EXCLUSIVE: Creator Danny Strong Talks Bringing to Life New Hulu Series, “Dopesick”

Hulu released the first episodes in its new limited series, Dopesick and we got the chance to talk to the show’s creator, Danny Strong. Strong is well known for not only his role as Doyle on Gilmore Girls, but for creating a number of hit shows including FOX’s Empire.

During our chat, we talked about bringing this story to life, casting Michael Keaton, a potential Season 2, crafting the story, and so much more. Check out what he had to say below.

What was it about this story that made you want to bring this story to life?

“I think in the case, what drew me was I was shocked, stunned, appalled, dismayed by the lies, deceit manipulation of Purdue Pharma and how a company run by a single family could lie their way to creating a national health crisis and then make billions off of it. I just was stunned by the facts of it.

And then when I saw that there was prosecutors that brought a case against them, a DEA agent who was trying to stop them, this was back in 2000, 2001. It made me think, ‘Oh, I think there’s a really compelling narrative here as well’. You know, that you could tell the story of the opioid crisis and not just as a really dark, depressing story, although there’s certainly a tragic, a tale of addiction here as well, but there’s actually quite an exciting investigation in which you see these prosecutors make a terrific case against Purdue. And you start to wonder, ‘well, how did they not get them? What happened?’ And to a certain extent they did, there was a guilty plea, but what happened? How did the Sacklers get away with it? And the show ultimately ends up explaining just that.

What do you think drew Michael Keaton to the story?

“I think Michael Keaton was inspired by the story, he also had a family member who died of an overdose, so it was a personal story to him as well.”

How did Keaton get attached to the role?

“Well, I just offered him the part and he said yes. By the way, never did I think we were going to get him. He’s one of the hardest actors to get. Everybody wants Michael Keaton and the part wasn’t even a lead. It was one part of an ensemble, kind of the main character, but not the central lead. And I thought it was a real hail Mary, but then sometimes they catch the ball on the touchdown, right. So it was just this home run. It was just one of those things where we were just blown away that he wanted to do it. And we were kind of off to the races, and Barry Levinson directing, Michael Keaton starring. And then it just was this train that just kind of roared it’s way into production.”

You can read the rest of our interview under the jump. Make sure to check out Dopesick now on Hulu!

Source: Hulu

Did you ever consider making this into a movie?

“It was originally pitched to me as a movie that producer John Goldwyn came to me and said, ‘Do you want to write and direct a movie on the opioid crisis?’ And I thought, ‘Well, that’s interesting.’ So I started researching it and I started coming up with this idea”.

How did it go from possibly being a movie to a limited series?
“Traffic was definitely kind of inspiration structurally how it told all these different stories, but unlike Traffic, I didn’t think I could pull it off in two hours. There was just so much information and I found it all fascinating. So I didn’t want to cut anything, and I thought, ‘Oh, well, let’s do it as a limited series.’ And I love limited series, I think they’re some of the coolest things out there in entertainment right now. So I went back to John and I said that, and he went, ‘Great! Let’s do that.'”

Could there be a Season 2?

“It’s not designed to have a season two. However, it’s not impossible. It would probably be a different set of characters because you probably do 2007 to maybe present, would be the next chapter. But we’re not talking about that right now, and it’s not really the plan. It’s more of a, let’s just launch the show, let’s see how it goes. The concept of this was very much to do the origin of the opioid crisis and that’s what we’ve done here. It certainly feels like a complete story in that way.”

Why did you opt to bounce between years in the series rather than follow a chronological order?

“I wanted to make it as hard on me as I possibly could. I was like, ‘How can I make this three times as hard as it needs to be by doing it to three different time periods at the same time?’ Part of that is because I thought the spine of the show should be the US attorney’s investigation, because it tied into so many other elements of the story. It ties into Purdue’s crimes, it ties into Purdue’s victims, which is the Finch Creek story. But that took place from 2002 to 2007. I also wanted to tell the origin of the opioid crisis, which begins in 1996, essentially, although one could argue, it actually begins much earlier, in 1985, when organizations start to redefine the nature of pain and try to change how we perceived opioid use as being something that was dangerous, that now was all of a sudden in the eighties, miraculously safe.

If I had done it chronologically, well, then I wouldn’t have even gotten to the US attorney’s case until episode five. And so I thought, ‘Well, let’s do it all at once and make it this intertwining puzzle that could feed off each other.’ And that the different storylines, even though they’re in different time periods, it could actually maybe be at times be quite powerful being with a character and then cutting all of a sudden to that character, four years later. I thought that could be a really sort of exciting way to take us through the story.”

Did you think about how complicated that type of storytelling would be when you were crafting the episodes?

“I think I knew how complicated it would be, but I didn’t really know until I started writing it. I think it works, I think it’s clear. I don’t think it’s confusing. I don’t think you need to know exactly what year you’re in every second, but you know you’ve gone back in time, you know you’ve gone forward in time and, and that was sort of the main goal for the audience. I never wanted to confuse them, but I wanted them to see, ‘Oh, this is like a giant puzzle that’s coming together over many, many years’ and we’re going in and out of time in order to build that puzzle for the audience.”

How much did you lean on Beth Macy’s book, Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company that Addicted America in writing, and did you work with her at all in any way?

“I leaned more on Beth Macy than I did her book. Her book is very inspiring and there’s a lot from it, there’s a lot of depth and soul and a lot of elements to it that absolutely infused their way into the show, but I had come up with this whole concept before I even knew the book existed. And had sold it before I knew the book existed, it was sort of a marriage that came after the fact. And one of the reasons why I agreed to team up with them was because I loved, I mean, I love the book, but I love Beth. I thought, ‘Wow, how amazing to have Beth Macy as part of this team.’

She was an integral part of the team, she co-wrote two of the episodes with me, she was in the writers room. We continued the investigation into fact finding, we did interviews together, we did them separately and we’d come back and go over facts together. She was just a wonderful element to the team and a wonderful person. So, thrilled to have gone on this journey with her.”

Was there was a moment while researching the opioid crisis and Purdue that made your jaw drop?

“It’s sort of a never-ending list of things that are jaw dropping, that Purdue did. I mean, one after the next, the deceit, the manipulation, fake pain studies, independent pain societies, putting out research and support of Oxycontin increased opioid use. And then it comes out, Purdue financed that pain society, or partially financed the pain society. It’s like, there was this giant con going on. It was playing on so many different levels and everywhere you go, if you scratch the surface, there’s Purdue Pharma pulling the strings over and over and over again.

One that, for some reason, this really stuck with me, because I think it exemplifies truly how much of a criminal organization they are. They created an email system that certain marked emails would automatically delete after being read. They called that Operation Disappearing Ache. And when I read about that, I was like, ‘Oh, well, that’s what criminals do’ that is to the extent of how committed they were to their criminal behavior, they wanted to create, they patented it. It was patent. Kathe Sackler, she was asked about it in a deposition. And she said, ‘Oh, well, it didn’t work very well.’ So there was no denial of Operations Disappearing Ache. There was something about the deception of that, that exemplified so much of what they did, but it was just particularly like, ‘Oh yeah, we’re criminals, and we’re going to do everything we can to hide that criminal behavior.'”

*This interview has been edited for length and clarity.