Fear as a Subject: A Conversation with ‘The Horror of Dolores Roach’ Creator and Writer Aaron Mark

The Horror of Dolores Roach, based on the hit Spotify podcast series of the same name, is a contemporary Sweeney Todd-inspired urban legend of love, betrayal, weed, cannibalism and survival of the fittest. Dolores Roach (Justina Machado) is released from prison after 16 years and returns to a gentrified Washington Heights. She reunites with an old stoner friend, Luis (Alejandro Hernandez), who lets her live and work as a masseuse in the basement under his empanada shop. When the promise of her newfound stability is quickly threatened, “Magic Hands” Dolores is driven to shocking extremes to survive.

Originally created by Aaron Mark as a one-woman play, Empanada Loca, Mark created, wrote, and directed the original podcast and penned the pilot script. The new series comes from Aaron Mark, who also serves as co-showrunner and executive producer with Dara Resnik, alongside executive producers Daphne Rubin-Vega, Jason Blum, Chris McCumber, Jeremy Gold and Chris Dickie for Blumhouse Television; Dawn Ostroff, Mimi O'Donnell and Justin McGoldrick for Spotify; Gloria Calderón Kellett for GloNation Studios; and Roxann Dawson, who also directed the pilot.

It's always fascinating to me how one medium can translate to another, but also how it will engage an audience, on a multitude of levels. And the life of The Horror of Dolores Roach has undergone various versions to serve various mediums and audiences - and I'm hopeful the television adaptation will tap an even broader worldwide audience, and pique their interest enough to digest the original play text and listen to the podcast - rinse and repeat.

Aaron Mark, the creator, writer, and showrunner behind The Horror of Dolores Roach, recently spoke with Script about the story's journey, the importance of trusting and believing in your characters, his fascination with the Grand Guignol of Paris, and why fear is less of a genre and more of a subject matter.

This interview has been edited for content and clarity.

Sadie Dean: Where did the story idea initially come from and then what was that process like from taking it on these different medium journeys, from play to podcast and now a television series?

Aaron Mark: Basically, what happened is I was a playwright living in Washington Heights. I was there for 10 years. And I was watching it gentrify at the speed of light. And I was really struck by the idea that I was watching this neighborhood feed on itself, I felt like I was watching a kind of cannibalism. And that to me really was the moment of this is the place to set a reinvention of what I think is probably the greatest cannibalism story that our species has produced, which is the legend of Sweeney Todd, which dates back to the mid-1800s.

And at the same time, I had been working on a series of one-person horror plays, three of which were done off-Broadway. And I was a Daphne Rubin-Vega superfan from way back. And I kept thinking I kind of want to write something for Daphne not knowing her. And had this idea that the next piece in the series I was working on would be Daphne as Sweeney Todd set in my neighborhood Washington Heights and I said this offhandedly to Jim Nicola - who ran until recently the New York Theatre Workshop where RENT had premiered - and I said to him, ‘I have this crazy idea.’ And he said, ‘Well, if you write it, I'll give it to Daphne.’ So, I wrote it, and he gave it to Daphne. And we developed it for two years together around New York. And we did our off-Broadway production in 2015 for the LAByrinth Theatre Company.

And then after the run of the play in New York, I knew there's more to Dolores’ story. We always said she's unkillable. And I came out to LA in 2016 and attempted to get going the TV version of the play. And people thought I was out of my mind. I was laughed out of rooms practically. But I had all this material that I'd created for what the serialized version of the story would be. And so, what happened was Mimi O'Donnell, who had run the LAByrinth Theatre Company, and had produced the play off-Broadway, had moved to Gimlet Media at the time. And they had just released their first scripted show, they were looking for another scripted show. They wanted ideally a horror piece. And she knew that I had been exploring a serialized version of Dolores' story. And she brought the project to Gimlet, and that's how that happened.

It's a very bizarre, bizarre, bizarre, fortuitous set of circumstances. And when we made the podcast, I had kind of let go of the idea of the TV show, I thought, 'Well, I tried to do it, it's not going to happen. It's totally fine.' And just focused on making the best audio production that we could possibly make. And in hindsight, I don't think it could have happened another way. I think if we had been trying to get a TV show going by making a podcast, I think it probably would not have worked.

Sadie: Right. Having all these different iterations of the story being told, and especially finding Dolores' voice, you know, reimagining it over and over again, to how it's being delivered and how audiences are experiencing it, what was that process like in terms of rewriting it for those different formats, to working with your actors and all that?

Aaron: That's a great question. Working with actors is my favorite thing in the world. I would say I got into this business because I love working with actors. Fundamentally, I think it's why so much of what I was doing the theater one-person plays because I just love that immersion with actors. So, the process I mean, in terms of voice specifically, I've been living in Washington Heights for 10 years and she was very specifically based on specific people that I knew there. And then there was a process of really tailoring it to Daphne's voice, which is, as I said, really, my favorite thing to do is to immerse with an actor and say, 'Alright, how do we make this sound like it's not written?' That's really always my goal. How do we make this so seamless that the writing disappears?

And then, in terms of Dolores' voice specifically, before the TV version happened, the play had been published and licensed, and I'd seen other people play Dolores. So, I was lucky to have had the experience of seeing other actresses play the same text that had been tailored to Daphne and bring out different things. And so, to bring all of that into the process of tailoring it to Justina [Machado], who is so different than Daphne, but equally extraordinary, I mean, you've seen it, she's unbelievable at what she does in this thing. So by the time we got to that process, the idea of tailoring it to Justina specifically was a thrill. I mean, it's honestly, it's my favorite thing to do. It's like, ‘Alright, how do we again, hopefully, make it sound like the writing is gone and that this is just coming out of your mouth?’

Sadie: I think that’s so important for writers, especially for those in the earlier stages of their writing journey, it’s important to hear their words come alive, especially for that rewriting process, dialogue, all of it. Find actors, they’re out there. They want to help. And I think it's so cool that you had those different iterations, going from Daphne's voice and how people are playing Daphne as this character.

Aaron: Yeah! And I was very lucky early in my career in New York, I had been an assistant working on musicals. So, I found myself around a lot of really incredible New York actors and Broadway actors, who would be very gracious with me as a very young playwright and do table reads for me. So, I was really lucky to have a lot of experience hearing amazing, amazing, amazing people read stuff and over the course of years, really learn how to relinquish what I thought it needed to be. And if an actor as great as Justina Machado is stumbling on something, it's not her, it's the line. You gotta listen to the actor, I think.

Sadie: Oh, absolutely. 100%. Another element that was really enjoyable in watching this show was this little wink at the audience of your writing journey of this show and its story from starting out as a play to seeing the podcaster covering this story – all of these layers of world-building. Because it's now a TV series, how much more were you diving into making sure that Washington Heights is a character?

Aaron: That's another great question. So, Washington Heights is absolutely a character in the show. And it was really important to us - we shot the majority of the show in in Canada - it was really important to us that we did represent actual Washington Heights that we let Washington Heights speak for Washington Heights. And one of the most surreal moments of my life was when our locations team actually got the very building that I lived in for 10 years in Washington Heights, where we shot bits of our pilot. So, Dolores returning to her old building, that's my old stoop. Like that's where I wrote the play and the podcast.

Sadie: That is so cool.

Aaron: It was so beyond bizarre. And, it was important we cast a lot of folks who had lived in Washington Heights and really knew what that was. We had a Washington Heights consultant that we brought on, it was really, really, really important to us, that the character of that location, be represented authentically and with love and respect.

As exactly as you say, we have this new frame of the meta, the play, and the podcast based on her story, which came from knowing that we wanted to set the Washington Heights piece in 2019, pre-COVID, so that it didn't become about COVID. And unlike in the play and the podcast, which then is narrated from immediately following the events of that first season, setting in 2019 gave us the opportunity to say, 'Well, what has happened in those four years? Where is Dolores now?' And in the writers' room, we were really taken by the idea of this character who just wants to be literally and figuratively underground. She wants to be left alone. She wants to be under the radar and then suddenly being world famous. What does that mean for her?

Sadie: Right, and also battling the idea that she doesn't want to be a serial killer, but here she is. It’s a really fun character. And going off of that, her character’s journey and an arc, with everything that's coming into play, was there more fine tuning that you had to do because it was a TV series now?

Aaron: Very much so. So much of the story, certainly in the podcast is in that basement cocoon, and that basement cocoon is really important for a lot of reasons. But we didn't want the series to feel claustrophobic. At moments, it's claustrophobic when Dolores needs to feel that claustrophobia for story to move. But the series, we want it to feel big and cinematic and epic. I mean, I think of her as an epic character on the scale, if I may humbly say I think of her as a character from a Greek tragedy. So, there were a lot of conversations about how do we open it up visually.

At the same time, the play is a monologue play. And so, it operates very much the same way as the podcast, which is that it activates the imagination, and you the audience, the listener, are creating the images of the violence and the gore, etc, etc. And for a visual medium, a little goes a long way. If we're not activating the imagination the same, we were showing people what this looks like, it's about a quick pop here and there. And it's about relying on, again, you can show Justina's amazing face, and that says everything that you need to know, and the podcast required two paragraphs. So, it was this simultaneous dance of how do we open it up? And how do we, at the same time, simplify it? And that was the journey of it.

Sadie: When putting together the writers’ room with your co-showrunner Dara Resnik, what kind of voices were you looking to add to the mix to heighten that world-building?

Aaron: Well, it was really crucial. I mean, I'm a white Jew from Texas. That's number one. It was really, really, really important that we surround ourselves, that I surround myself with writers of color, and writers that represented other characters that we had in the show; it was important we had a lot of queer representation in that room, we had a lot of Latino representation in the room. That was number one.

I also was always looking for, what I like to call the 'How dare you?' gesture. It's the, ‘How dare you that? We can't do that on TV. We can't actually identify with a character who's doing that.’ We were looking for writers who embraced the 'How dare you?' gesture in material that did things that I went, ‘Oh, my God, you can't do that.’ But did it absolutely, truthfully, and in a grounded way. And they would say, 'No, no, we are going to do that gesture. But we're going to follow that through and really take seriously the experience of the human character behind that.' That was the room that we built.

Sadie: Yeah, I love that approach behind the ‘How dare you’ gesture. It reminds me of the first time we see people eating the empanadas - you're basically serving the community. [laughs]

Aaron: [laughs] Yes, serving the community. Yeah, that's the 'How dare you?' We were looking for writers that had unconventional ideas that we could follow through in a grounded way with Dolores.

Sadie: Which, in a very weird, cannibalistic way, you do make it grounded.

Aaron: Thank you for saying that. That's a great relief to hear.

Sadie: Taking a step back, what inspired you to become a writer?

Aaron: I was a musical theater kid, and really still am. And was a child actor in Texas, growing up and did musicals there. And there was someone, a theater teacher, that when I was in the third grade said to me, 'You're going to be a writer. I want you to write a musical.' And so, I started writing in the third grade, I wrote a musical and a play. Strangely enough, the musical was about cannibalism. And the play was about a kid who was infected with HIV from a used needle on the street.

Sadie: You wrote this in the third grade?!

Aaron: Yes. And so, I've always been writing since then. When, I moved to New York, after high school, I didn't go to college, I moved to New York, I was 18, and thought my career was going to be directing musicals. And really was trying to focus on directing for a long time and at a point, finally faced that as a young director, I didn't know any writer who was going to just hand me their masterwork, to direct and thought, 'Alright, I really should focus on writing for myself.' And started really focusing on writing plays.

And that's where the solo pieces came from, because I was having such trouble getting plays done in New York City. But I was doing these readings with these incredible Broadway actors that I knew. And so, at a point, I thought, all right, I'm gonna write something where the reading is the thing, like it's a guy sitting at a table, I used to call them Grand Guignol in the style of Spalding Gray. And so, it's an actor sitting with one piece and that's it. So, if this never goes any further than a reading, at least those in the room will have experienced what the thing was meant to be. And that became the focus of my career for many years in New York. And it's like, ironically, has spawned a television show. [laughs]

Sadie: [laughs] I'm hoping there is a second season, but do you think you'll take up the reins as a director on a few episodes?

Aaron: I would very much like to. I directed the podcast and I direct my work in the theater. Yes, I very much would like to and to the second season point, there is certainly a lot more of Dolores’ story to tell. I'm very hopeful that people watch the first season and that will help us to be able to tell more of the story. Whether it's me directing a couple of episodes in the second season or something else, that's very much something I'm actively pursuing.

Sadie: Yeah, I hope so. What is it about the horror genre that you seem to have anchored a lot of work in, in that you’re able to tell certain stories or themes that you want to explore through that genre?

Aaron: Well, I'm really fascinated by fear as a subject. Like for me, it's less about the genre itself and more the subject matter. I was always fascinated, in my theater career, by the disappearance of the stage thriller, and horror theater in America specifically. So, I have been really fascinated with the Grand Guignol of Paris and the stage thrillers of the 40s through the 70s. And the experience of being scared and facing fear in a room full of people was something that I just went, 'Why am I not in the theater and live performance seeing this very much?' And so that's where these monologue plays came from. It was how do we sort of reinvent, how to do that now for audio and screen? The extension of that fascination for me creatively is about human as monster.

So much of mainstream, I find, and I love mainstream horror, and so much of it is about fear of the other, fear of the vampire, the ghost, the monster. I became really fascinated in doing research on the Grand Guignol, the Grand Dame Guignol, which is movies like Sunset Boulevard, and movies like Whatever Happened to Baby Jane, about a human as monster - what are we capable of? People, like Dolores, who may hold at a distance, ‘Well, that's not me, for this reason, this reason, this reason, this reason. And on top of that, I would never behave the way that she behaves.’ To me, the creative exercise is going, 'No dear viewer. She's you. She's me. She's all of us. And we're gonna take you step by step, by step, by step, by step through how and why you would do the exact same thing.’

Sadie: It's her act of survival. And I think if push comes to shove, we would probably do the exact same thing.

Aaron: Yeah. And horror is I think the way to tell a story like that. I mean, it’s why horror is in the title. I think that gives the piece permission to go there; to exercise the violence and the gore. While really, I hope, trying to tell a story that's about identification with someone that we otherwise, I mean, really, it's that fundamental, I think.

Sadie: Yeah, 100%. I think that because it’s a universal, I think it will resonate with a lot of your audience that are watching this.

Aaron: Absolutely the hope. Thank you for saying that.

Sadie: How much did you have your hand in casting and getting talents like Cyndi Lauper to join this cast?

Aaron: The casting process was meticulous. As I said, I love actors. Casting is perhaps my favorite if not one of my favorite pieces of the process. We knew that with the sole exception of Kit Updike who came with us from the podcast, that this was going to be a totally new incarnation of the piece. And we were really, really, really, really, really meticulous about how to surround Justina in the best possible way in talking about it being a piece of identification. The idea was always that we surround Dolores with this sort of kooky off kilter cast of characters that by extension make her look like the sane one. So, we're anchored to the serial killer because everybody else is crazy. Like she's looking around going like, 'Am I the only sane one in the room?' And oddly enough, she often is.

Cyndi, that's a character that was not in the play or the podcast. There was this idea in the writers’ room that was completely organic to that process of a Broadway usher who moonlights as a P.I. because I want to see that story. And Cyndi became this prototype for this character. And on the page that character's name was Cyndi. And it was one of our brilliant casting directors, Terri Taylor, who said, 'We should go to Cyndi.' And we thought, 'Oh, really? She's not going to do this.' And we sent to the material, and we were absolutely stunned that she's like, 'Yeah, of course, I want to do this.' And her one request was that we not call the character Cyndi, which we were happy to oblige. And she was a dream. I mean, really just a joy to have around. She's fantastic in the show. And then wrote a song and recorded a song for us that's being released to coincide with the launch of the series called "Oh, Dolores" which is, I mean, I can't find words to express how thrilling that is.

Sadie: What was the biggest learning curve from the various stages of these various adaptations or maybe a creative challenge that you fully leaned into and will take with onto your next writing projects or, hopefully, next season of this show?

Aaron: This is gonna sound like bullshit, but it really isn't - trust in the character, honestly. I've been working on this for 10 years. And there were many, many, many, many, many times when it really looked like it was not going to happen along the way that the play wasn't gonna happen. And the podcast wasn't going to happen, and then that the TV series wasn't gonna happen. And at a point, I think I had to kind of like relinquish, I had to sort of surrender to Dolores. Honestly, I believe in this character. And it will happen in the moment that is supposed to happen in the context that are supposed to happen with the people that it’s supposed to happen with. And very happily it has. So, I hope going in, God willing if we're able to tell more of her story on television, what I hope to take with me is a kind of like, ‘It’s OK’ I strive for a kind of Zen peace. I believe in Dolores, and I'm along for the ride.

Sadie: Yeah, you’re gonna make Dolores believers.

Aaron: I talk about her like she's real or if something goes wrong, I say,’ Oh, God, we've upset Dolores.’ I feel her, you know?

Sadie: Yeah. What's that tale if you say “Bloody Mary” in the mirror three times?

Aaron: Oh god, yes! Yes, yes, yes. [laughs]

Sadie: If only we were so lucky for Dolores to pop up like that.

Aaron: Yeah, God willing. That's another horror movie, Dolores actually manifesting.

Sadie: And she's surprised that she's here now, ‘Why would you do this to me?’

Aaron: [laughs] Why would you conjure me? I was peaceful.

The Horror of Dolores Roach premieres on July 7, 2023, on Prime Video.