“This Is Something I’d Want To Watch”: Murray Bartlett And Brandon Flynn On Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed

In Apple TV’s latest thriller, featuring The White Lotus and 13 Reasons Why stars, an identity crisis sees its lead spiral perilously out of control.

If you were to be the only witness to a crime as serious as a murder, what would you do? It’s one of those high-stress scenarios that would instantly trigger one’s fight-or-flight response and in the case of Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed’s Paula, she most certainly chooses to fight. 

Apple TV’s latest bloodpumping thriller sees the aforementioned Paula, a newly divorced mum played by Tatiana Maslany, not only fighting her way through a custody battle but also through her identity crisis. The crime she’s convinced she’s seen right in front of her eyes leads her down a dark rabbit hole that involves blackmail, murder and even youth-level football. 

It’s Brandon Flynn’s Trevor who would appear to fall foul of the apparent murder. You might recognise him from his role as Justin Foley in 13 Reasons Why or as Max in Looks That Kill but, here, he’s a rather charming cam boy who Paula becomes a lot more emotionally connected to than she intended via intimate online exchanges. 

In the second episode, we’re also introduced to Trevor’s uncompromising and eerily shape-shifting boyfriend Dennis (Murray Bartlett). You would’ve seen him on HBO’s The White Lotus and the Pedro Pascal-starring The Last Of Us, and in this guise, without spoiling too much, he’s as full of surprises as ever. 

Speaking to Man About Town, Bartlett and Flynn get into the difficulties of playing their respective roles, the excellence of Maslany and immersing themselves into the complex minds of Dennis and Trevor. 

Jotaro Joden: How would you sum Trevor and Dennis up as characters in one sentence? 

Murray Bartlett: Dennis is a chameleon who doesn’t stop until he gets the job done. 

Brandon Flynn: Trevor is a bisexual minx whose ambition may get the best of him.  

JJ: What aspects of your roles excited you and what parts felt daunting? 

BF: Trevor is [about] sort of being the consummate actor. Always having a script and really performing it really excited me in how it fits into the show and the story. I thought that would be really fun to embrace. I guess the challenge was how to just have fun with all of it. 

MB: I think this character Dennis that I play is so great. It’s written so well, so great on the page that he is, like I mentioned in my amazingly phrased sentence about myself, a chameleon. He just shapeshifts into whatever he needs to be in different situations and that’s just a cool thing for an actor to be able to play. So I was really excited to play with that and see what I could  bring to that. There were some wonderfully challenging things in the role. There’s one scene where I’m driving a car, focused on a very quite serious task but at the same time, I have to have a phone call about something completely different that’s extremely emotional. Again, it was a real challenge, but a great challenge and something that I was really excited to do. So yeah, it was just a great, complicated character with some challenges that I really wanted to take on. 

JJ: Murray, were there any things that you did, especially with your character being more of a chameleon, that got you into a certain aspect of that role?

MB: He presented to me on the page as a sociopath or what I thought a sociopath might be. So I did a bit of a deep dive on that. I found this amazing book written by a woman who is a sociopath, laying out what it is to be a sociopath and demystifying it and saying that not all sociopaths are necessarily bad. But, one of the things that it is is sort of a lack of empathy,  a really narrow spectrum of emotions, which she said she had. She’s experienced happiness and anger and then a lot of the time, apathy. But that apathy, because there wasn’t this range of emotions that allowed her these valves to express what was going on in her life, would build this pressure and then she’d have to act out in quite intense ways at times. So I found all that stuff such a great way into this character from the inside, which I always think is often a really good way to play a character so that you’re not generalising on, ‘This is a bad character or this a good character.’ That was super helpful for me and super fascinating as well.

JJ: Brandon, what about you with Trevor? Are there any things you did to get into this character as you were taking on this role? 

BF: Yeah, an important aspect when I jumped in was the fact that Trevor is a sex worker, and so I just recruited some of my friends who do sex work and asked them about how these fantasies take shape with clients and how they’re called upon to show up for clients who are looking for something specific. I think with Trevor, it really inspired making a lot of positive choices, always championing his client and, almost on camera, sacrificing himself as a person just to really allow the other person to shine, feel good and get off. 

JJ: What about the show made you want to take the project on?

MB: Many things, it’s a really great script. The initial reaction for me when reading the first script was like, ‘Oh, this is cool and different. Not what I was expecting in the way that this woman is sort of dealing with her situation, feeling a bit overwhelmed by all the things that are in her life.’ It feels very real and human. And then as it goes on, it just turns into this incredible, wild ride that twists and turns and is an incredibly compelling story. I was like, ‘This is something I’d want to watch.’ In terms of my character, similarly, he is a great rich character that has all these different aspects to him that I get to lean into. It’s really well written and something different from what I’ve had the chance to play before. Also, it’s an awesome group of people, great actors, and great people at the helm who created the show. 

BF: Same, really. An offer also makes it great, too. Murray actually said it and it hit me. That is such an important part of my choices when I read a script and I’m like, ‘I would like to watch this.’ That feels really exciting to me.  

JJ: Out of everyone in the cast, before you started the show, who were you most excited to work with?

BF: You better say me…

MB: Brandon.  

BF: Murray.  

JJ: How about the non-PR answer?  

MB: I mean, knowing that Tatiana Maslany was the pillar of the show [made it] a no-brainer. I just think she’s amazing. I could immediately see her in this role. It’s a great role for her. She makes it a great role, she’s awesome. So I knew she’d do amazing things with it, and I wanted to be in a show that’s anchored by someone amazing like that and get the chance to work with them. 

BF: Yeah, I mean… 

MB: Apart from me.

BF: Yes, apart from Murray, I was a huge fan of Tatiana and was really anxious and excited to get the opportunity to work with her. Shout out Tatiana.

Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed is out now on Apple TV