The new series Dope Thief is currently streaming on Apple TV+. The show follows longtime friends Ray and Manny, who met while incarcerated as teens. They become low-level grifters upon release, posing as DEA agents and robbing small-time drug dealers until things go left and they find themselves on the run.
Brian Tyree Henry, who portrays Ray, tells ABC Audio that people like Ray and Manny who get caught up in a cycle of violence while trying to survive should receive support from those around them.
“What we tend to do sometimes is that we see people in those situations and we immediately come up with our own prejudices about how they got there,” he shares. “Here you have these two men who’ve been incarcerated, whatever their circumstances were, since they were 15 years old. And usually you have a system that keeps you there and wants to keep you trapped into that dynamic for the rest of your life.”
“And it’s like, well, how do we embrace them? How do you see a future when the system is telling you you don’t deserve?” Brian continues. “And so for me, it’s really about the people who are there to embrace them when they come out. When you see them on the street, when you see them trying to make it … you have to in some way open yourself up in a way to understand them, to listen to them [and] allow them to be vulnerable instead of keeping them trapped within this system that told them that they couldn’t be anything.”
Wagner Moura portrays Manny in the show.
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