickly learned that the role she was about to land — for a 21-year-old woman who puts her life on hold to care for her young cousins — would require her to work closely with young actors.

"A lot of the time, because I started acting when I was younger, I was the kid," Jones said over Zoom from her native London. "It's really interesting for me to be on the other side of that."

"Task," which premieres Sunday, follows two men on opposite sides of the law. Mark Ruffalo plays FBI agent Tom Brandis, who forms a task force to apprehend a group of criminals as they carry out a string of violent robberies targeting drug houses. The leader behind the robberies is unsuspecting and sympathetic single dad Robbie Prendergrast (Tom Pelphrey), who relies on his niece Maeve (Jones) to look after his young children. The series is set in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, just like Ingelsby's previous HBO hit "Mare of Easttown."

Jones described Maeve as tough and unapologetic, but she thinks of herself quite differently: "I'm a little bit of a people pleaser, as most Brits are," she said. "We just apologize for our shadow and I'm very much like that."

Stepping into a character so unlike herself, Jones wanted to ensure she was deeply connected with her scene partners and felt grounded in Maeve's world, so she quickly befriended Kennedy Moyer, Oliver Eisenson and Ben Lewis Doherty, the three children who appear in the series. She went bowling and played basketball with Moyer and Eisenson, who play her character's elementary-aged cousins, on weekends during the shoot.

Building those friendships with the kids made her job as an actor much easier, Jones said: "I did love Kennedy and Oliver and I wanted to protect them," she said.

Jones also got her three young co-stars thoughtful wrap gifts — something that was always meaningful to her when she was a child and was often broken up about the idea of not seeing her new friends from set every day anymore. For Doherty, who showed an interest in photography, Jones went with a Polaroid camera and the suggestion he make a scrapbook from the shoot. For Eisenson, whose character had a penchant for repeating "chicken butt," she got him a hat inscribed with the phrase. And for Moyer, whom she still texts today, Jones got a necklace with Harper, the name of Moyer's character, on the front and "Sisters forever" on the back.

Slipping into the motherly role both in front of and behind the cameras appeared to be "effortless" for Jones, said writer and creator Ingelsby. The kids "were in love with her from the first hour they met," he said. "Maybe it was her experience of having been on sets and having people care for her. But I also just think Emilia is a really caring, kind person — that's a part of who she is."

Jones, who started performing professionally at 8, said she "fell into acting kind of by accident." Her parents are both creative people — her father is Aled Jones, a musician and radio presenter — but she says they knew nothing about the acting world when she got her start. Still, they supported her ambitions, schlepping her to and from auditions and performances, and their creative natures helped her to see that a career in the arts "wasn't off-limits," she said.

By the time Jones was 13, she was working on the film "Brimstone," where a late-night shoot complete with a rain machine and adrenaline coursing through her veins solidified in her mind that this was the right path for the young actor, who is now 23.

"I remember it so vividly — I was sitting in my chair, and I was like, 'I want to do this for the rest of my life. This is feeding me in some way I can't describe,'" she said.

Jones' parents weren't pushing her to audition for every role she could, and they wanted to keep her in school so she could be "a normal kid," which she said she resented at the time. "I just wanted to be acting all the time," she said. "But now I look back and I'm really grateful."

The actor has now appeared in several notable projects — the Netflix series "Locke & Key"; indie films "Fairyland," "Cat Person" and "Winner"; and has several new projects coming soon — and her parents are still supporting her every move, sometimes from directly behind the camera. Her mother, Claire Fossett, acted as her off-camera scene partner in Jones' audition for "Task."

While Fossett is no stranger to the self-tape, having filmed Jones' "CODA" audition, too, the actor said her mother "absolutely hates" recording with her — her mother's shyness means she tends to read lines as quietly as possible, Jones said.

For "Task," Jones asked her bashful but patient scene partner to redo one scene, an explosive fight Maeve has with Robbie, quite a few times, eager to get the perfect take. "I said, 'Could you just give me a little something?' She was like, 'Absolutely not,' " Jones said, laughing at the memory.

When she revisited that high-octane scene on set with a more willing scene partner in Pelphrey, Jones said going tête-à-tête with him was a riveting experience: "I forgot that there were cameras rolling."

Many of the emotional scenes Jones had opposite Pelphrey were filmed in just a few days. "We were like back-to-back screaming, but I kind of liked that because it was just all-consuming. I was so in Maeve's world and in her headspace," she said. "And I'm really grateful that I was the Maeve to his Robbie."

Ingelsby recalled watching a pivotal scene between Jones and Pelphrey and being struck by the "fierceness" of Jones' performance. "That's what a great actor can do; they can elevate material in a way that I can't," he said. "It's hard for me to be good at one thing. Emilia is just so good at so many things."

Getting into Maeve's mindset was easier for Jones when she got into the character's costuming. Unlike her own style, Maeve dresses in dark colors with heavy, metallic jewelry and sports a shaggy mullet. Jones said her hair is still recovering after the actor "razored" it for the role. She also opted to get additional ear piercings for the series.

And once she was done-up in head-to-toe costuming, Jones said the rest came pretty naturally.

"I found that I started to sit differently and walk differently and it just changed my whole body language," she said. "It was really fun just being someone so different to myself."

Jones also had to swap her British accent out for a thick, distinctive Delco accent, as the dialect spoken by those from Delaware County is affectionately called. Practicing was made easier by repeat viewing of Ingelsby's "Mare of Easttown."

She had already seen the series two or three times before working on "Task," she estimates, but when she was learning the specificities of the regional accent, she said hearing any other vocal inflection on TV was distracting, so that number bumped up to about 10 complete viewings of the series.

"I've got to keep in the Delco mindset," she said. "And it's not just an accent, it's an energy."

Jones is well acquainted with heavy prep work — for "CODA," she learned American Sign Language to play the only hearing member of the Rossi family and how to fish. She likened that breakout role with her "Task" character, saying they each have "the weight of the world on their shoulders."

While Jones said her characters' experiences of shouldering undue responsibility and feeling trapped are foreign to her, she says she likes to jump in feet first when she's met with a challenge.

And she's not slowing down anytime soon. This fall, Jones will appear in the highly anticipated adaption of Stephen King's "The Running Man" alongside Glen Powell. She also trained as a chef to star in the romance movie "Charlie Harper," opposite Nick Robinson, and will appear in A24's upcoming Anthony Bourdain biopic, "Tony," where she says she plays a '70s girl in Provincetown, Massachusetts," she said — many of the film's details are still under wraps.

"When I'm pushed and challenged is when I do my best work," she said. "I feel like I've really earned wrapping a project if I felt challenged and pushed out of my comfort zone."

And it's safe to say sporting tattoos, mastering the art of a perfectly placed Delco "youse" and being the one looking after the kids on set, instead of being the kid herself, fall well beyond that comfort zone.