Brian Tyree Henry Is, Finally, Exactly Who He Wants to Be

BRIAN TYREE HENRY doesn’t know the meaning of the word “typecast.” In the nine years since his career took off when he got cast as rapper Alfred “Paper Boi” Miles in Donald Glover’s Atlanta, racing ahead at 100 miles per hour seemingly out of nowhere, he’s played everything from too-online conspiracy theorist to inspirational boxing coach to immortal superhero. But according to the 42-year-old actor, there’s one recurring element across his many varied roles.

“In every project, I’m either in a bulletproof vest or I’m being shot at,” he says with a laugh that hides real sincerity—and perhaps just a hint of frustration.

Henry, whose breakout role in Atlanta led to a flurry of TV and movie gigs, seems like the kind of generational talent who can do anything. So then, where is our Brian Tyree Henry rom-com? When will he star in an award-winning biopic? Those opportunities seem imminent. But in the meantime, in his latest role as the star and first-time executive producer of Dope Thief (his first true leading role), Henry is back to getting shot at.

Not that it’s a bad thing. Because Dope Thief, which is currently streaming on Apple TV+, is the exact type of project seemingly designed to show off Henry’s unique skillset as an actor: the gruff exterior that quickly gives way to an emotional center. It’s been a tumultuous few years for Henry. Not only has he lost 85 pounds and started going to therapy, but his father died just before production began on Dope Thief—something he had to come to terms with while working on the show. All of that combines to make the release of this show feel like a pivotal moment in an already pivotal career. It’s an important respite, and a brief chance, to reflect on how he got here—before diving into whatever comes next.

“I really felt like Dope Thief gave me an opportunity to truly emerge as a completely different and much better man,” he says. “Because I was able to lay all of that down during the process.”

CREATED BY PETER Craig (the screenwriter behind The Batman and Top Gun: Maverick) and with some help from executive producer Ridley Scott (who directs the first episode), Dope Thief is an epic inner-city crime drama in the mold of The Wire. Based on a 2009 novel of the same name, it tells the story of two ex-cons living in Philly, played by Henry and his co-star Wagner Moura, who come up with a clever money-making scheme: dress up as DEA agents and rob drug dealers. But when they accidentally bust up the wrong operation, they catch the attention of both the actual DEA and some very scary drug lords.

And that’s all in episode 1.

The story quickly spins out in multiple directions from there, exploring the fractured psyches of Ray (Henry) and Manny (Moura) as they unravel under pressure. At times, it seems the only thing keeping either character from total collapse is their unguarded friendship, which gives Dope Thief a unique flavor compared to other gritty crime sagas.

“These two truly, truly, truly need each other,” Henry says. “They really love each other, and I wanted to make sure that that was showcased. The juxtaposition between tenderness and hard edges is what makes it so unique to me.”

To pull this off, Henry introduced a subtle element to his acting that wasn’t in the script: physical contact. “I remember telling Wagner, ‘Hey, do you mind if I put my head on your shoulder from time to time? If I just lay next to you? If we hug, are you okay?’ It’s easy to see these two characters as uber-macho,” he says. “We wanted to change the perspective.”

Aside from Manny, the other biggest relationship in Ray’s life is with his father, Bart (played by the incomparable Ving Rhames), but there’s much less tenderness here. Rhames plays an extremely flawed man who’s already in jail when Dope Thief begins. For Henry, their dynamic offered a chance to unpack his relationship with his own dad, who died on Thanksgiving 2022, just a few months before they started filming the show.

“I never got to deitize my parents,” Henry says. “I was always the kid who was pretending to understand the fantasy of being a child, rather than actually living in the fantasy of a child.”

When Henry first met with Craig to talk about Dope Thief, one of the topics they discussed was fathers. They quickly realized they shared several of the same “traumatic daddy issues,” and agreed to incorporate those into the show.

Getting to work with Rhames was an added bonus—“he’s a legend,” Henry says—but he made a conscious choice to not tell his onscreen father about the death of his real one. He even asked the rest of the cast and crew to keep this one secret from Rhames, out of fear that it would alter the way the actor portrayed his character.

“I didn’t want him having sympathy and empathy for me in between takes,” Henry says. “I wanted him to be able to play Bart the way he wanted to play Bart. It probably won’t be until this article comes out that he’ll even know that I lost my dad.”

Behind the scenes, Dope Thief also gave Henry the opportunity to work with one of his cinematic idols: Ridley Scott. He recalls one piece of advice the legendary American Gangster director gave before they started production: “He was like, ‘Brian, I’ve been doing this for a long time, and all I’m looking for is for an actor to make me go, I never thought of it that way.’”

“And I was like, ‘Well shit. Say no more.’”

BRIAN TYREE HENRY looks different than I expected. He’s still a big guy—6-foot-2 and broad—but he’s shed much of the weight that quietly defined his earlier roles.

“They’d be like, ‘Oh, his fat ass is here,”’ Henry recalls. “Even in the script, it would be fat this, big this.”

He never took it personally, but he recognizes that his body back then was “a reflection of grief.” Henry’s mother died in 2016, just as Atlanta was getting started. He also picked up some bad habits growing up, including smoking, which he did for 19 years before quitting in 2020.

“I’ve made a huge lifestyle change for myself,” Henry says with pride. “I was just shy of 300 pounds. I’ve lost 85 pounds.”

He says he runs six miles “almost every other day.” He also changed his eating habits, switching to a high-protein, plant-based diet. But this transformation is more than just physical. For Henry, the work he’s done to improve himself mentally—including meditation and therapy—is just as important.

“I’ve done so much work to love myself and care about myself,” he says. “I could give zero fucks about what anybody says about my shape, but I don’t want to leave this Earth hating the body I was in. Because this body is temporary, and so is this life. At the end of the day, if being able to go shirtless in every scene is your thing, congratulations. But for me, in my lifetime, I want to be able to love who I am, handles and all.”

Henry recalls a moment, earlier in his career, when his perceptions of his own body started to change for the better. In 2019, he was cast as Phastos in Eternals, a big-budget superhero movie full of spandex bodysuits and extravagant fight scenes. So when he met with director Chloé Zhao and Marvel producer Nate Moore, his first question was a seemingly obvious one: “How ripped do I have to get?”

Zhao’s response caught Henry off guard. “I didn’t cast you for that. I want you the way you are,” she said.

Later, when production started on Eternals, and it was time for Henry to suit up, the enormity of the moment brought him to tears.

“I remember going in to get my hero costume fitted,” he says. “I was much heavier. I was a bigger guy. And I cried, because I was like, I am in this costume as myself. This is who I am. We all deserve to feel like we can be heroes, but it took a minute for me to really believe that I deserved to be in that suit.”

IT’S UNCLEAR IF Phastos or the rest of the Eternals will ever return to the MCU (Marvel boss Kevin Feige has admitted there’s no sequel in development), but Brian Tyree Henry’s other Marvel character is definitely coming back. He voices Jeff Morales, the father of Miles (aka, Spider-Man) in the beloved animated Spider-Verse movies. And while the fate of Beyond the Spider-Verse, Sony’s promised trilogy-ender, is still a bit murky, Henry is confident it will surpass all expectations.

“It’s been gone for so long, that in order for it to properly come back, it’s going to have to be bigger and better,” he says. “I don’t really know much about where it’s going to go. I do know that my character’s arc is pretty big in what happens to the future of Miles and his family.”

But regardless of what happens with any upcoming project, Henry isn’t worried about the future. Why would he be? He’s in the best physical and mental shape of his life, he’s got plenty more in the works (including Panic Carefully, a mysterious new thriller he’s starring in alongside Julia Roberts and Elizabeth Olsen from Sam Esmail), and he’s about to release a bold new TV show with an episode directed by Ridley Scott.

So whatever comes next, Brian Tyree Henry is ready to give it everything he’s got.

“My job is to stretch people’s imaginations and make them go, ‘Well, there’s nobody else that can play it but this person,’” he says. “‘It has to be Brian.’”