By Iain Blair
Dopesick showrunner Danny Strong began his career acting in shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer before transitioning into writing for films (Game Change, Lee Daniels’ The Butler), directing (TV’s Empire) and producing. His latest project, the Hulu limited series Dopesick, examines the true story of how one company — Purdue Pharma, owned by the Sackler family— triggered the worst drug epidemic in American history. The series, starring Michael Keaton, takes viewers to the epicenter of America’s struggle with opioid addiction, from the boardrooms of Big Pharma to a distressed Virginia mining community to the hallways of the DEA.
Strong created, wrote, directed and ran Dopesick, a story he says he was compelled to tell. I spoke to him about making the show, working with Oscar-winning director Barry Levinson and the post workflow.
Danny Strong (in mask) on set.
This is your first time as solo showrunner. Who taught you the most?
I learned the most on the first season of Empire. I was the co-creator and EP, but we also had showrunner – Ilene Chaiken — and watching her and the whole process was a great education. She was my showrunning mentor.
How tough was it directing episodes and showrunning at the same time? And how did you work with Barry Levinson, who directed as well?
It was hard, but having someone like Barry Levinson around was a huge help. He’s one of the greatest directors of all time and one of my heroes, and I could pick his brain, so that was pretty cool. Our other two directors – Michael Cuesta and Patricia Riggen – are also so talented and accomplished, so the shooting was pretty smooth.
What look were you and DP Checco Varese, ASC, going for?
We talked a lot about different looks and templates, and the one that really stuck out was The Insider, as well as The Deer Hunter, especially in portraying the coal town. We shot a lot of locations in Virginia, and we spent probably 80% of the shoot in Richmond and the rest in the Blue Ridge Mountains. We shot with the Sony Venice and used Zeiss lenses, and that gave us a bit of the richness and tone of The Insider — the same sense of mystery and danger. At the same time, it let us switch very quickly to something a bit brighter, with more of a hyper-real look. And we had to move fast, so it was a great package for us.
Tell us about post. Was it a traditional TV post schedule?
It was fairly traditional TV post, but it was also very complicated. We block-shot the first two episodes directed by Barry, we completed them, and he was done. Then for the next six weeks, we block-shot all of Michael Keaton’s work — Episodes 2 through 8 — before we lost him for a movie. So I had one storyline pretty much completed, but then we had to pick up all the rest of the episodes.
So we couldn’t complete an episode until very late in production, except for the first two. That was the most stressful time of the whole process for me, as I was block-directing Michael Keaton, supervising the other directors, and supervising editing and post while on-set of those first two episodes… all at the same time.
There was also the stress of turning in the first episode to the network, who had just spent a lot of money on the show. Expectations were very high, they had notes, and they want you to do those notes. And I wanted to kill it. So post was very demanding. But the moment I saw the first cut of Barry’s pilot work, I knew it was going to work, and working on Barry’s episodes with him was such a great experience.
Where did you do the post?
It was all remote because it was during the height of the pandemic. I bounced around a lot. I did a lot of post in Richmond on weekends, then I was in New York and back here in LA. I’d never worked remotely on post before, but I quite liked it, especially the remote editing, which was way more effective thanks to Evercast. What a revolutionary system for the industry.
We did the DI with Stefan Sonnenfeld at Company 3. Everyone wants to work with him, and we were able to get him because he and Checco are very close. Barry was also a big part of the DI too. He wanted to push the colors and differentiate the worlds — particularly the coal world, the Sackler’s world and then the investigative world. So getting all those tonal shifts right was a key part of post, and it turned out great.
Let’s talk about the editing. You had three editors – Douglas Crise, Matt Barber and Chi Yoon Chung. How did that work?
They were all in LA working from home. They mostly cut their own episodes. Doug did the first two with Barry, and then Matt and Chi Yoon alternated their episodes. Occasionally, I’d pass off one to another editor to get their ideas and fresh input, and sometimes one would take over another editor’s cut if someone had to leave for another job or medical issue. I like that way of working, as it stops you getting jaded and brings new energy to a cut.
What were the main editing challenges?
Dopesick has so many storylines and different characters, but I think the biggest challenge was the time-jumping. You have all these different narratives, and they’re all in different timelines. I didn’t do that to be clever and show off. It was because I wanted the crime story to be the spine of the show, and it took place in two different time periods. And the crime they’re investigating took place in the past, after those two time periods. So I was stuck with that structure.
Some people said it should have been linear, but the complex structure is what made it work and gave it its propulsive drive with those investigations from the start. And once I stayed for three, four scenes — even a whole act — in one time period, instead of jumping around so much, it began to really flow in the edit.
Can you talk about the importance of music and sound to the show?
I get very obsessive over both, and by the final mix, which we did on the Sony lot, I’m so tense about it. I’m so sensitive to sound and score, and our composer, Lorne Balfe, did an amazing job. But it took a while to figure out the first few episodes, and we played around a lot with the sound design and music. Barry Levinson was a big part of that too. In the end, we used a lot of different genres to tell the different stories — the investigative genre, the addiction genre, the family black comedy one and so on.
There are some VFX. Who did them, and what was entailed?
I’ve directed several TV and film projects with VFX, and while none of them were big action or sci-fi things, I really enjoyed it. They’re so helpful and can add so much tension and scale and scope; they just elevate everything.
For instance, we couldn’t all fly to Connecticut to shoot the big new Perdue HQ building we needed for one episode, so Patricia Riggen (who directed that episode) shot this amazing drone shot into nothing, and then we recreated the building with VFX. In another episode we had a total wig disaster with the Rudy Giuliani character, so we just fixed it in post with VFX. And as it’s a period piece, we fixed a lot of stuff with our vendors that included Mels, Mr. Wolf and Pipeline.
You got a great, huge ensemble cast and landed a big star — Michael Keaton, doing TV for the very first time, as Dr. Finnix. What did he bring to the role?
He’s a beloved legend and a great actor, and he brought all his experience and skill and was so committed to it. Once he came on board, everyone wanted to be in it.
Finally, what made you take this story on?
I was outraged by the actions of Purdue Pharma and the Sackler family. I was stunned by the deception and all the manipulation and the fact that one family could make billions off the suffering and deaths of so many Americans. The big challenge was how to take this American tragedy, a very bleak story, and turn it into something really watchable? I wanted to document it, and at the same time make it into a crime story that was also entertaining and exciting and a bit of a thriller.
Industry insider Iain Blair has been interviewing the biggest directors in Hollywood and around the world for years. He is a regular contributor to Variety and has written for such outlets as Reuters, The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times and the Boston Globe.
