Thuso Mbedu Reveals the Meaning Behind Aleah's Revelation in 'Task' Episode 3 Erica GonzalesSeptember 22, 2025 at 4:00 AM 0 Thuso Mbedu on Task Episode 3 HBO Spoilers below. The character Aleah Clinton is the definition of "I didn't come here to make friends.
- - Thuso Mbedu Reveals the Meaning Behind Aleah's Revelation in 'Task' Episode 3
Erica GonzalesSeptember 22, 2025 at 4:00 AM
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Thuso Mbedu on Task Episode 3 HBO
Spoilers below.
The character Aleah Clinton is the definition of "I didn't come here to make friends." Played by Thuso Mbedu in HBO's new Sunday night drama Task, Aleah is a no-nonsense police officer who's only here to do her job then clock out when the shift is done. Even working intimately with a small, scrappy task force isn't enough to soften her tough, all-work-no-play exterior. But in this week's episode, she starts to open up.
After she and fellow task force members raid a suspect's house, they take in a few trespassers they found on the scene for questioning. One of them is Ray, whom Cliff and Robbie asked to move their stash of stolen drugs, and the other is his partner, Shelley. Before the interrogations begin, the group learns that Ray had past domestic violence offenses that were dropped when the victim, presumably Shelley, refused to press charges. Mark Ruffalo's Tom, the team leader, orders Aleah to get Shelley talking.
In the interrogation room, Aleah leads with empathy rather than intimidation. She reveals that she, too, is a survivor of domestic violence, and her former partner abused her so badly that she had to get a titanium plate and three screws implanted in her cheek. Her chilling, but powerful, speech "wasn't something that she pulled out of her pocket when she felt like she needed answers," Mbedu explains. It was her genuinely reaching out a hand to someone who is in the same position she was in four years ago. Resonating with Aleah's confession, Shelley speaks.
Mbedu, who you might recognize from The Woman King and Barry Jenkins's The Underground Railroad, was eager to join Task after being a fan of Mare of Easttown, which comes from the same showrunner Brad Ingelsby. Reflecting on her involvement in the show, she says, "The story is beautiful. It's shot beautifully. I'm very humbled to have been a part of it." She, like her castmates, went through intensive training for the show, from meeting police officers to learning proper gun handling, shooting at targets, and staging house raids. "But in crafting Aleah," she says, the most important preparation was "just understanding her psychologically."
Here, Mbedu walks us through Aleah's backstory, her preparation for the series, and her upcoming role in the much-anticipated film adaptation of Children of Blood and Bone.
Aleah is a fascinating character. How would you describe her, as someone who's lived in her world?
She's so cool. She's layered, but on the surface, she's someone that I, as Thuso, would've wanted to play. Even as a young kid growing up in South Africa, watching all these American [shows] with FBI agents, everybody looks cool. Aleah's different in the sense that she's not ready to make friends like everybody else. She's not cracking jokes. She's serious. She's there to get the job done. The decision I made for her is that she joined law enforcement as a result of something that she had suffered. She wanted to be something for someone else that was lacking in her life.
HBOYou mentioned watching police and detective shows growing up. Were there any type of media that you consumed prior to this role to get in the zone or to prepare?
Not necessarily watching things specifically for this role, but it was in the research. It was watching interviews with domestic violence survivors. I started with just your everyday women retelling their stories; the aim was to study where they are mentally, physically, psychologically as they retell their story because the last thing you want to do is to play into an idea of what it's supposed to look like in retelling something that's actually very traumatic.
And then I moved from your everyday survivor to people within the police force or law enforcement. It was actually very hard to find cases like that. There were two that stuck out to me. There was a documentary of a lady who's from New York. She's not in the police force anymore. I think she retired years ago, but she had been a domestic violence survivor. The police system had failed her time and time again because her partner, the perpetrator, was also in the system. So whenever she'd do call-outs, they'd defend it or dismiss her. And so that's why she became a police officer. And then she went on to be essentially almost like a bodyguard for the mayor.
With her, it had been years when she retells [her story]. And it's a story that is out there now. So how she tells it is completely different to another police chief in the U.K. who was telling it for the first time. For her, she seemed calm and collected, but again studying her voice, studying her facial expressions, you could tell that it was something that was very uncomfortable for her to share, especially with her peers. There was tension. Her voice was super tight. I noted the rhythm with which she would swallow her saliva, trying to calm herself down. So it was more that—trying to take note or inventory of real people who had survived this.
HBOThe scene at the end of episode 3, of her interrogating Shelley, is the first time Aleah opens up about her history with domestic violence. What was it like reading that in the script, and how did you approach it as a scene?
It was actually one of our audition scenes.
Oh, man. So you were prepped from the beginning.
Yeah, from the beginning. But whew! A lot went into it. A lot went into just crafting that moment [while shooting], because again, I don't want to play into what I think would pull on certain heart strings at any moment. It was actually [important] for me to try to lean away from the tears more than anything. And I was able to collaborate with Salli [Richardson-Whitfield, Task producer] because she directed that episode in a way that was meaningful.
I made the decision again, that for Aleah, this wasn't something that she pulled out of her pocket when she felt like she needed answers. It was the very first time that she was sharing this with anyone—and not just Shelley, but also Lizzie [a fellow task member played by Alison Oliver] who's in the background. But shooting it on the day, Salli, being an actress, obviously understands the process, and she was in conversation with both myself and the actress who played Shelley because her character is still in the world of domestic violence, whereas my character has moved out of it.
Is there anything you hope people take away from that episode or from Aleah?
A decision I made for her is that she's not one who would prefer to have partners. She would rather work alone. But in this particular situation, she needed others. She needed to collaborate with others, whether it be Lizzie or Tom.
I think it changes the way that she views life going forward, that you actually don't have to be alone. She explains to Shelley, "There is light" at the end of the tunnel, and it's not the end. Your circumstance, no matter how dire, it doesn't need to be the end. Reach out; get the help that you need.
For people who might find themselves in the middle of domestic violence, what helps the perpetrator is your silence. So get the help if you're able to reach out to someone and try. It's not easy to get out. Because again, I've had friends and family members who have found themselves in that situation, and they will defend the situation as much as they can, and mentally, I will never understand the processing of that. But once they're out, they're all the better for it.
HBOHow would you describe the task force's group dynamic?
Upon meeting Lizzie, I think Aleah was maybe... Lizzie feels like she's all over the place. Obviously she's going through something as she goes through the divorce, but it's like, "Don't bring that type of stuff to work." That's how Aleah is. With Grasso, it's eye roll, eye roll, eye roll. You're so corny. But again, "I don't need this," is her mentality. Come in, come out, do the job, solve the case.
One of the things that the scripts did was explain the type of people that we're meeting when we first meet them. And Aleah is described as being perceptive. So even when it comes to Tom, it's like, okay, even if it feels like he doesn't have all the answers, the reason why we're here is to get the answers. But observing that he is going through something, giving him the space to do that, but also acting as a great support where I might not know the details of what he's going through, but okay, how can I best help in this situation?
After working through all those scenes with Mark Ruffalo, what's something you learned from him?
Number one, he's a brilliant actor. He's on it at all times. He's a very generous actor. He's kind, he's funny. Something that I would love to adopt going forward is that ability to think on my toes. I've given this example before because it's my favorite: Tom is established as a birdwatcher, a bird lover. And Mark is the same actually. He can identify different birds. So we would be like mid-scene—we got all this chunky FBI jargon that we're throwing at each other—and in character, Mark would be speaking, he'd hear something, a bird or whatever. And then, in character, he would be able to stop, identify the bird and continue as if nothing happened, which was amazing for his character.
HBOAt the end of the episode, Tom suspects that there's a leak in the task and he shouldn't trust everybody. Do you think that's fair for him to think that?
Yes, I think so because with everything that the members plan and then having things fall through, it's like, "Why are we working backwards?" And the reality is, as he points out early on, he had no say in who was picked to join this task force. We're racing against time because a child has been taken, and the longer it takes for them to find the child, the higher the chances are of the child's life being taken. So suspect everyone. If Aleah was privy to that information, she would be like, "I don't trust any of you, including Tom."
While I have you, I want to ask about Children of Blood and Bone. Is there anything you can share and what was it like reuniting with Viola Davis?
That was a tough project. I'll say that. It was a lot of fun, but just physically challenging in a good way.
In a similar way to The Woman King or different?
Tougher than The Woman King. But in the first week of shooting, I was with Viola. The first two weeks were with her, which felt amazing. I remember even being in the space with her and Gina [Prince-Bythewood, the director] and just being like, "This feels almost like a full-circle moment." Because in The Woman King, Viola was number one [on the call sheet]. I was number two. And her character is almost like a mentor to the girls that come in. So coming into Children of Blood and Bone and sharing the first few moments with them, and now I'm number one on the call sheet, it's like she handed over the baton.
That's really cool. One of my colleagues spoke to Damson Idris recently and he said "there's a lot of abs" in that movie. Can you confirm?
Yes, I can confirm it. Gina worked us hard. But yeah, the boys had to work super hard. The girls will not be disappointed. [Laughs]
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
If you, or someone you know, is a victim of intimate partner violence, call the National Domestic Violence Hotline toll-free at 800-799-SAFE or connect online at thehotline.org.
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