Dope Thief Cast Talks Morally Gray Drug Trade, Brotherly Love, and Confess Their Biggest Crimes
Two lifelong friends get sucked into a hidden narcotics operation when they pose as DEA agents to rob a house in Apple TV+’s Dope Thief. Pop Culture Planet’s Kristen Maldonado got the scoop on the morally gray drug trade, Shakespearean brotherly connection between Ray and Manny, and got the cast to share their biggest crimes at the show’s New York premiere.
After writing films like The Hunger Games: Mockingjay and Top Gun: Maverick, Peter Craig took the leap into TV as the creator, director, and executive producer of Dope Thief. “I felt like it was really outlandish, but, at the same time, I could see how it was totally real,” he told me. “I wanted to get back into just pure crime writing with eight episodes. Enough time to live with all these characters and see what their lives were.”
“[I wanted to] characterize people that normally would have been supporting if this was a regular crime movie like A Thomas Crown Affair, one of those old ones,” explained Craig. “They would have been the driver and the bagman. I wanted to just be completely in on them and what the decisions they were making really were in the midst of that.”
Craig knew from the very beginning that they needed Brian Tyree Henry and Wagner Moura to lead the series. “Brian was our first choice. We heard he wasn't reading. We heard he didn't want to do TV anymore. I'm really grateful to his manager and producer that made him read it and we got him right away. Wagner came later. It was the same thing. We didn't think we'd get him, but he responded right away,” he revealed. “After playing Pablo Escobar, [he wanted to play] the other side of the whole drug traffic [trade] and somebody who was rolled over by it and suffering. Their chemistry was incredible immediately, so I really had a good time working with both of them.”
Author Dennis Tafoya called his book being adapted into a series “beyond my wildest dreams for any achievement for the book.” “It's just been an amazing process to watch,” he shared on the red carpet. “Peter Craig is a real genius and a wonderful, generous man. It was great to meet the actors involved and all of it just a blast.”
Henry and Moura play best friends Ray and Manny, whose bond transcends the typical friendship. It resembles something more profound and tragic, like Romeo and Juliet. “It is a love story between these two dudes and that's another thing that I love about the show. It’s a very violent show. There's a drug trade and everything,” said Moura, “but they are not the stereotype of the heroes of action crime shows. They're not tough. They just want a way [out].”
“Manny is probably the most vulnerable character I have ever played in my life. Very emotional and like many Latinos and Black men that were thrown into this cycle of violence,” continued Moura. “The thing that I love most about the show is that they are not the stereotype of the macho. They represent many kids that were told that was their value. […] You're going to spend the rest of your life doing that and then they start seeing another horizon from themselves, [but] it's maybe too late for that.”
Henry reflects on how their brotherly love is unlike anything we’ve seen portrayed on screen. “We knew that Ray and Manny were a relationship that we hadn't really seen on television before. We hadn't seen this Black man and Latino man who had gone through all these trials and tribulations be this close. To find that tenderness and that affection and vulnerability,” he explained. “It’s very easy to be like, well, it's a crime drama and they got to be hard and they got to be macho. We didn't want that because that's not who me and Wagner were to each other. Peter recognized that and brought a lot of that to the show and I love that man. I swear I would do anything for that man. I'm so grateful he was a part of this.”
“What drew me to the project was Peter Craig, Ridley Scott, Brian Henry. You see those names on the audition sheet and you're like, ‘I'll take any part, honestly,’” laughed Amir Arison, who plays Mark Nader. “Every episode I was like, ‘What is going to happen? What is going on?’ It is an onion to peel and my character is trying to peel that onion as best as he can while he's starting to deal with unimaginable character situations.”
Throughout the series, the character Manny really struggles with an inner turmoil of what it means to be a good versus bad person. “He's such a conflicted soul, right? Manny spends the entire show just trying to get out of that cycle of violence that he was thrown in. In order to do that he has to break up with the person that means most to him, which is Ray,” Moura shared. “It's a very tragic character and he tries to do that through religion, through drugs. He sees that Sherry is his way out of that situation, but he really can't do that. We all have been in a situation where we know what's the right thing to do, but we can't and that's just tragic.”
In addition to their friendship, the bond between Ray and Theresa, played by Kate Mulgrew, was a major priority for Craig to bring to life. “I really wanted to get that feeling of family that's chosen each other as family instead of born biologically related and what that is in life. The people that become your family along the way,” said Craig. “That was the part that Dennis had in his book and is in the show and I really think they did they did it justice.”
“It was immediate. It was organic. It was authentic and it was inescapable because he's such a virtuosic performer. This is a classically trained actor, but, boy, did he bring his game,” said Mulgrew about working oppposite Henry. “When your partner brings their game, you better be ready, and I had nothing but joy playing opposite him. He is a consummate actor. I think he's going to be a big, big star.”
The love between characters is the true heart beat of the show. “We're all deeply flawed, deeply fractured, and the thing that keeps us human and the reason this series is so good is because love is the thing, is the coherent. People love each other,” shared Mulgrew. “It's a Romeo and Juliet relationship between Manny and Ray. Friends since they were babies, right? Theresa and Raymond, it makes no real practical sense and yet it makes all the sense in the world. They have chosen each other. That's the story.”
Mulgrew is no stranger to the criminal world after leading seven seasons of Orange Is The New Black, saying Galina “Red” Reznikov and Theresa Bowers are “not so opposite, in a gritty dark world.” “Same streets, […] very different personalities. Theresa’s lived experience is much different,” she shared. “She has an unconditional love for Raymond. She is obviously his defacto mother. I'm white. Brian's Black, but I have never stopped loving the father, played by Ving Rhames [as] Bart. My whole thrust is one of allegiance, loyalty, and unconditional love.”
Marin Ireland plays Mina who said the key to bringing her role to life was all "about pacing myself as we went and preparing physically and emotionally for all of those steps.” Her character feels like she had to be strong for everyone else, which she could really connect with. “She's a woman who feels pretty alone and has been grappling with some really profound grief and isolation and loneliness for a really long time and just had to keep pushing that down to get through the day,” she said. “That's very relatable I think for this the world we're all living in.”
In honor of Dope Thief, the cast confessed to their biggest crimes on the red carpet. Arison admits he still feels guilty from taking a padlock he found on the ground at a gym when he was 10 years old. “To this day, the guilt! The pit of my stomach. I have no business in the criminal world. I would be the worst,” he laughed, while Ireland revealed she stole something from her namesake country: “When I was 17, I was in Dublin, Ireland, which is my last name. I did not have any cash on me and I really wanted a souvenir. I stole a Zippo lighter in Ireland. I never even used it. […] I was too afraid that if I used it they would find me. I'm confessing to you all now.”
“I wish I hadn't, but I tried to steal a penguin. It didn't work. It clawed me up and it shit all over me. I got caught because of it, so that was my last attempt at theft,” revealed Craig. “That's sealed on my record. Maybe I'm not supposed to talk about that. I don't know, [but] you got the scoop.”
The first two episodes of Dope Thief hit Apple TV+ on March 14, with new episodes dropping every Friday.
