It’s one of the year’s most star-studded TV shows, and by far one of the timeliest.
But for its creator, Dopesick proved to be one of his biggest challenges to date, as he had to wrestle a decades-spanning scandal into an eight-part limited series.
The show, premiering on Disney+ this Friday (12th November), takes a look at the opioid crisis from several points of view, from the malicious businessmen who made OxyContin widely available in America, to the prosecutors investigating the case, and the families affected by it.
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The latter are represented by Michael Keaton as Dr. Samuel Finnix, a man wracked with guilt over prescribing drugs deemed to be safe, and Kaitlyn Dever as Betsy Mallum, one of his patients who he prescribed them to.
Other big names in the A-list ensemble include Will Poulter, Rosario Dawson, and Michael Stuhlbarg as the ghoulish Richard Sackler.
It’s the first series created solely by Danny Strong, best known for co-creating Empire with Lee Daniels, and for recurring acting roles in the likes of Buffy, Gilmore Girls and Billions.
After being approached about making a movie on the opioid crisis, he embarked upon extensive research, and realised there was no way this scandal could easily fit into a single film.
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“The project originated from a meeting with producer John Goldwyn”, Strong said, “he came to me after this New Yorker article about the Sackler family exploded and asked if I would be interested in developing a movie about the opioid crisis.
“I’d read the article so I knew what he was talking about, and started to do a deep dive further into this subject matter – I was stunned by the actions of Purdue Pharma, this company micromanaged by a family who repeatedly lied about their involvement with it.
“Once I’d started diving into this, I ended up falling down the Purdue Pharma rabbit hole. It’s hard to believe what this company did, so I was naturally committed to turning this into a drama. The problem is that a movie is just not big enough to tell this story.”
“And then a weird Hollywood thing happened”, he continued. “I pitched this and sold it to 20th Century at Disney, while another studio owned by the company was in the midst of a bidding war to buy the rights to Beth Macy’s book Dopesick. Neither side knew what was happening!
“When we heard, we agreed to team up; I read Beth’s book and loved it, and more importantly I absolutely loved her when we met. But it’s a very strange case of me selling the show before I knew the book it’s now adapted from even existed.”
With so many storylines spanning several time periods, constructing the series proved a challenge for Strong. Luckily, he found a solution in the midst of the tense legal battle: “I found that the US attorney’s case predominantly covered the origin story for this crisis, and I realised that intercutting between the two periods would be the most effective way to pull this off.
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“The hook into it was approaching it as a crime story, seeing the case these prosecutors put against Purdue, as it feels very exciting as an audience member to watch it unravel in that way.”
Once that was cracked, Strong realised he had a bigger problem on his hands. As a writer who aims to extend empathy to all of his characters, he found himself having trouble characterising Richard Sackler, the billionaire businessman who was the president of Purdue Pharma.
“Everybody hates him, and he’s vilified as this American Hitler by anti-opioid activists. Even when I interviewed people close to him at the company, they hated him just as much. He’s an off-putting person to be around, so one of the biggest challenges was extending him some empathy to work out how he became like this.
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“It wasn’t greed as he grew up rich, so why would he lie that a deadly addictive narcotic was safe? And this is where going down the rabbit hole comes in, and realising that this family was split into three wings – and most of those disliked him, even though he was the one predominantly doing the work.
“They just wanted the money that work would bring. There’s more depth to that family dynamic than meets the eye.”
But this still wasn’t enough to truly get to grips with the monstrous figure, so he decided to try out an unusual method to help his writing process, as Strong confesses: “I went to a therapy session where I roleplayed as Richard Sackler which is something that I’ve never done before or since – I just needed to explore this character to properly write him.
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“A friend of mine who is a screenwriter, his wife is a therapist, and he refers to her as his secret weapon. He was right. I came out of that session with this visceral sense of what he believed just from talking about his problems.
“It never even crossed my mind that I should approach writing characters in this way, but my friend is more successful than me, so this method really does work!”
It wasn’t just Strong who was intimidated by the demands of the project, as recent headlines have suggested Michael Keaton was scared to sign on due to the daunting subject matter. Naturally, there’s been a little bit of fabrication on that front:
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“Michael didn’t seem scared or reluctant to sign on, he just had the questions all actors at that level do – if he was as scared as some of the headlines have said, he hid it pretty well! After reading the script, he asked me to write up a short biography that ended up totalling five pages, and he then said yes.
“The only advice I gave him after that was that he should play Batman again”, joked Strong, “and he’s going to be doing that, so it was a success all round.”
Strong didn’t write any of the roles with a specific actor in mind, as his process involves acting out all the parts himself to get a sense of who they are. But once Keaton was signed up, he still managed to get his dream cast together:
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“The cast is unbelievable, all incredible on the show, and wonderful people, and it rarely works out that way. Once we had Michael and (director) Barry Levinson on board, there was quite a bit of interest from other actors to be part of the show.
“The uphill battle of casting this ensemble became smooth sailing, and we ended up getting our first choices for the majority of the roles. A studio can greenlight it, but they can’t do anything if actors say no – I call it the ‘when the rubber hits the road’ moment, so there was a huge sigh of relief when Michael said yes.”
Unfortunately, the rubber hasn’t hit the road for all of Strong’s projects, with a recently announced Empire spin-off centered on Taraji P. Henson’s character falling through: “I don’t think the Empire spin-off is happening.
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“I actually thought it was going to be made, there were meetings about budgets to start shooting, and then we abruptly got the call saying that it wasn’t happening. Hopefully that can come back in some form”.
Until then, we have Dopesick – a gruelling watch, but one that is certain to start conversations.
Dopesick airs on Disney+ from Friday 12th November.
