The stars of Dope Thief, premiering Friday on Apple TV+, each had different forms of vulnerability to portray in the show. Wagner Moura, Kate Mulgrew, Nesta Cooper and Marin Ireland play characters on different sides of the law in Philadelphia, Pa.

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Moura, 48, portrays Manny, who has been running a scam with his childhood friend Ray (Brian Tyree Henry) where they impersonate DEA agents and rob drug dealers. The con is successful until one heist goes south in the first episode.

In a recent Zoom interview with UPI, Moura said his character is desperate to escape that life.

"They spend the entire show trying to get away from that cycle of violence, especially Manny, who is probably the most vulnerable character I have ever played in my life," Moura said. "He is addicted which makes him an even more tragic character."

Addiction runs in Ray's past too. His stepmother, Theresa (Kate Mulgrew), has dealt with Ray's drug use in the past since his father, Bart (Ving Rhames), has been in prison.

Mulgrew, 69, said she imagined a backstory for Theresa and Ray's relationship that she is keeping to herself. She did not even discuss it with Henry.

"Brian and I never talked about the past," Mulgrew said. "We approach acting in the same way. You hit the set, you better have done your homework."

For Theresa and Ray, there is love in the home that often manifests as playful ribbing. Both characters give as good as they get.

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"Tenderness is not at play here as much but love certainly is," Mulgrew said. "The way we love is through teasing, through badinage, through banter, through a certain kind of understanding that is exclusive to us alone."

Although Manny has been in Ray's life as long as Theresa, Moura believes their relationship is unhealthy.

"In order to break this cycle of violence, Manny sort of needs to break up with Ray who is the only family that he has," Moura said. "Ray is the alpha guy and Manny is always struggling and fragile."

Going on the run from threatening drug dealers makes that breakup harder. Moura said Manny remains in a raw state the rest of the series.

"It's pure emotion," Moura said. "He's not a character that rationalizes things. He is in a very high voltage emotional state all the time."

Series creator Peter Craig, adapting Dennis Tafoya's book, said the con Ray and Manny perpetrate also highlights the way they avoid their real problems.

"You're stealing an identity as much as you are stealing drugs or cash or anything else," Craig, 55, said. "You're also stealing some credibility. Then I also liked writing their justification for it, the elaborate backflips they do to tell themselves that they're not doing anything as wrong as everything else. They're just taking a cut from the chaos."

Theresa claims to be content before Ray's scheme shakes up her world. She scratches lottery tickets every day while watching TV and taking care of her dog, though Mulgrew suspects Theresa secretly wants more.

"She's longing for something," Mulgrew said. "We can long for something while playing our lotto tickets. We can long for a man while petting a dog. That's what most women do, long for a man and pet a dog instead."

On the other side of the law is a character coping with a physical vulnerability. Marin Ireland plays Mina, a DEA agent who can no longer speak due to an injury on the job.

In early episodes, Mina can only type on an iPad or phone to communicate with other agents. Ireland, 45, said she insisted on typing out all of her dialogue, even though the props department could have programmed it into the devices.

"I remember saying I need to be able to do this myself because these are my lines," Ireland said. "I had to actually say my lines which in some of those scenes meant typing it myself."

Mina is gradually able to make faint sounds in some episodes. Ireland worked with a speech therapist to learn how a vocally impaired patient would strain their throat trying to speak.

"Think of it not as tightening up but as allowing less breath through," Ireland said. "That became a way to push it through without feeling like I was just clamping down."

Those techniques required soothing exercises involving steaming and neck relaxation after Ireland finished. It was important to Ireland to endure for her character though.

"As she was starting to heal, we get closer to hearing her actual voice," Ireland said, adding that Mina is literally "a woman losing her voice and then regaining her own voice."

A surprising ally on the legal side proves to be Michelle Taylor (Cooper), a lawyer whom Theresa insists Ray meet to help with Bart's case. Ray has no interest in helping free his father, but discovers he can lean on Michelle for legal support.

Cooper, 31, said playing a young lawyer allowed her to embrace the optimism of an idealistic attorney.

"I just embraced her youthful essence or her hope," Cooper said. "She hasn't gotten to the point where she's beat down or tired. She still really tries to see the best in people so I just tried to embrace that part of her character."

Craig said the second half of the season departs from the book somewhat. Where Tafoya spent the second half of his book reflecting on the characters' crimes, Craig wanted to keep the external threats propelling the narrative.

"You can be almost just philosophical in the second half [of a book]," Craig said. "If you're insightful you can pull it off. I wanted to stay pretty hard driving and pretty fast the whole way through."