Brian Tyree Henry Was Working Out His Relationship With His Real Father Through His ‘Dope Thief’ Character

Brian Tyree Henry Was Working Out His Relationship With His Real Father Through His ‘Dope Thief’ Character

Brian Tyree Henry is three for three when it comes to Emmy nominations in the major acting categories, having nabbed his first for best guest actor in 2017 for his appearance as the long-lost cousin of Ron Cephas Jones’ William on the NBC drama This Is Us; his second a year later for his supporting actor role as Alfred “Paper Boi” Miles in the FX comedy Atlanta; and now a lead actor nod for his portrayal of Ray Driscoll in Apple TV+’s limited series Dope Thief.

“This is a sexy-ass category,” says Henry of being nominated alongside Colin Farrell (The Penguin), Jake Gyllenhaal (Presumed Innocent), Cooper Koch (Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story) and Stephen Graham (Adolescence), to whom he expects to take a graceful L. 

“I hit up Stephen, because I love Stephen Graham — I truly, truly love him,” adds Henry, “and I keep telling him, ‘It’s going to be such an honor to lose to you.’ ”

Losing is something Henry’s character Ray is desperately tired of doing when he and childhood friend Manny (Wagner Moura), both recovering addicts, decide to pose as DEA agents to rob drug dealers. Their amateur-hour antics quickly land them in over their heads when a meth lab heist gone wrong sets off a crime war that actual law enforcement, led by Mina (Marin Ireland), a veteran agent who barely survives a bullet to the throat during the robbery, is eager to crack down. 

“The crazy thing about Ray and Manny is they went and got these coats made. They went and got these hats made. They’re going in with guns that don’t have bullets. The whole thing is they’re bad, and here’s what happens when you decide to do a life of crime and you’re terrible at it,” says Henry.

It’s in that way that the series created by Peter Craig, based on Dennis Tafoya’s 2009 novel of the same name, differs from the typical onscreen depictions of African American men as menacing career criminals.

“There were so many parts of [Ray] that I hadn’t seen, especially in a Black male character. You have this man who has been abandoned by his father; raised by this adoptive mother, who is a white woman, played brilliantly by Kate Mulgrew; in the system of incarceration in Philadelphia, of all places; dealing with addiction; dealing with codependency with his best friend; and then robbing trap houses. I was like, ‘What the fuck is this?’ ” says Henry, who was equally cognizant of Manny’s representation as a Brazilian man.

“We’ve seen the tropes. You put a Black and Brown man together and there’s drugs and violence and it’s just body count and you don’t care,” he adds. “But you had these two people who truly loved each other. One who is an immigrant from another country who is still wrapped up in the system, and one who feels like a refugee in his own country and is wrapped up in the system. And the one thing that Wagner and I really wanted to reflect throughout the whole show was the kinship that they have.”

Before committing to the project, Henry, who in 2023 received an Oscar nomination for his role as a grieving auto mechanic and amputee in Causeway, knew his next character had to be one he could live with for several months.

“I am always in parts smothered and covered with trauma. I’m always doing projects where Black men are going through different forms of strife and a lot of emoting and running for their lives, and I was tired,” he admits. “When I got the pages to Ray Driscoll, something really amazing happened because I felt so attached to him emotionally, physically, mentally, he felt like me in a way.”

In some respects, the line between Ray and Henry has been blurred as a result of the relationships the actor formed with his castmates, beginning with Mulgrew. “She’s in my phone as ‘Ma,’ and she calls me ‘son,’ ” says Henry, whose biological mother, Willow Deane Kearse, died in 2016. “She has been the most amazing mother that I could ever have adopted in my life.”

Henry’s father, Marion Henry Jr., died during the filming of Dope Thief, making for a particularly charged dynamic between Henry and Ving Rhames, who stars as his dad, Bart Driscoll, in the series.

“Because of what I knew I was bringing to it with my own personal relationship with my father, I kind of wanted to protect Ving from that because Bart is a mother​fucker, man,” says Henry. “There is a scene [in episode three] where he’s in the hospital and Ving’s laying there and he’s still talking shit, and I hug him to try to choke him — there was a lot of therapy that I was getting out because I was like, ‘This is how my dad talks to me. This feels like what I was going through with my own father.’ ”

In another scene in episode six, Bart sacrifices his life to save Ray’s as he looks on in anguish, crying out for his dad. It’s the closest thing the pair got to closure in their estranged relationship. “To actually be an adult man and to scream for your father changes you,” says Henry. “I remember just doing it. That wasn’t in the script. I was just like, ‘I feel like I need to,’ and Peter was like, ‘Go for it.’ And it just changed me. I was like, ‘Oh, I don’t think I’ve screamed for my dad or cried for my dad in a very long time.’ ”

That Henry, who’s also an executive producer of the series, felt free enough to do so speaks to the environment he and Craig curated. “I always felt safe and protected on set,” says Henry, who also credits his castmates for bringing the best out of him and of their own characters. “[They’re] just masters, and I really wish that the nominations reflected that this year,” he adds of receiving the sole nod for Dope Thief. “This nomination isn’t even about me. This is for all of them because they made me better.”

Going into the Emmy campaign cycle again, Henry doesn’t feel any nerves, but he does have a specific mission for the night of the ceremony, which he shared with friends and fellow nominees Cynthia Erivo, Colman Domingo, Natasha Rothwell and Sterling K. Brown the morning nominations were announced. “All I really care about, honestly, is how we’re all going to photobomb Beyoncé,” he says of the singer, whose NFL half-time show, Beyoncé Bowl, earned her four Emmy nods, including outstanding directing and variety special. “I was like, ‘Yeah, congratulations on your nomination,’ ” he says of the texts he sent out on July 15. “ ‘So what are we wearing, because we’re going to take this picture.’ ”

This story first appeared in an August stand-alone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.