Julianne Nicholson to Reprise ‘Mare of Easttown’ Role in ‘Task’ Season 2
Emmy winner Julianne Nicholson is joining the cast of HBO‘s Task — as a character audiences may already know.
Nicholson will reprise her role as Lori Ross from Mare of Easttown in season two of Task. Both shows were created by Brad Ingelsby, and both are set in Delaware County, Pennsylvania. Those connections led some people to speculate whether the two shows shared a fictional world, which Nicholson’s casting now confirms.
Ingelsby, for his part, has been open to the idea of the two shows crossing paths: “They exist in the same world, so it wouldn’t surprise me one bit if Mare [Kate Winslet] walked into a Wawa that Tom [Task star Mark Ruffalo] was in,” he told The Hollywood Reporter before Task’s premiere in September 2025. “I don’t have a story in mind that’s a crossover, but I love the idea of their worlds intersecting.”
How Lori figures into Task is being kept quiet for the time being. Mare of Easttown ended with (five-year-old spoiler alert) Mare, the police detective played by Winslet, arresting her best friend Lori’s son for the killing of a teenage girl and the two women looking for a way to repair their relationship.
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Season two of Task will follow Ruffalo’s FBI agent, Tom Brandis, as he takes the helm of a new task force. Mahershala Ali, Harry Melling, Adam Nagaitis, Aminah Nieves and Edgar Ramirez also star.
Nicholson won the first of her two Emmy Awards for her Mare of Easttown role (the second was for Hacks last year). She currently stars in Hulu’s Paradise; other credits include HBO’s The Outsider and Boardwalk Empire and Law & Order: Criminal Intent.
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Variety first reported the news.
