Brian Tyree Henry has stepped into what he calls one of his hardest roles as an actor in the new Apple TV+ series, Dope Thief.

Alongside Manny (Wagner Moura), Ray (played by Henry) explores the ups and downs of an unlikely brotherhood rooted in trauma. The pair find themselves in a world of trouble after a robbery gone wrong.

What is ‘Dope Thief’ about?

According to an official synopsis, “Based on Dennis Tafoya’s book of the same name, Dope Thief follows long-time Philly friends and delinquents who pose as DEA agents to rob an unknown house in the countryside, only to have their small-time grift become a life-and-death enterprise, as they unwittingly reveal and unravel the biggest hidden narcotics corridor on the Eastern seaboard.”

Henry called his character, Ray, unique. He noted that viewers find Ray in chaos from the beginning, indicating the roller-coaster ride they’ll be taken on throughout the episodes of Dope Thief.

“There’s a lot of things about Ray,” he told Blavity’s Shadow and Act in a recent interview. “Like, I hold him very close to my heart. Most of my characters, I do. But Ray, especially, was very close just because we start the show already seeing him in some bulls**t immediately from the time we started. He’s in the back of a van trying to figure out how to rob a house, how to get these things, how to take this money, how to get these drugs — so you’re already seeing somebody who is in survival mode.”

He added, “We don’t see him clocking into a job. We don’t see him picking up anyone from day care. We see this man already coming up with a way to rob somebody. And so, for me, that was interesting because I was like, that’s how you are introduced to him. And then as the show goes on, you see that he’s going to a cookout. You see that he’s trying to take care of his mom. And then you see all these different elements of him that are truly easy to gloss over.”

Exploring the effects of generational trauma

Henry and Moura’s characters are examples of people navigating the world, often unable to escape the generational traumas they’ve inherited. For instance, as someone with a Brazilian background, Moura said that when he moved to the West he quickly learned people could be much less affectionate than he is.

“That was something we connected [on] a lot because Brian is also like that,” Moura said, explaining how it is in his nature to always go in for a hug or greet others with a warm embrace. “And it transcends to the screen, right, like when we were there doing the scenes. I felt very comfortable. And I think that nowadays, it’s so cool to see men comfortable with each other, and that also says a lot about the characters we’re playing that are not the stereotype of the macho, tough-action hero. These guys are not like that. They spend the entire show trying to get rid of that cycle of violence.”

Henry added, “And not only that, don’t forget, they were incarcerated together since they were like 15 years old. There’s nothing more intimate than a prison cell. At the end of the day, I’m pretty sure that, at some point, they were separated when they were in prison. I’m pretty sure, at one point, he could hear me crying in the cell. I’m pretty sure at some point that there was this — that we yearned for tenderness and connection to each other. So proximity of space was something [too].”

Why Henry calls ‘Dope Thief’ a coming-of-age story

Moreover, Henry, who also serves as an executive producer on Dope Thief, said that despite the fact that Ray and Manny are older, the show is still very much a coming-of-age show.

“I was like, regardless of where we meet him, he is still developing. He’s trying to figure out who he is. When I got this script, there was something incredibly intriguing about that,” he said. “Like, how does a man become a man in this world when all these different things are put on top of him and denied him, and you’re told you can’t be this and you shouldn’t be able to do this, and then it gets to this element of, well, this is the means of how I get by. This is what I’m going to do. And not only that, this friendship, you know, this partnership that he’s found in the world — all of that was just very intriguing to me.”

“It was very intriguing to me who this man is, because I know, more often than not, you get so many different tropes of characters like this, and so many different ways that people want to portray them,” Henry continued. “And I felt like Peter [Craig] did an amazing job of actually making a universe where you really wanted to know more about Ray and find yourself rooting for Ray and Manny. Where you want to know what this relationship is like. Ray was just incredibly vulnerable, and that was something that I really wanted to show of myself and to explore for myself at the same time.”

Dope Thief is now streaming on Apple TV+.

Wagner Moura

Get relevant content delivered to you once a week