Brian Tyree Henry has admitted he had to “battle” with particular aspects of his latest role.
The Oscar-nominated Atlanta star takes the lead opposite Narcos’ Wagner Moura as Ray and Manny, two close friends who impersonate DEA agents to rob drug dealers.
Dope Thief kicks off when the pair unwittingly uncover one of Philadelphia’s biggest narcotics empires and they find themselves on the run from powerful gang leaders and the FBI.
Throughout the series, Ray struggles to keep a hold of his relationship with his stepmother, Theresa (played by Kate Mulgrew) as well as forging a tenuous romance with a Quaker lawyer, Michelle (Nesta Cooper).
Speaking exclusively to Express Online, Henry admitted his latest role became one of his toughest as it started to hit close to home the further he delved into Ray’s backstory.
Brian Tyree Henry admits ‘close to home’ Dope Thief role was a ‘battle’ (Image: APPLE)
He explained: “Ray’s only connection with women… it’s something that I had to battle with because if you think about Ray’s connection to women, the very first woman he had was his mother who OD’d and died. He watched his mum die, he was a baby, so she’s gone.
“Then the next female relationship that he got close to was his teen crush, his first girlfriend. Then he gets an adoptive mother, with the legendary Kate Mulgrew playing Theresa, who’s not his mum but is also a white woman, who’s there in servitude to my dad.”
Henry went on to further explain the series’ complex race dynamics, one of just many hard-hitting topics the drama created by Peter Craig covers in addition to being an exhilarating crime thriller.
“[She] loves this Black boy in the best way that she can,” he continued. “I had these conversations with Kate, like, ‘Wow, you picking me up from school must have been very confusing. Like, it must have been confusing for you to take me to the grocery store, knowing my father’s not around and here you are slightly burdened with this child that’s not yours’.
“Like, what do you do? And of course, Ray sees that. There was this throughline that I had of being the inconvenient child, the child that just always got in the way. The child that nobody made time for, the child that people forgot.”
Brian Tyree Henry and Wagner Moura team up for Apple TV ‘s Dope Thief (Image: APPLE)
The Fire Inside star revealed he saw a lot of his younger self in Ray as the youngest of five children whose parents separated when he was a child.
“That really reflected a lot to Brian,” he said. “Like, I often felt like that growing up as well. I was in a house full of adults who couldn’t really be bothered with this young kid running around, this young boy.
“I was always passed off to people. So I always grew up with this feeling of being inconvenient, which then translates into being the caregiver, or always needing validation or always making sure people are happy.
“That’s a big part of why I took Ray because I really wanted to lay that burden down, I really wanted to uncloak all that trauma that I was carrying with that.”
Henry also previewed Ray’s other vital relationship in the series, the connection he forges with Quaker woman and his father’s lawyer, Michelle.
Henry revealed he resonated with Ray’s troubled childhood (Image: APPLE)
“It’s very interesting because as you move forward through Ray’s life he ends up meeting a woman he absolutely falls in love with,” he shared. “Who’s a Quaker… you’re like, ‘Wait what!’
“Their whole premise of finding salvation is through silence, right? You sit and you just listen. You start to see this evolution of Ray because that’s also showing him that this co-dependency isn’t necessary before, but this is what he knows and feels the safest with because he didn’t have any strong male influences in his life, either, until he found this relationship with Manny.
“So, a lot of these things shine a lot of light on who Brian is as well. And Peter, because he was like, ‘This is a lot about me, too’.
“Our connection to our fathers and our connection to the women in our lives. I think it’s done so beautifully. It’s so cathartic.”
If one of ’s best actors tackling complicated themes along with some gripping action sequences isn’t enough to convince you, Dope Thief also stars Narcos legend Moura at his best, plus The Umbrella Academy’s Marin Ireland and The Blacklist’s Amir Arison.
Dope Thief premieres with two episodes on Friday, 14th March on Apple TV+.