Brian Tyree Henry’s career has been on such a steady rise that it’d be easy to dismiss how much work—and risk—has gone into every step of it. Take Dope Thief, the vehicle for Henry’s biggest onscreen leading role to date. As the North Carolina native told me earlier this year, the project took a lot out of him. Henry plays Ray, a formerly incarcerated recovering addict who goes on the run after a robbery gone wrong. The role required Henry to do a lot of introspection, at the same time that he was learning the ropes as a first-time executive producer.
Little Gold Men (listen or read on below), I caught up with Henry, now that Dope Thief’s run has finished on Apple TV+. The actor speaks like someone at an inflection point: He’s past the exciting, sometimes confusing hump of the initial fame that came with his Emmy-nominated breakout on Donald Glover’s Atlanta. Since then, he’s received an Oscar nomination for the character-driven indie Causeway and appeared in blockbuster franchises like Godzilla and Spider-Verse. Now he feels prepared to take charge of his career by constantly upending our expectations of how it should look.
Dope Thief’s sweet ending nicely exemplifies this. Ray has survived several life-or-death situations, finally finding himself out of harm’s way. He’s in a fast-food drive-through, sitting beside the undercover agent (Marin Ireland) who’s been after him all season. In a moment of peace, they order. They eat. He gets ketchup on his face. She wipes it off and says, “You’re clean.” Ray replies, “Hallelujah.”
Vanity Fair: Dope Thief hands you this really playful, at times crazy mix of tones. Can you talk about getting to play that?
Brian Tyree Henry: Every single character in this show is fucking flawed. They are just people who are trying to make it, and aren’t usually choosing the best ways to do so. I often joke with David Canfield Peter Craig about his amazing skill—his weird Dr. Frankenstein way of making characters who are so incredibly flawed and dark be so lovable and likable. You want to know what’s going on with them regardless of if they make it or not. What I know about Ray and Manny [played by Wagner Moura] is that there is still something incredibly youthful to them. Even though they are grown men in the eyes of society, there’s still this disconnect between how to be and how to be free.
I just don’t think they think about their future that much. Their future technically was taken away from them when they were very young. But I think what elevates the show is the humor. We’re dealing with such dark subject matter—be it suicide, be it addiction, be it, I don’t know, cartels—but tragedy and comedy are hand in hand. You never really know when either is going to creep up on you.
We spoke before the premiere, and you said that this project was personal for you. I’m curious what you remember about the period right after you finished filming. Did you take a break?
I don’t know if you’ve met me, but I don’t know what the word break means.
That’s why I ask.
When you are fortunate enough to be the lead of the show and the EP, you’re with the show until the show is released. It really is your child. I’ve found, in the course of my career, release has been hard—especially for these men that I’ve played, because I’ve spent so much time with them. They become a part of me. I realize that’s not always helpful, especially if you’re dealing with characters who are being required to confront so much loss, grief, trauma. But with Ray, it was very different because my whole point of taking Ray was to get him to the other side.
I often joke that if this had come to me five years ago, there’s no way I would have been able to [do it]. I don’t know if I would have made it to the other side. So much is required in order to carry Ray. When you wrap a show like this, it doesn’t leave you.
Once the show is over, you’re editing and you’re scoring and you’re looking at a lot of yourself. Which also was new for me, because all the projects I’ve been a part of, I’ve been at the mercy of the edit. But with this one, it was incredible to be able to go into the booth and watch the edits—to watch the lighting and the VFX, to watch the music go into place. I also had to release a lot of things. Once I finish a project, I don’t run to watch it. But with this one, I was forced to confront my choices, which—there’s just a whole metaphor baked into that. I would never have been able to sit with myself the way that I had to sit with myself for this show. But it gave me a true sense of pride at the end of the day.
So all that to say, no, there is no break. But for this show, it was worth it.
It might be hard to go back to the way that you used to experience acting, without that level of input.
There’s no going back. What I’m hoping to achieve with being an EP is that, when you see my name attached to something, it comes with a certain caliber of excitement for you to be like, Oh, okay, well, we know what we’re going to get. It also gives me a chance to feel like I have a hand in making the sauce. Instead of just sitting at the table and consuming it, I actually get to know all the flavors and smells and varieties that go into making something that I cook. That is the progression that I want—and it’s addictive. I’m not going to lie. In my career, I’ve found myself doing [the work] of executive producers; I just wasn’t credited that way, or people didn’t think I was ready to be credited that way. But now, I know that is how I want to progress.
Peter mentioned to me that he had an idea to continue the show. Are you interested in that?
Gosh, man, I’d go anywhere with Peter. I believe in him so much, and I know he believes in me. It’s all about alignment for me, truly. If it aligns, then who am I to deny it?
When you first started shooting the show, you were in Philadelphia. That’s where you learned of your Oscar nomination for Causeway. I wonder how you felt about yourself in that moment.
The feeling of it is constantly changing. When people are like, “Emmy-nominated, Tony-nominated, Oscar-nominated,” when it comes to me, I’m like, Oh, right, I guess that’s my title. But you never really have the control of what you think people are going to recognize you for. I’m walking around with a sash that’s like, “Just so you know.” I just had an interview where I was talking about reclaiming my name. Getting my name back and the loss of that—when I took on Atlanta, I didn’t realize that I would just be known as Paper Boi to people. I went from Brian to Paper Boi, and I never had any say in how people knew me.
That’s a big reason why I took Dope Thief, to reclaim my name again—to be like, Okay, well, you know that, but then you get to know this as well. Then I also didn’t realize being an Oscar-nominated actor, what comes with that—because I was like, Well, what does this mean now? And will it ever happen again? Now you’re like, Oh, well, it’s happened once. It is an honor because it’s bestowed to you by your peers, by people who you want to believe know movies and know talent. But at the same time, I still have work to do.
The Atlanta parallel is interesting too, and I know you’ve talked about this: When you started on that show, you were very much treated like someone in his first acting job.
People didn’t even know I was an actor. People thought that they pulled somebody off the street.
Right. They did not know you had been on Broadway.
They didn’t know that I was trained. They really thought that I was a rapper that Donald found somewhere in SWATS Atlanta and gave him his first shot, which—as an actor, that’s great! You know what I mean? But then you have to fight to remind people that, Hey, hold on, I did all this too. There’s this sense of ownership that people have, and I have to be okay with that. Paper Boi belongs to everybody. Paper Boi is a way for people to feel.
It’s so crazy. I was out in the desert the other day, going to the grocery store, and there was this little white kid who had to be 15 years old that just saw me and waited in the parking lot for me to come out—just so he could go “Paper Boi!” and throw up the deuces. The ownership of Paper Boi made him feel connected to something. I have to remember over and over again that Paper Boi means something to people. He really does. He meant something to me, I care about him very much, but I have to remember who the hell I am at all times. I have to remember exactly who I want to be, how I want to present myself. With great success also comes great loss because that is something that I had to deal with.
On top of being Paper Boi, I had to find a way to show people these other sides of me so that they get closer to Brian. I don’t know if, back then, I was ready for people to get closer to Brian, but now I’m like, No, it’s okay. Come closer to me, so you get to know me and all the things that I can do. Because I haven’t shown you anything yet.
What do you feel ready to show people that you haven’t yet?
Love.
There’s a lot of love in Ray.
There is, but it also comes with a lot of bullets and tears. And look, even love is messy. I would like to show you the softer side of who I am. I want to get to the cashmere level of my career, where it’s like, Ah, this is nice. I get to wear this. I get to be in love. I get to be kissed.
During the pandemic, you were asked to do a virtual reading of Angels in America. You pushed to play the lead, Prior—and Tony Kushner ended up writing you a letter basically saying, “I can’t believe I’d never seen a Black Prior before.” I imagine that speaks to your desire to push people’s expectations of you.
When I got Angels in America, everything that I saw of who had played it before, it already told me what I couldn’t do—every single thing at the beginning said, “Dah, dah, dah, but if you’re of color, Belize.” What I connected with the most was Prior. I was like, This is something I have to shout from the rooftops: I know I could do this. That’s been the testimony of my acting. When I read something and it hits me, and I feel like I can see myself in the space, I always ignore the things that people put at the front. I never really think about who played it before, what they looked like before. If I feel like my voice is the voice, then that’s where I’m going to go.
It’s exciting, but it’s also tiring. It takes a lot to try to bend and stretch people’s imaginations, but I find that when the word action is called, that’s where I do the best. I’d rather show you than tell you. I don’t want to be a man who’s spending his career convincing anybody of anything—that’s already part of my job. But convincing you that I deserve to exist in a space that you have already told me that the expectation doesn’t include me, that’s more than I care to do. I guess that also means that I have to just keep EP’ing as well. That’s another great thing with that title: I get to choose. I get a say in how these men live, and the worlds they get to live in, and how they’re loved, and how they’re cherished.
You were recently in London, where you shot Panic Carefully, which stars Julia Roberts and is directed by Sam Esmail. You’re playing a federal agent in that film. How did that fit into what is exciting you right now? What felt fresh?
I’m just like, Wait, am I really sitting with Julia Roberts about to do this? Okay. To be able to do a high-action thriller with the people that I got to do it with, it was so much fun. I always try to remember that little kid in Fayetteville, North Carolina, who sat at his television and watched so many programs where he never saw himself—I would always put myself in them. When I would watch the shows, I would always see myself. Delicious is the only word I can think of now. It’s so delicious to be able to know that the bandwidth has broadened, because I have decided to step in it. I want to just keep doing that and building on that.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
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