Brian Tyree Henry Has Been Doing the Work
He’s ready to break out as a leading man, as he has on Apple TV+’s ‘Dope Thief.’ But he’s also had to cope with demons from his past.Brian Tyree Henry Has Been Doing the Work
He’s ready to break out as a leading man, as he has on Apple TV+’s ‘Dope Thief.’ But he’s also had to cope with demons from his past.
Brian Tyree Henry is accustomed to portraying characters who are shouldering some massive burden. He broke out in Atlanta, in which he played Alfred “Paper Boi” Miles, a drug dealer turned rapper forced to reckon with the dangers of his old life and the bizarre nature of fame. In Barry Jenkins’s adaptation of If Beale Street Could Talk, he played Daniel Carty, a man still haunted by the fallout of a wrongful conviction. In Causeway, he played James, a mechanic beset by a heavy one-two combination of grief and guilt. Henry’s performances go beyond what is on the page. He makes them physical: The exasperation (and, in some instances, outright sadness) is in the deep sighs, the eye rolls, the tension in his shoulders, even the way he walks. It’s an intangible Henry’s been credited for, a true hallmark of his work. When we talk in late March, he’s amused by the idea that he’s exceptional at playing the aggrieved and beleaguered.
“I want that on a T-shirt,” Henry, 43, tells me with a hearty laugh. “Before you even continue, I want that printed out somewhere.”
In the Apple TV+ miniseries Dope Thief, currently six episodes into its eight-episode run, Henry finds himself back in that headspace. He plays Ray Driscoll, an ex-con and con artist who’s taken to posing as a DEA agent to rob trap houses in Philly with his best friend, Manny Carvalho (Wagner Moura). A botched heist sends them on the run, but they’re bound by a sense of obligation to loved ones whom they can’t leave behind and whose safety they don’t want to jeopardize. They’re tested the whole time, chased by the actual DEA and a neo-Nazi biker gang dispatched by an unseen threat who demands, over the phone in his Boston accent, the return of over $400,000 that was stolen from him. Ray’s also unable to escape his demons: addiction, survivor’s remorse, daddy issues—all of which are revealed through black-and-white flashbacks spliced into the show’s overarching narrative. Everything reaches a breaking point for Ray in Dope Thief’s most recent episode, “Love Songs from Mars.”
Throughout 43 claustrophobic minutes, Ray is forced into the care of people whom he loves but who have also weighed him down. While his gunshot wound turns septic, he copes with the return of the person who’s hurt him the most: his father, Bart, played by a perfectly gruff Ving Rhames. Dope Thief is a crime thriller, but this episode embraces its absurdist comedy aspects by placing Henry in a series of compromising situations that allow him to show his range. There are moments of dark humor, as when he’s on the brink of killing himself while listening to an old girlfriend’s mix CD but can’t bring himself to do it because he can’t stand the abundance of top 40. This episode, like the show itself, forced Henry to deal with matters that struck remarkably close to home.
Throughout his career, the perceptive Henry has dug deep to illuminate the characters he has portrayed. He found common ground between himself, Alfred, Daniel, and James rather quickly. The circumstances were the only variance in his approach to Ray. “I think Ray came to me at a time when I had done a lot of the self-care work, so I was able to provide some for Ray,” Henry says. “Because if this part had come to me seven years ago, I don’t think we’d be talking right now. So what I saw when I read Ray was just a different version of myself. And I think that’s how I’ve approached all these Black men that I’ve had the honor of playing—at some point, I realized the through line is that, shit, we all are feeling it.”
The first time I interviewed Henry was right before Atlanta’s series premiere, before the show changed his life. The second was just ahead of its conclusion, when his performance in the series and elsewhere led to him being more in-demand. Now, his schedule is even tighter because of more great work and the acclaim it’s earned. Henry received Emmy nominations for Atlanta and This Is Us, a Tony nomination for the Broadway revival of Lobby Hero, and an Oscar nomination for Causeway. He doesn’t see awards as validation but does recognize that they, along with the attention he’s received for his work, can lead to more opportunities. “I would like to think that it has influenced and persuaded the kind of projects that come my way,” he says. “I would like to think that it has opened up the eyes of many people. So I’m seeing it happen and it’s great, but it also means that my peers see me. That people want to see me in different places and to share what I have through these different characters.”
Henry’s résumé is broad. He played a quietly menacing crime boss and aspiring politician in Widows. He brought levity to the Godzilla franchise as a tin-hat podcaster. He’s even part of the growing list of actors to join the Marvel Cinematic Universe, appearing in Eternals. Henry has remained pensive throughout. He believes characters like Ray chose him when he was ready for them and not the other way around. He’s done the necessary work on himself to make every character feel lived-in. He’s proved himself to be one of the finest character actors working, but now it’s time to drop the qualifier.
Dope Thief presented Henry with the chance to lead—through top billing and as an executive producer. He’s used to challenges, personally and professionally. Now, he’s prepared for more of the former and eager for more of the latter.
It makes perfect sense that Henry views acting as an opportunity to investigate, to explore the nuances of human behavior and understand the motivating forces behind people’s actions. He was an inquisitive child with an affinity for the last of the five W’s. “The question ‘Why?’ was the first thing that came out of my mouth when I woke up,” he explains.
Henry was born in Fayetteville, North Carolina, where he lived until his parents split up when he was 5 years old. From there, his mother took him and his four sisters to Washington, D.C. After a brief period in which he shuttled back and forth between the two cities, his mother made the executive decision to “Boyz n the Hood [him],” as he put it, and sent him back to Fayetteville to live with his father permanently. While Henry was close with his mother, his relationship with his father was strained. “Most of my trauma with my father happened when I was a young man, and I found that I carried it all the way into adulthood, trying to really figure out how to get to a place to call him my dad,” he says. After spending his formative years in North Carolina, his curiosity took him to Morehouse College, where he developed a deep love for the city of Atlanta and discovered acting. After graduating in 2004, he moved on to the Yale School of Drama to enroll in its MFA program.
“I would like to think that it has opened up the eyes of many people. So I’m seeing it happen and it’s great, but it also means that my peers see me. That people want to see me in different places and to share what I have through these different characters.”Brian Tyree Henry, on his awards recognition
In 2011, Henry found his mark on Broadway. The role of the General in The Book of Mormon (a character Henry was the first actor to play) paved the way for TV appearances on Boardwalk Empire and The Knick during the mid-2010s. The Book of Mormon brought Henry a degree of stability, but he was never certain musicals were the best fit for him.
Atlanta was more Henry’s speed. The time he spent in the city informed his portrayal of Alfred, who reminded him of friends he’d made there. Even in Atlanta’s most peculiar and unsettling moments, Henry understood its world firsthand. Alfred never wanted to be famous; his rap career was accidental. “He has all these sixth senses, and he’s super solid, but he’s human as well,” Jamal Olori, a writer and producer for the show, told me in 2022. Atlanta placed Alfred in various situations where his rising celebrity stripped him of his humanity. As the show progressed, the experience became a bit meta for Henry, whose world expanded as Alfred’s did. Henry has been forthright about how weird fame is, overall—and how the experience of navigating it as a Black person can feel like the world is attempting to provoke you in myriad ways. As Alfred, Henry excelled at communicating that without even speaking. “Brian plays that ‘Where the fuck am I? Why am I here?’ so perfectly,” Hiro Murai, Atlanta’s primary director and an executive producer, told me in 2022. “His face does all the work.”
Following the four-year gap between Atlanta’s second and third seasons, Henry found his way back into the character by realizing their lives had paralleled in certain areas. “I find that there's a lot of juxtaposition between Alfred and I. Because I remember when I stepped away from him for so long, I was really nervous about where he would be when I met him again,” Henry told me during Atlanta’s third season. “Like, ‘I haven't spoken to him in a long time. I haven't walked in his shoes.’ Then I had to realize: ‘No, you actually have, because Brian has changed.’”
Henry thought he was done with TV after filming the FBI thriller Class of ’09, which aired on Hulu during the spring of 2023. What brought him back, leading role aside, was the executive producer title. This felt like the logical path forward for Henry, whose office would be situated right next to fellow executive producer Ridley Scott’s. “I felt like I had been giving myself an opportunity to contribute in a way that an executive producer would on a lot of my other projects, I just wasn’t credited that way,” he says.
Peter Craig, Dope Thief’s creator, writer, and another executive producer, knew he wanted Henry out in front and by his side. Like many others, he was awed by what Henry did in Atlanta and heard praise of his performance in Causeway before the film was even released. In working with Henry, Craig was delighted to learn that he’s an even better performer than anticipated. “He’s kind of rare because he’s so trained, but then everything seems so spontaneous,” Craig says. “He’s gotten so great that he can just break down the training and almost be like a jazz musician where he can riff on anything you throw at him.”
During a dinner at the start of production, Henry and Craig agreed to mind each other’s blind spots. They bonded over their issues with their fathers and came to trust each other rather quickly as a friendship blossomed. Henry was at Craig’s wedding; Craig now considers him one of his best friends. Their relationship aided the work, as Henry was able to interpret elements of the script that were autobiographical for Craig while also explaining how Ray’s experience as a formerly incarcerated, impoverished Black man would alter those elements. Craig values their ability to be honest with each other, as well as Henry bringing the same intuitive, detail-oriented approach he utilizes as an actor to producing. This quality kept Henry mindful of how the setting of their show, Philadelphia and its surrounding areas, would be depicted throughout Dope Thief.
A cold, hard truth: Philly is known in the mainstream for voicing its collective displeasure. There’s an edge to the way people talk, a sharpness to the slang, and a potent venom in the way Philadelphians insult everyone. If people trust you, they treat you like family. But if they don’t like you, they’ll let you know. If they don’t like something you’ve said or done, they’ll absolutely let you know. Henry—who frequented the city in his 20s, visiting friends who attended Temple University—has a firm grasp of this. “There’s no way I was gonna be in Philly and not represent it, because Philly is going to tell you, without a doubt, if it feels like you’re giving it the pride and respect it deserves,” he says.
Henry lived in Philly for over a year, right across from the Kimmel Center in Center City, from 2023 into 2024 and developed a sincere reverence for it. The extended stay gave him the opportunity to explore the city and other parts of the Delaware Valley. He fell in love with the food scene (“Philly’s. Food. Scene. Is. The. Shit. OK?” he says), citing restaurants like Friday Saturday Sunday, Parc, Barclay Prime, and Alpen Rose as favorites. He attended festivals and picnics during the spring and summer. When he wanted to escape the city, he’d make the 45-minute drive out to New Hope (the Bucks County town that has recently become popular among monied people of repute) to go thrifting. From there, he’d sometimes cross the bridge into Lambertville to explore further. One time, he even went tubing in the Schuylkill. When he was visiting his friends at Temple in a past life, he was unaware of the local art scene, which he now holds in high regard. “When I went back to do this, I was like, ‘Wait, there’s museums in this mufucka?!’” he remembers thinking. While making Dope Thief, he would drive out to Valley Forge, where Washington encamped with the Continental Army, then ride his bike back down to the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Familiarizing himself with Philly and its surrounding areas served Henry well in his capacity as an executive producer. He did his best to act as a bridge to the community when he could. “If we’re filming in West Philly at 3 o’clock in the morning and the neighbors wanna know what’s going on, we need to tell them,” he says. Henry wanted Ray to feel like someone people in Philly knew—or would want to know. He recognized something familiar in Ray: another character, like Alfred and James, who never considered leaving the city where he was born. The difference with Ray was that he was physically imprisoned by his birthplace, his actions monitored and options severely limited by the system of justice. Henry also wanted to explore something he and Ray had in common: issues with their fathers.
“He’s kind of rare because he’s so trained [as an actor], but then everything seems so spontaneous. He’s gotten so great that he can just break down the training and almost be like a jazz musician where he can riff on anything you throw at him.”Peter Craig
Henry kept his distance from Rhames while they were filming in order to make the acrimony between their characters feel as realistic as possible. “Ving is a legend, and man did he remind me of my dad,” Henry says of Rhames, whom he expresses effusive praise for. “Every time this man spoke—how stoic he was—I was like, ‘Man, I want to jump out of this chair and fight this man.’ He really brought it. ... Some of the stuff that Ray is saying to Bart is what I desperately needed to say to my father. I was so desperate to really get that out.”
Henry believed he could “land Ray’s plane,” guiding the character to his necessary endpoint, because he’d developed the healthy coping skills Ray lacked. He learned to accept vulnerability; that people deserve to express their pain, rather than suffer additionally by bottling it up. He thought he knew exactly what grief looked like in certain situations and how to convey that. “The crazy thing is that just when I thought I did, the universe was like, ‘Sike!’ Because it put me through more grief while I was filming this: losing my father,” he says.
“Love Songs from Mars,” which was supposed to be filmed in late spring 2023, was delayed by the Hollywood labor strikes. Henry remained in Philly, choosing to absorb more of the city during the pause in production. When things resumed in November of that year, the plan was to shoot “Love Songs from Mars” ahead of the holidays. But just before they were about to begin filming, Henry’s father died—on Thanksgiving Day. “Literally, as the strike is lifted, when I’m supposed to go in and start Episode 6 the next week, my father dies,” he says. “And not only that, he dies on Thanksgiving. My mother died on Mother’s Day. I’m like … ‘What?!’” In a cruel twist of irony, the episode’s levity balances its emotional weight as Bart, if only briefly, becomes the father Ray always wanted him to be, risking his life to save his son’s.
This was the second time Henry’s grief was anchored to his work. His mother died in 2016, around the time production of Atlanta’s first season was completed. The Season 2 episode “Woods,” in which Alfred is haunted by his own mother’s death and the chance of not living up to his potential, is dedicated to her memory. Henry was shocked to learn that one of his stand-alone episodes from Atlanta’s second season was tied to his pain. “I didn’t even know there was an episode about [Alfred’s] mother until I got the pages, right before we shot,” he says. “I had to make a decision: Do I go in here and beg Donald [Glover] not to do this, or do I confront this and do it for Alfred and for myself? I believe Alfred deserved it because I know I deserved it. Now it lives on and feels like a way to honor them, honestly.”
Henry feels the same way about “Love Songs from Mars.” There’s a moment toward the end of the episode when Ray calls Bart “dad” for the first time as an adult. It’s a product of Ray’s vulnerable state and a touch Henry added himself. “That was me calling for my dad in a way that I never got to—because that wasn’t in the script,” he says. “I just felt like it needed to be there.” Henry was so dedicated to maintaining the dynamic between himself and Rhames that he made sure none of the cast or crew told Rhames that Henry’s father had just passed away. “I didn’t want that to have the opportunity to affect what he had to give me,” he says. “He probably won’t even know about it until he reads this.”
“Some of the stuff that Ray is saying to Bart is what I desperately needed to say to my father. I was so desperate to really get that out.”Henry
Despite hiding this from Rhames, Henry always had the support of his colleagues, which made it easier to manage Ray’s emotional state and his own. “I never felt like when I’m lying on the floor, covered in blood, crying about my father in the show, I couldn’t do the same thing about my life,” he says. If acting is discovery for Henry, then Dope Thief and his career at large have helped him accept that he doesn’t have to be the sum of his problems. It’s the type of thing people might understand about themselves intellectually but don’t truly get until they’re staring up in a daze, having been repeatedly knocked down by life. This helped Henry let go of a burden that some of the characters he’s played were unable to free themselves of.
“For a long time, the friction and estrangement between me and my father used to be my narrative when I walked in a room,” Henry says. “Now that it’s ended, I was like, ‘Well who are you now, without it?’ I think that honestly, going to film that episode right after my father died was a way of the universe showing me that all the things he couldn’t say, we’ll put them right here. And all the things I couldn’t say, we’ll put them right here.”
More than the experience being cathartic, it reminded Henry that life will always interrupt your equilibrium when least expected. It reinforced the fact that you can do the work on yourself and still be a work in progress. There are moments when self-doubt still creeps in—when Henry still has to reassess things, including how he views his career and how it’s altered his existence. “I said this to somebody the other day: No one told me that I was saying goodbye to my old life,” he says. “I didn’t realize I couldn’t go back to that 7-Eleven anymore. I didn’t realize that this block right here is not the same block I can go on. So you’re mourning the life that you never really got a chance to say goodbye to. Sometimes, that’s what grief is like.”
At the time of our conversation, Henry is filming Sam Esmail’s Panic Carefully, which also stars Julia Roberts, Elizabeth Olsen, and Eddie Redmayne. He’s unclear about any dream roles or what the next five years will look like for him. Craig can see him as a director, saying he recognizes the qualities that have made actors like Clint Eastwood and Bradley Cooper successful behind the camera. “I think Brian will be the same,” he says. “He’s a filmmaker in the frames.”
Whatever the future holds, Henry is ready and aware that he’s deserving. “Trust and believe, when I’m in there, I’m like, ‘Yeah, I’m here,’” he says. “‘This is where I’m supposed to be.’ I’m grateful for the opportunity, but goddammit, I’m supposed to be here.”