The Direct's Russ Milheim sat down with the cast and creatives of Dope Thief to talk all about the intense new series.
The show follows Brian Tyree Henry's Ray Driscoll and Wagner Moura's Manny, two best friends who have a side hustle of stealing money from drug dealers—something they achieve by pretending to be DEA agents.
As one might guess, one day, it goes sideways and puts them and everyone they love into the crossfire as they are hunted by both the DEA and a mysterious drug cartel.
Dope Thief Creator Peter Craig on the Biggest Differences From the Book
The Biggest Differences Come In Halfway Through
Peter Craig serves as the talented creator, director, and executive producer on Apple TV+'s Dope Thief, which is actually based on a book by the same name from author Dennis Tafoya.
- The Direct: "The show's actually based on a book. Can you kind of describe what are some of the biggest changes that you made for this series when adapting it from the original book?"
Peter Craig: Yeah, Dennis is a great writer, a great guy. I love him. I'm glad I'm gonna see him tomorrow. Here, I really adapted the first half of the book, and then the second half of the book is very internal.
The initial dilemma, kind of the inciting incident, is solved at the midway point of that book, and then it becomes a different story. And he's it's very reflective. It becomes a little more of a, he described it this way, so I'm not saying anything he wouldn't like. It becomes more of a literary novel in the second half. And he knew I'm not really a literary writer.
So, what I did is I took the inciting incident and I took the first half of the book, and I just stayed in the crisis the whole time and developed a couple other threads and just continued that through to a similar emotional end for some of the characters, but a different end for a lot of them.
- The Direct: "The show features a lot of interesting, traumatic flashbacks that the characters see as they're going through the story, going through kind of an everyday moment. Can you talk about incorporating those into the show and how you feel that choice and their placement enhances the narrative as a whole?"
Peter Craig: So, the idea was, how do you do flashbacks without leaving the present? So, the idea was that past trauma is just getting kind of swallowed by current trauma, or just sort of embedding with it, and how can you do that without really leaving the moment that we're in?
So we would try to place characters in the middle of scenes and come in and out. We were gonna do it initially just with a tilt shift and a little blurriness, but then when I saw it desaturated, I didn't mind the color. It was kind of a callback to what we were doing in 'The Town.' And I also like that later on, we could play with color and start to add things back in as memories started to eat each other.
Wagner Moura on His Incredibly Emotional Character
"Manny Is Probably the Most Vulnerable Character I Have Ever Played."
Wagner Moura is Manny, the best friend of Brian Tyree Henry's Ray Driscoll and his accomplice when their drug busting side hustle goes wrong.
- The Direct: "Now Manny and Ray are, you know, literal dope thieves, as the title [suggests], yet Manny has a drug problem himself. Can you describe his relationship with those substances and how it holds him back throughout the series? "
Wagner Moura: Manny is probably the most vulnerable character I have ever played. It's pure emotion all the time. And what I think is very interesting in this series is that both him and Ray, but especially him, he spends the entire series, which is a very violent one, trying to break this cycle of violence, trying to get out of it, trying to get out of that place. He doesn't want to be there.
They're not good at that. I think they're the anti-cliche of the tough drug guys, like they, none of them, are good at that thing, but especially Manny. And I think the drugs are one way out. It's one of the things that he finds to get away from that nightmare that took his life.
- The Direct: "He's also heavily religious. How does that drive his every choice? And what kind of pressure does it put on his shoulders once they've, in the beginning of the pilot, they choose that wrong house and things go sideways."
Wagner Moura: Yeah, the religiosity is another thing that only makes it worse because he has to believe in something. You know, it's very tragic, man. I mean, I feel lots of empathy for Manny. He has to believe. He's constantly trying to find a way out.
It could be the drugs, could be the religion, and Sherry [his girlfriend] is a very important character for him because Sherry represents the way out. But in order to do that, he has to break up with Ray, who is the only thing that he knows as in terms of love and affection. So it's yeah, the religion thing only makes it only makes it worse, because I was raised Catholic too, and there's a lot of guilt and blame in that.
Marin Ireland and Amir Arison Talk About Their DEA Agents Hunting the Dope Thieves
"My Character, I Think, Has Some Trouble With Authority."
Marin Ireland is DEA Agent Kristy Lynne, but also Mina, her undercover identity as a drug addict. Amir Arison plays Mark Nader, her boss at the DEA, who is overseeing the case when everything goes sideways for them, thanks to Ray and Manny.
- The Direct: "You guys both played the DEA agents, with Mina being the one undercover. Can you both kind of describe the complicated relationships between you two that play out over the course of the series?"
Marin Ireland: Yeah. I mean, my character, I think, has some trouble with authority. When we meet her, her undercover life is kind of subsuming her. She is not functioning very well as a person undercover, period. And her job is a little bit at risk anyway. And then she finds herself having to fight to stay on this job once she's been physically compromised.
And you know, I personally would also agree probably more with Nadir's assumption, Nadir's assessment that she should take some time off, recover properly. But that's all she has in her life at this point. So she really, I think, without that, she has nothing.
So, she needs something to hang on to and give her life purpose, and for the sake of the show, having a having a central conflict for her to fight against, she needs the guy who's got to say no all the time, but it's for her own good. I get that.
Amir Arison: It really was fun to have, like, meaty conflict, subtle nuance. We're on the same page. She's convincing me, I'm trying to convince her, I'm trying to protect her. I really have a big thing. Peter [Craig] and I talked about how I have to protect the department. There are politics he has to play. There are budget things. He has to play, things that—And she's like, What about getting the real guys or the right guys? And then who are those guys?
One of his big assessments is that he has to arrest the guys for the optics and the reality that killed Jack. You know, Jack is the key character that dies right away, uncovering his motives. And slowly, over the series, he is seeing what she's saying, trying to get to the bottom of it.
He's trying to do both. He needs her to be a witness. Is she undercover? Is she a witness? She needs to be off duty. She does pass her fitness for duty test. He gets to say it. He thought they'd have a great moment. She's still like, what are you doing? Get the real guys.
So, all of that talking about is bringing back memories of actually, each episode, each scene, had a new, sort of unique obstacle, and sort of the volume knobs, the mixtape, yeah, it was, it was great. And I do want to give a shout-out to Will Pullen, who played Mark Yeti, who was sort of our third wheel in all of these scenes and added a great element of love and humor and stuff.
- The Direct: "Marin, Mina's voice is basically shot the entire show. How did you approach acting and bring the character to life with that added quirk?"
Ireland: Early on, I met with a speech therapist because I talked to Peter, and I was like, I don't want to actually destroy my voice in order to make this accurate. I met with this woman, and we talked through a lot of the things, and she helped me figure out a way to do it and get myself into that [it] would sound consistent.
But also, it does change over the [show]. And we it really became a kind of its own thing over the months and years, really, with the strike that we were interrupted, and we had a lot of time to kind of sit with the thing. But I really felt like living through it as an actor, not being able to talk at all, having to write it, and then having to work with the electro larynx and find that thing.
Peter and I talked, he was like, it's a little bit of a cliche, but, she does find her voice over the course of [the show], and at the exact halfway point we hear her real voice in the flashback. It was definitely a real journey for me, and it was hard to find ways to sort of try to communicate in different levels.
As an actor, you have pitch, and you have volume to try to kind of play with, to find different levels in the scene, and to feel like I couldn't really play with either of those in that way, it was definitely a challenge. I was constantly giving myself like massages here at the end of the night because I found myself like this; the strain of this was definitely more than I was used to.
Kate Mulgrew and Nesta Cooper on the Genius Writing of Dope Thief
"This Is Nothing More or Less Than the Genius of the Writer."
Kate Mulgrew plays Theresa Bowers, the unlikely mother figure to Brian Tyree Henry's Ray Driscoll, whose continued relationship with his imprisoned father serves as a continuous point of contention.
Nesta Cooper plays Michelle, a lawyer who is hired to help Ray's father potentially get out of prison. It doesn't take long for her to form a connection with Ray and, in turn, get thrown into the deep end of his troubled life.
- The Direct: "What do you feel Dope Thief achieves that many, if not any other shows, kind of, manages to do to the same effect."
Nesta Cooper: "I think what this show does that I think is kind of a staple in a lot of Apple shows, is that it has this very cinematic sense to it. Every episode feels like a film, but it is able to really drag you along in the way that a TV series does.
It's this really great mixture of feeling like each episode is a technical and artistic feat in itself, but it hooks you along in a very television way. I think it's a beautiful blend of those two things."
Kate Mulgrew: And this is nothing more or less than the genius of the writer. If it's not on the page, it cannot be brought to life. The minute I got this pilot script by Peter Craig, I just sat bolt upright and said to myself, 'Dear God, this guy can write.'
I mean the nuance, the subtlety, the cleverness, the understanding of language, the understanding of exchange discourse on maybe five to seven different levels, it's something quite serious is being said because somebody's been shot, but the words that are emerging from their mouths are funny.
This is a gift. Very, very few writers have it in Hollywood, and Peter Craig has it in spades.
- The Direct: "Kate, Theresa is an interesting mother figure to Ray. Can you kind of explain what separates her from what you think a standard mom might look like?"
Mulgrew: Biology, for starters, that would go there. Yeah, I mean, I was a bad girl in my youth, and I fell in with a bad crowd, and I fell in love with the head of that bad crowd, played by Ving Rhames in the character of Bart. He had a son by a woman who was a heroin addict.
And I don't think I became particularly interested in that as Theresa until Bart was sent to jail, and then are facing this young boy, and I'm understanding that there's only one choice to be made. I mean, he is delivered unto the wolves, or he is delivered unto my bosom. And I said to him, come with me. At least together, we stand a better chance than we do apart."
- The Direct: "Nesta, Michelle is thrown into the deep end of Ray and Manny's world without warning. Can you tease how she handles entering that world unexpectedly?"
Cooper: I guess I can say that she is well equipped. Michelle is very smart, and for being as young as she is, she's just like all the other characters in the show. She's extremely complex, and she has seen the good side and the bad side, or the justice and injustice in the justice system, and she's more experienced than you would think.
- The Direct: "If there were ever a Season 2, what's something you didn't get to explore with your characters that you would like to see explored in the future?"
Nesta Cooper: I would like to dive more into Quakerism. I thought it was so interesting that Michelle was a Quaker, and I would have liked to explore that religion more because what I learned just by playing her was so fascinating and interesting... I would like to dive more into that aspect of her.
Kate Mulgrew: I agree with you. You see, that's exactly what I'm talking about when I talk about Craig's genius that he would associate Michelle with. Quakerism is fascinating, a very, very unusual choice, immediately fascinating and interesting to the audience.
As for Theresa, I wouldn't mind a little more retrospection. Let's go back and find out why it is she ended up where she did. How entrenched was she in that life? How dark, in fact, is she, or how light? I want to know the true denomination of her spirit. So the opportunities are endless, and if Peter writes it beyond endless to the moon.
Dope Thief starts streaming on Apple TV+ on March 14.
