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Alison Stewart: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. The Broadway revival of Sweeney Todd has been a major hit this season, but if you aren't able to snag tickets or make it to the show, consider attending the tale of Dolores Roach. The streaming series The Horror of Dolores Roach follows its titular character, played by my next guest, Justina Machado, as she returns to a gentrified Washington Heights after 16 years in prison for drug possession, taking the fall for her shady boyfriend.

Looking to get back on her feet, she sets up a massage business in the basement of an empanada shop. It's the only place in the neighborhood that hasn't been pushed out due to higher rents replaced by a bougie pet store yet. It's run by Luis, who has had a crush on Dolores since he was a kid and when his dad was running the place.

Now, not many people are coming in for empanadas. They aren't very tasty. Luis is facing eviction because the rent has been jacked to about $11,000 a month, which would mean Dolores gets kicked out, too, until a massage gone wrong on an unlikable landlord turns into a solution, sort of, to both of their problems. If you know the story of Sweeney Todd, you can guess where it goes from there. The Amazon Prime series is based on a popular podcast of the same name, itself based on a one-woman play, all of which were written by my other guest, Aaron Mark. The Horror of Dolores Roach, premieres tomorrow. Mark, welcome-- Sorry. [laughs] Aaron Mark, welcome.

Aaron Mark: Thank you so much for having us.

Justina Machado: Yes, thank you for having us.

Alison Stewart: Justina, nice to meet you as well.

Justina Machado: Yes, likewise.

Alison Stewart: This story was first produced as one-woman play starring Daphne Rubin-Vega. Then it was a podcast also starring Daphne. We actually had her on the show to talk about this and the Wayback Machine, and now we're at the TV series. Aaron, how has the medium for these in each iteration dictated the way you tell the story?

Aaron Mark: The story has gotten more expansive and expansive and expansive. The play is a monologue play. We called it Grand Guignol in the style of Spalding Gray. Though you're in the room with the actress, it activates the imagination. You, the audience member, are creating the imagery, particularly of the violence and gore, and it's the same in the podcast.

Adapting for television, it's a visual medium. It was really an exercise in how do we be economical, how do we be spare in what we actually put in front of an audience? A quick pop of gore goes a long way. We can cut to Justina's extraordinary face, and she, in two seconds, will communicate what on a podcast could take two paragraphs.

Alison Stewart: It's interesting because it is spare. There is gore in it, but it's not gratuitous. It punctuates the story.

Aaron Mark: Oh, good. I'm glad to hear that. As I said, a little goes a long way.

Alison Stewart: [laughs] Justina, how familiar were you with the podcast with the one-woman play before you got this script?

Justina Machado: I was a little familiar with the podcast because one of our producers and I wanted to do a podcast before Dolores Roach even came along, and she said, "You should really listen to The Horror of Dolores Roach. The rights have been acquired by Blumhouse," and to get an idea of what we wanted to do. That was the first time, I'd say maybe a year before the script actually came to me, I was introduced to the podcast.

Alison Stewart: Dolores - we're not giving anything away - becomes the serial killer, but she's also somebody we really root for, Justina, when she's not killing. [laughter] How did you and your director and the creative team find that balance between her being terrifying but also appealing?

Justina Machado: Aaron can really help me with this one because we had multiple directors. We had about four directors for every two episodes. I just think that we just talked about it a lot. There was a lot of discussion. There was a lot of experimenting. We had to re-shoot a lot of the pilot to change things once we realized what the tone was. Can you add to that, Aaron?

Aaron Mark: It's a really unusual show. It does something that I think a lot of viewers won't really notice, which is that there's one character in every scene. That's really unusual on television. That was about making sure that we're emotionally aligned with this person who's doing things that we may think we're never capable of ourselves.

That really is the fundamental function, I think, of the story, is to say, "Oh, you think you would never behave this way? You think you would never be in this situation? Oh, no. Dear viewer, we are going to walk you through step by step by step how you are so emotionally aligned with this character, particularly with this extraordinary performance that Justina gives, that you absolutely would behave the same way."

Alison Stewart: No, you definitely-- you see this woman, she's released from prison, she's given $200. She goes back to a place that she, and her mind looks one way, but has completely changed, completely gentrified. To your point, what would you do if you were in this position?

Aaron Mark: We talk a lot about--

Justina Machado: Hopefully we wouldn't do what Dolores did. [laughter]

Aaron Mark: Well, hopefully.

Justina Machado: We can understand, we can totally understand that. [laughs]

Alison Stewart: The neighborhood has changed in so many different ways. Visually, you help us out, you see a geeky guy carrying a snake plant, crossing the street, and Dolores gets very--

Justina Machado: The dog in the stroller. The dog in the stroller kills me. That's very LA. [laughter]

Alison Stewart: There's a pet supply store called Pet Amangier. Aaron, when you think about the role and the significance of gentrification in this story about this woman who is pushed, let's say, to become a serial killer - I'm sort of Team Dolores, weirdly - what is the role of gentrification in this story?

Aaron Mark: Gentrification is the backdrop and the catalyst at the same time. This whole thing came because I was living in Washington Heights, where I lived for 10 years, and I was watching this gentrification sweep, and so aggressively, and it struck me as cannibalistic. I thought, "Oh my God, our species really does cannibalize itself."

That was really the initial inspiration that that would create a situation in which our modern-day Sweeney Todd, as it were, is not driven by revenge, which is the version that most people know, which is the musical, or by greed, which is really what the original penny dreadful is about. This would be a character driven by survival because the cannibalistic nature of our species has backed her into a corner.

Alison Stewart: Justina, Dolores has been incarcerated for 16 years. How did prison change her?

Justina Machado: Inside of prison she was by herself, she had no family, she was abandoned. It was really her-- I don't know if anybody knows, but when you're in prison, if you don't have anybody sending you any money for commissary, it's like you have no way of getting all these other things that you need to live. In prison you still have to buy feminine napkins. You still have to do all of those things, so you can only imagine what she had to do. She had to rethink her whole life. She had to be in this world, and probably made her just very untrustworthy and really nervous to be out there in the world after 16 years of being in this institution.

I think it changes that in her, but I think what's lovable about her is that you still relate to her. She still wants to do good. You see that she still has hope when she comes out. Post-incarceration, we all know how difficult it is for people to get jobs in those situations, especially going away for what she did-- it's so ridiculous, selling marijuana, but 16 years of your life stolen. I can only imagine that she was less trusting and just didn't know what to do when she got out. What do you think, Aaron?

Aaron Mark: I think that's exactly right. We talk about her like she's a Rip Van Winkle character. In a sense, the world has moved on, and she feels, "Oh my God, I've been left in the dust."

Alison Stewart: There's also, if you listen carefully and you watch closely, that issue of many women becoming incarcerated for acts that their boyfriends had done or just being proximate to the acts. That's also a big part of the story is that she's just really been left to take the rap.

Justina Machado: The rot? She says it, there's a line. "He left me to rot." She's realizing all of these things when she gets back to Washington Heights, "What the hell did I do for 16 years?"

Aaron Mark: I think she's grappling not only with what's happening in the present to her, obviously, as she is accidentally on purpose snapping people's necks, as we like to say. [laughter] She's grappling with this dynamic, with this man who she thought she was protecting for 16 years. She had to convince herself. I think, Justina-- I mean, I'm curious what you think. We've talked about this, I'm sure. To survive those 16 years, she had to convince herself that what he had done to her was not as bad as it was, and getting out and having to face, "Oh my God, this really was completely grotesque, what was done to me."

Justina Machado: Absolutely. I agree. We did have many conversations about that. Why is she still pining for Dominic after everything that he did for her? It's this lie that she was holding onto, that he couldn't possibly have done this to me. When I get out, I'm going to get that house in Hoboken. That kind of thing.

Alison Stewart: We're talking about The Horror of Dolores Roach. It premieres on Amazon Prime tomorrow. I believe all the episodes are dropping at once. It's a great binge. My guests are actor Justina Machado. She plays Dolores Roach and creator Aaron Mark. We've been talking about the Sweeney Todd similarities or just how it's akin to Sweeney Todd. Dolores would be Sweeney Todd in this instant. Luis, this young man who's been in love with her for a long time, is Mrs. Lovett, the pie shop owner, in this case empanada shop owner. What was interesting to you about swapping the gender?

Aaron Mark: Well, I think we associate that character as being very male. Certainly, it's depicted generally as a white male over the years, since the mid-1800s is when that character first appeared. To deepen the idea of the female character at the center of this being the perpetrator of the violence, I think, is something that we're not used to seeing depicted in the theater, or on television, or in the podcast form, frankly. I think that's part of what's been so fascinating to people across these three different forms. We're just not used to seeing that.

Alison Stewart: What did you want to capture about the plight of the small business owner and about running an empanada store? How much research did you have to do on that part of it?

Aaron Mark: Well, a lot of the research was my 10 years in Washington Heights and frequenting the empanada shop around the corner, more than I probably should admit, say for the year when we did the play off Broadway and I was off of them for a year, but then I got right back on them.

Dolores is an underdog, and so is the empanada shop. The small business owner now, certainly in the context of gentrification, is the underdog. That's really what the show is about. It's about a group of underdogs. I think all of the characters that we fall in love with at the core of the show are all underdogs working to survive a system that is actively working against them.

Alison Stewart: Justina, Luis, this character who has inherited this empanada shop and is in love with Dolores, seems to have no qualms about these people being killed and then ending up in his empanadas. How does your version of Dolores feel about the killing?

Justina Machado: Well, first of all, Luis is played by the fantastic Alejandro Hernandez. He's so amazing in it. Really, what a performance he gives. She doesn't like it. That's what's interesting. It's like she's snapping these necks, but she's like, "You're worse. You're making empanadas out of them." To her, what he's done is way worse than what she's done because she's always justified in her killing.

To her, she's justified what happened. She can't imagine that somebody would go that far and be that grotesque, which always makes me laugh because she's the one that starts the whole thing. She comes in, and this poor guy, she just does a tornado in his world, and of course he's a little twisted and he's happy to join. It just gets crazier and crazier.

Alison Stewart: At one point someone tells Dolores, "You're mean."

Justina Machado: Yes.

Alison Stewart: Do you think she's mean?

Justina Machado: I think she can be mean. I think she can be really mean. I think that's what surprised her. That's what's so wonderful about this character. She can be everything. That's why I love it so much because as a woman and a woman of color playing something like this, there's no boundaries. It's exciting. It's usually doesn't go to somebody like me. She can be mean, and she can also be very loving. She can also be sometimes victimy and she can also be a little bit of a monster. She can be anything. She can be everything. That's why I'm so intrigued by Dolores Roach.

Alison Stewart: Aaron, when Dolores gets out of prison and she goes to her old apartment just hoping that his old boyfriend Dominic will be there, and so she finds a young white couple, and she talks her way in, but after she leaves, she tells them, "I hope I didn't make you nervous. I really don't want to be that person." Why does she feel like she needs to say that?

Aaron Mark: I think she's just spent the last 16 years around people who have behaved in ways that she thinks she's not capable of, much like our experience as the viewer, perhaps knowing what Dolores is about to do if we know what the premise of the show is and thinking, "Oh, I'm holding them at a distance."

I think that is her first acknowledgment of, "Oh, there might be a doorway to something that I don't want to be." I think she sees that. Walking into that apartment and seeing and feeling the ghosts of the life that she thought would still be there for her or hoped there would be some version of that life. I think there's a Spidey-sense that she gets, "Uh-oh, this could take a turn."

Alison Stewart: We're talking about The Horror of Dolores Roach. It premieres on Amazon Prime tomorrow. I'm speaking with actor Justina Machado, she plays Dolores Roach, and Aaron Mark, he created the series, the podcast, the one-person show. It's interesting because-- we get screeners and I was looking at the screeners, and at first I thought I got the wrong screener because of the first couple-- because I thought it was an EPK. I'm like, "Oh, this is opening night for the show, for the series." Then I realized, "Oh, no, this is part of the series." There's a meta aspect to this series. It opens with a Broadway production of Dolores Roach, which we learned is based on a True Prime podcast and that Dolores is real. There's even like later on in the show, there's a shout-out to the co-producer of the series. How did you want to play with the series' own origin story?

Aaron Mark: Well, we knew that we wanted to set the meat, if you'll pardon the pun, of the story not in the present day, but in 2019, pre-COVID, because I think any story through COVID becomes about COVID inevitably. Unlike the play and the podcast, which are narrated from immediately following the events of the first season, we knew that we wanted to then hint at where Dolores was in the present day, which is three years later.

The idea that this character who just wants to be under the radar, she wants to be left alone, she wants to live, as she says, a quiet, peaceful life, that she would have become world famous, she's a household name, and that her story now would've been taken from her and she's exploited in this whole other level, that was really fascinating to us in the writers' room, and to couple that with the meta aspect of the podcast, and the play was just, again, to pardon the pun, delicious to us.

Alison Stewart: Justina, you're giving two performances in this show. There's one on camera and then there's one in narration, what's going through her head. As an actor, how much does narration, acting when you know it's going to be narrated over, how much is that different from when you are acting on camera and the words are coming out of your mouth at the time?

Justina Machado: Well, it's very different, but also one of the things that we did is we shot the show, the whole show, before I went back and did the voiceover.

Alison Stewart: Interesting.

Justina Machado: That helped a lot because that reminded me where I was and what was going on. Also, since Aaron had had two years of the podcast, he really guided me with the voice-over performance, because there are certain times when she's narrating and there's certain times that it's happening in the moment. Because he knows the story so well, I'm indebted to him for that in the room. He guided me with that, but it wasn't as difficult because we'd already shot the show. It was easy to remember where I was emotionally.

Aaron Mark: It was fascinating, Justina being there with you, and we would pull up a scene that you maybe hadn't seen a single frame of, since we had been there. You would see a second of it and go, "Okay, I got it. I know it."

Justina Machado: I remember it. Muscle memory, absolutely.

Alison Stewart: In addition to originating the role, Daphne Rubin-Vega's also credited as a writer on the second episode of this series. What was it like for you to work with a new actor in this role that you have spent so much time with?

Justina Machado: "Ooh, this is a good one. I can't wait." [laughter]

Aaron Mark: Well, it was thrilling.

Justina Machado: "I'm salivating."

Aaron Mark: Daphne's extraordinary. Justina's extraordinary.

Justina Machado: Absolutely.

Aaron Mark: I pinch myself every day. The other thing that happened was in the interim, the play had been published and licensed, and I saw other people play Dolores. By the time Justina came into the process, I had already seen different interpretations of a text that had really been tailored to Daphne. As you said, Daphne's a writer and producer on the series, and she's a producer on the podcast.

I talked to her yesterday. Justina coming in, my favorite thing is to tailor material to actors. Justina is-- my God, not to overuse the word extraordinary, but this is somebody we're lucky to have. I'm going to talk about her like she's not here. This is one of the great artists on the planet. To be able to tailor this character to her was a joy and a privilege.

Alison Stewart: We've got this interesting tweet. I think it might be your next iteration of Dolores, Aaron.

Aaron Mark: Uh-oh.

Alison Stewart: Somebody says, "Loving the concept of this new Sweeney Todd, new people moving into an existing community is definitely a challenge and should probably manage better somehow, but the opposite is always true. A lot of people from the Bronx and Harlem are moving upstate to smaller, quieter, more tranquil areas with wildlife and retirees. They are bringing their music and cars and trying to turn the suburbs into what they left. New people in the existing community is also disruptive on the other side, so maybe Dolores heads to the Catskills, the Hudson Valley."

Aaron Mark: You know what? If God willing we're able to--

Justina Machado: That's an interesting tweet. That's what I have to say. That's very interesting.

Aaron Mark: We're going to take that with us. Hopefully, we will be able to digest and process that in a way that you'll be able to see.

Justina Machado: We will see.

Alison Stewart: We will see. Somebody on my team just put, "That was a tweet?" Dolores Roach, Dolores means sorrow. Why do we have the last name Roach, Aaron?

Aaron Mark: Oh my God. Well, Roach, this is something that came out of a conversation that Daphne and I had. She's unkillable and she will survive us all. Daphne also was talking to me yesterday. She was reminding me that we had a conversation early on when she was given that name about roaches and ladybugs being essentially the same animal.

Justina Machado: What?

Aaron Mark: Ladybugs are given pretty privilege. Ladybugs we consider beautiful, and roaches are brown, and we treat them at a distance, but they will survive us all.

Alison Stewart: The series is The Horror of Dolores Roach. It premiers on Amazon Prime tomorrow. It's really great. Justina Machado-

Aaron Mark: Thank you.

Alison Stewart: -has been my guest. Aaron Mark is the creator. Thank you so much.

Aaron Mark: Thank you. It's such a pleasure.

Justina Machado: Thank you, Alison. Thank you.

 

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