Exclusive Interview: Brandon Flynn and Murray Bartlett on What Drives Trevor and Dennis in ‘Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed’

With Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed, Brandon Flynn and Murray Bartlett step into characters who understand performance as currency. Trevor and Dennis move through the series constantly calibrating themselves to the people around them, reading a room, shifting tone, becoming whatever version of themselves is most useful in a given moment. It’s that constant push and pull between interiority and presentation that makes both performances so fascinating to watch, especially as the series peels back the psychology behind why these men operate the way they do.

Created by David J. Rosen, Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed follows newly divorced mom Paula as she falls down a dangerous rabbit hole of blackmail, murder, and youth soccer after becoming convinced she witnessed a crime. Brandon Flynn stars as Trevor, a cam boy Paula believes she’s formed a genuine connection with, while Murray Bartlett plays Dennis, Trevor’s boyfriend, whose presence introduces another layer of unease and unpredictability into Paula’s increasingly fractured world.

Pop Culturalist was lucky enough to speak with Brandon Flynn and Murray Bartlett about the psychological complexity behind Trevor and Dennis, the performative nature of identity within the series, approaching their characters without judgment, and what made collaborating with Tatiana Maslany such a creatively rewarding experience.

PC: Brandon, you bring such a sense of duality to Trevor—he’s constantly having to be different things for his clients, while underneath it all, it feels like he’s fighting for survival. What was it about this character that spoke to you? And with so much of his connection existing through a screen, how did you approach building that sense of intimacy—especially in his dynamic with Paula—and what was it like collaborating with Tatiana within that?
Brandon: A little more esoteric within the dramaturgy of the show was how deeply I related, as an actor, to what Trevor is going through throughout the series. I have my own interiority, but then you step into a role, live inside that life for a period of time, and there are people who still call you by your character’s name. So there was something very meta about that connection for me, and whether that was just living in my own back pocket or something audiences would actually perceive on a larger level, who knows?

I also liked that Trevor understands performance as a means of getting what he wants. He knows how to become the thing people need him to be in a given moment, and I found that really compelling.

And playing opposite Tatiana Maslany was a delight. She’s so, so talented, even through a webcam. [laughs] She makes choices where you immediately think, “No one else would’ve done it that way.” Everything feels incredibly specific to her and the way she sees the world, and it’s always good.

PC: That’s such a great answer. I didn’t even realize the parallel. Murray, there’s this real sense of danger to this character, and you have a standout moment in Episode 4 that’s both frightening and revealing—it really raises the stakes and shows just how calculated he is. Without giving too much away, how did you approach that scene where you’re essentially your only scene partner? And how do you go about approaching a character like this without judgment?
Murray: I think trying to understand Dennis in the way that I did was really the key to it. With all the things Dennis does throughout the series, it seemed clear to me that he’s a sociopath, so I started looking at what it actually is to be a sociopath and how someone like that moves through the world.

There’s this amazing memoir written by a woman describing her experience as a sociopath, really demystifying what that is, and it was incredibly helpful for me. It gave me a way into Dennis that was completely non-judgmental. It made me realize that if he is a sociopath, then he has a very limited emotional range, so he becomes an expert at observing human behavior and learning how to perform social cues and behaviors.

That’s really who he is. There’s this thing the woman says in the book about how she mostly feels apathy, and that really stuck with me. So when Dennis is doing some of these things, he’s not emotionally caught up in them the way most people might be. It’s very strategic. He’s approximating the kind of human behavior he thinks is right for a given situation.

So my approach to Dennis was almost taking a leaf out of his book and being really strategic in how I played those scenes. Like in the car scene you mentioned, I felt like Dennis had two tasks he needed to accomplish, and the question became: how does he do that most effectively based on what he’s observed from other people in those situations? Once I approached it that way, there was no judgment attached to it. It was just the task at hand.”

Make sure to follow Brandon (Instagram) and Murray (Instagram). New episodes of Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed drop every Wednesday on Apple TV.