‘DTF: St. Louis’: Jason Bateman, Linda Cardellini, David Harbour, & Steve Conrad On Vulnerability, Sexual Secrets, & Jason Bateman’s MCU Character [Bingeworthy Podcast]

There’s a specific flavor to a Steve Conrad show. A little awkward. A little hilarious. A little sad. A little dangerous. Sex, lies, murder, and old smut. That tone is back in full force with “DTF: St. Louis,” the HBO Max series that follows adults who think they’re signing up for an app that’s simple and transactional, only to discover that intimacy is never that clean. The ensemble includes Jason Bateman, Linda Cardellini, David Harbour, and Richard Jenkins, and like Conrad’s previous work on “Patriot,” it blends weaponized awkwardness with genuine emotional exposure.

On this episode of Bingeworthy, Mike DeAngelo spoke with Conrad and the cast about where the idea began, how you calibrate a tone that’s funny and unsettling at the same time, and what it’s like to shoot your first scene together at eight in the morning while sitting on Jason Bateman’s face.

For Conrad, the origin point wasn’t a character or a crime; it was the app itself.

“It was the brand name of that make-believe app,” he said. “It opened up everything for me, because only a sucker would believe that that’s all anybody is down for. I mean, life has its surprises, but the idea that you can have an intimate relationship with somebody, shake hands and say, now go on with the rest of my life — unlikely that that is always going to go that way.”

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That false promise of emotional simplicity led him to a larger question.

“What could be an unintended consequence?” he asked. “I knew I wanted to make suspense, and I knew I wanted to put it in the landscape of sunlight and quiet streets. It just seemed like a place I would like to try with a camera to make tense.”

Instead of building a traditional whodunit, Conrad reveals a death early and lets the series unfold through shifting perspectives. That decision, he said, was deeply connected to Richard Jenkins and the character’s generational worldview.

“I thought, how do I make Richard, the inherent characteristics of Richard, part of this plot and this tension?” Conrad explained. “He’s in a generation where he is going to have trouble really assessing contemporary sexuality. It’s not like that in St. Louis, Missouri.”

That philosophy of exposure runs through the show’s most intimate scenes, especially when Bateman’s character is invited to confess his deepest fantasies.

“What would that feel like to hear from another human being?” Conrad said. “It would feel like a gift. But, you’re giving yourself away when you say, ‘Now I’m going to place the treasure of my secrets with this person who essentially is still a stranger to me.’ What this person is capable of doing with my precious secrets, I don’t know yet, but the prospect is so enticing. I’m going to say yes.”

Reading that material was thrilling and unnerving for the actors.

Jason Bateman admitted that the vulnerability on the page was immediate.

“These people say and do these very vulnerable things that are hilarious, but then they’re so unguarded, and it’s off-putting as a reader,” he said. “And I was thinking, boy, as a viewer, it’s going to be even more unsettling because you can see it, you can feel i,t and you almost kind of don’t want to watch it because it’s so honest.”

He called that darkly humorous discomfort “kind of the superpower of the show.”

Harbour said he initially worried he’d have to overthink the tone, but that fear dissolved once he saw what Bateman and Cardellini were doing.

“I found myself; they made it so easy for me,” Harbour said. “Once you see people doing such specific work like that, you’re just swimming in great territory, and it just becomes so easy because you can sort of hit the ball wherever you want it at that point.”

Cardellini described Conrad’s leadership as collaborative rather than prescriptive.

“There’s like a flow about him and an energy where you feel like in your best moments, you’re in communication and community with everybody,” she said. “He’s got these beautiful words and these feelings, and you can go to him with any kind of question, but he also allows you to find things too.”

Bateman emphasized that restraint was key to making the tone land.

“The proper juxtaposition to that is for us to do next to nothing and just stay,” he explained. “You don’t want a hat on a hat. You don’t want to have some bitchin’ performance on top of this bitchin’ dialogue and incredible situation. Just to play it real and not wink was really our job most days.”

That philosophy was tested immediately.

Cardellini revealed that her first real scene with Bateman will likely be an instantly infamous face-sitting moment.

“That was the first day we really met,” she said. “We had maybe passed in the hall, but that was really our first day of working.”

Bateman confirmed it.

“First scene. First shot,” he laughed. “Eight o’clock in the morning.”

Despite the awkwardness, he said the set was handled with care.

“It was easy as that possibly could have been,” Bateman said. “The environment on the set was very relaxed and safe and calm… we had the intimacy coordinator there and all that. It was well done.”

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That balance of explicit but honest, funny but never winking is what makes “DTF: St. Louis” feel so specific. Conrad summed up the show’s ethos best when describing what he wants the audience to believe.

“You shouldn’t only laugh at it. You should believe that this is what someone wants in a motel at 2:30pm on a Wednesday.”

Awkward. Honest. A little dangerous. Entirely human.

You can listen to the full conversations with Steve Conrad, Jason Bateman, Linda Cardellini, and David Harbour via the podcast embed below or watch the conversation with Bateman, Cardellini, and Harbour on The Playlist’s YouTube page (embed below):

Bingeworthy is part of The Playlist Podcast Network, which includes Deep Focus, The Discourse, and more. We can be heard on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Soundcloud, and most places where podcasts are found. You can stream the podcast via the embed within the article. Be sure to subscribe and drop us a comment or a rating, as we greatly appreciate it. Thank you for listening.

Mike DeAngelo

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