How 'Dope Thief' seamlessly blends drama with absurdist humor

The deepest cut I feel is of this series is the relationship between Ray and Manny

Like, you invest so much in who they are and wanting them to survive as a duo

You know, like, once they get separated, it's just like, what happens? And you want them to get back together

But you have to also release the fact that there are no answers, right? Like when you're living on unstable ground, there really aren't any answers about what the next day is going to bring

And I think that's the testimony to Peter and the way that he develops the stakes and the environment

and character. And so for us as actors, we just day by day

had to show up and go, you know, like, we're doing this, but we're going to do it together

And also, what the is going on? Like, what, though? Like, it's true

to just watch them digging deeper and deeper to try to farm resolve. I'm going to explain to you what we do

Dea! Hands up! We're posing his feds. We were ripping off drug dealers

You're good? They don't remember. your face. Just a badge. Here in the 215. You're going to get your head shot off

What I thought was so interesting about the show is the way it balances some of these very dark moments of drama with a kind of sense of humor that is absurdist but to me kind of felt like it that just the way things are like that

So can you talk to me a little bit about finding the rhythm of going from one scene that is at once very dark, but also pretty funny

It was scary, but it was gratifying at the same time. It was like, I've just never experienced any character

And we felt safe. We felt for the script. The script gave us a lot of a safety net

This is good. This is well. And you're talking about how funny that is

And it's a very difficult thing to do, like, in terms of script writing

Like, it is funny and it's tragic at the same time. It starts with the script

It's just the way that Peter writes. It's impossible to not have that difference of doing something that's so heavy

and trying to find light in it. It's just so natural as people

You know, when you go through something in your regular life, there is always going to be light in it, no matter how traumatic

As people we search for the light in things and Peter writes that into each scene in a way that I think makes it easy It can be there unless it on the page

It can't be there unless the writer understands how to do it. Most writers assume that we are on one level with each other

You and I are having this conversation, but you know that I could well be thinking about what I had for breakfast

who I'm going to meet later on, what happened with my kid yesterday. It all is playing into the flavor of the scene

but Peter Craig and maybe a handful of others can do it

It's a form of genius, which is why I find it galvanizing and sort of intoxicating

Aren't you in there? Because what's fascinating to you is, oh my God, he's captured that

That's tickling his funny bone, while in fact that person's dying. But those two things are not exclusive

How are you painting so many houses? in this cold. Interiors? What? What

Anything you want to say to me today? Yeah. Can you walk Shermy for me

He been cooped up all day haven you Daddy It the way life is He writes life Like church giggles It full of church giggles We had real church giggles Yeah we did I do think I write that way I think Dennis Dennis is the author of the book Dennis DeFoya

I think he writes a little bit of it, and there's an opportunity for it in the way he writes

But I think I just naturally kind of saturate things with that a little bit because I think that humor exists a survival mechanism

Ray's a witty character. He's going to do it to do it. try to both manipulate and fool people and survive

This is the experience I've had in my life is that when you're really tested and you're really going through something really difficult, you kind of get goofier

You kind of get slap happy and silly and you don't deal with it by getting more serious all

the time. So I think there's a way to be really authentic and credible by having characters kind of

have that Buster Keaton response to something absolutely awful. It's too much to then have a really awful response to it right afterwards

And particularly because we're doing a show that's really kind of about defense mechanisms and about blind spots and about all of them breaking down

And, you know, how is it that you eventually live with yourself? Two characters that wear disguises for everything they do eventually are just bare and just have to deal with whoever they really are