‘DTF St. Louis’ Stars and Creator Reveal the Version of the HBO Show That Almost Was

Note: This story contains spoilers from “DTF St. Louis” Episode 1.

David Harbour does not just play the murder victim at the center of “DTF St. Louis.” He is also the reason the HBO limited series exists.

“I’d been talking to David about putting our heads together on something, and I’ve been making suspense [shows] the last few years. I like that genre. I feel like you can understand it, and if you care to, you can really try to contribute to it. It’s got a built-in kind of staying power,” creator Steven Conrad, who wrote and directed all of the series’ seven episodes, told TheWrap. 

The “Patriot” and “Perpetual Grace, LTD” creator is used to making thrillers “in different settings than you might expect,” and that is certainly true of “DTF St. Louis,” which tells its story of betrayal, deceit, love, hookup apps and death amid the mundane sprawl of an everyday Missouri suburb. But it was the thought of putting Harbour at the center of such a thriller that started Conrad on the path toward “DTF St. Louis.”

“David’s just an actor that I thought, whatever it is that amounts to my material, it would cooperate with him very well,” Conrad explained. “I find his persona, no matter what he’s in, has this weird loveliness to it. It’s like you can feel years behind his eyes. Maybe it’s not in the real guy, but in the characters. So I thought, ‘What is suspense with David?'” Going further, Conrad wanted to “mine the desperation” of middle age. He wanted Harbour to play someone “other side of where he is, who isn’t exactly in a shape he can control anymore, despite his best efforts and wishes.”

That character became Floyd, an out-of-shape ASL translator whose dead body is found halfway through the first episode of “DTF St. Louis,” which also drops the bombshell that Floyd’s best friend, weatherman Clark Forrest (Jason Bateman), and his wife Carol (Linda Cardellini) had an affair before he died. Even worse, as the opening chapter of “DTF St. Louis” reveals in its final moments, Floyd knew about Carol and Clark’s relationship. Their love triangle is at the center of the police investigation led by Detective Donoghue Home (Richard Jenkins) and Special Crimes Officer Jodie Plumb (Joy Sunday), who quickly find cause in the “DTF” premiere to arrest Clark for his friend’s murder.

Bateman told TheWrap he was drawn to “DTF St. Louis” by its darkly comic, somber yet screwball tone. “It’s horrifically tragic at times and absurdly funny at other times,” the actor noted. He is not the only one who speaks in awe of Conrad’s tonal control. “It’s hard to get me to laugh any more. I’m so jaded when I watch things that are trying to be funny,” Harbour explained. “But there’s something about the absurdist underpinnings and yet the ultimate deep sincerity of what Steve’s doing that makes me feel like a kid in a candy store.”

“It just feels infectiously joyous, and that’s been there since the very beginning,” he said. “That’s really what I latched on to about his brand of television. It’s just extremely pleasurable TV to watch.”

Harbour, who executive produces as well as stars in “DTF St. Louis,” added that his and Conrad’s original pitch for the series was not the same as what ended up on screen. “When we pitched it to HBO and we were putting it together, it was very different back then. It had the same components, but it was crazy,” the “Stranger Things” star revealed, explaining that the show was originally supposed to revolve around Bateman’s Clark being put on trial.

“Clark went to trial and one of the lawyers was called Fred Rogers and [that character] used to get up and tell the jury about being a good neighbor,” Harbour recalled with a laugh. In both the show’s conceptual and finished versions, the friendship between Bateman and Harbour’s characters was always at the center of “DTF St. Louis.”

“I thought, ‘If I put [Floyd] with a new friend, what trouble could those two get up to if they had a quiet summer and a little too much time on their hands?'” Conrad said. “It just felt like playing with matches.”

In the case of “DTF St. Louis,” said box of matches might as well be its eponymous hookup app for married partners looking for commitment-free sex, which Bateman’s Clark convinces Harbour’s Floyd to join in the show’s premiere. “It was heavier in the weather a few years ago than it is now, those kinds of consequence-less hookup sites,” Conrad said, alluding to his show’s 2018 setting.

“They were really targeted toward married people, and they would say, ‘You’re going to meet a married person who doesn’t want to have a commitment to you, and this is just all going to be good, clean fun,'” the creator observed. “Most of us know better, but I liked the idea of meeting two people who probably would know better — if it were a different year. But this year has just caused some emptiness in their middle age.”

That emptiness permeates “DTF St. Louis,” a show which, despite abandoning its initial trial idea, is still very much concerned with what it means to be a good neighbor, friend, lover and spouse. That is usually a tricky enough conundrum without the empty promises of new-age hookup apps coming along to complicate matters further. Sex, after all, requires the same level of vulnerability that friendship and marriage do. You can’t get any of those things without giving up or revealing some part of yourself along the way — without giving some level of power to another person.

Reflecting on that, Conrad dryly noted, “‘DTF’ was a thing people would say back in the 2010s… It’s also probably not an earnest promise. That’s all you’re ‘D’ for?” 

New episodes of “DTF St. Louis” premiere Sunday nights on HBO and HBO Max.

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