From creator Danny Strong and inspired by the best-selling book of the same name, the limited Hulu series Dopesick delves into how Purdue Pharma created the worst drug epidemic in American history when they pushed their opioid while lying about how addictive it truly is. Threading stories about Big Pharma, a small mining community, and the DEA, the villains become clear while the ordinary people try to struggle through each day just to make it to the next.

During this 1-on-1 interview with Collider, writer/director Strong talked about how outraged this story made him, where to draw the line when it comes to the rabbit hole of research, his strengths as a director, getting Michael Keaton involved, and what he hopes people take from watching the show.

Collider: Thank you for talking to me. This is definitely not easy material. This story is heartbreaking, it’s tragic, it made me want to scream while I was watching it.

DANNY STRONG: Yeah.

What sort of mindset do you have to be in, to decide to create a show telling this story and know that you’ll actually have to be living in this world for however long that takes?

STRONG: An outraged mindset. Just outraged by reading and researching the facts of what Purdue Pharma did and how much destruction they were able to cause through blatant lies, through manipulation, through falsified studies. The details of it are so enraging and caused so much destruction by a company that is owned by a single family. And it’s not like the whole family worked at the company. It was a small group of people in this family. Six, seven or 10 people could be responsible for so much death and then make billions from it, and are gonna get away with it, at the end of the day. It’s truly one of the most outrageous, shocking stories that I’ve ever come across and I just thought, “People need to know this. They need to know what happened.”

john-hoohenakker-dopesick
Image via Hulu

RELATED: Michael Keaton on ‘Dopesick’ and Why This Was an Important Story to Tell

It was so interesting to watch because I’m one of those people where addiction runs through generations of my family, so when I had abdominal surgery, I only took ibuprofen. When you take something like this on, how do you know when to stop falling down the rabbit hole and to just walk away, or where to draw the line because it seems like it would just be an endless pit?

STRONG: Yeah, that’s a great question. Rabbit hole is the exact word I used for researching Purdue Pharma. You fall down this rabbit hole, and then you just can’t believe what they did next, what they did next, and what they did next. With writing a non-fiction project, you can’t be overwhelmed by the research, or you you’ll never write it. At a certain point, after a little bit of research – for me, a little bit of research is maybe reading two or three books – you can get what happened in the macro sense. In a micro sense, you can get not every detail, but about 70% maybe. And then, at that point, it’s time to start writing. It’s time to start to construct your story. The research never stops, but the research comes in between drafts. I’ll do another draft, read another book, and there’ll be more information that I can infuse into it. It’s just this ongoing process, as opposed to saying, “I’m just gonna disappear for a year in research and never write.” I can’t even process that much information. So, once I figure out what I believe the story to be, then it’s time to put the books away and it’s time to start telling that story.

You’ve directed a few episodes of television and you’ve directed a film. What would you say most defines you, as a director? Where do you feel your biggest strengths are, when it comes to that aspect of the storytelling?

STRONG: For me, it’s two elements. I think that my biggest strength in being a director is that I’m an actor and have the ability to talk to other actors and block the scenes. I’m on their side. I’m one of them, and I think actors feel really safe with me. I think that’s my biggest strength. But I also think it’s just being the writer of it as well. I know, at my core, what I want the scene to do emotionally, either within the performances or what I want the emotional effect to be on the audience. I can really try to carve that out through my direction, or sometimes it’s just in post-production and how to maximize that emotional respect. There are many, many directors that are more talented than I am, but I feel uniquely good about directing my own writing. I just know what I ultimately want it to be, and I do have a great experience working with the actors.

dopesick-michael-keaton-social-featured
Image via Hulu

How did Michael Keaton get involved with this? He seems like an actor who doesn’t take work because he’s obligated to take it, but that it has to compel him in some way. What was it like to have that collaboration with him?

STRONG: Well, Michael Keaton is probably as difficult an actor as you can get to say yes to your project. Everyone wants him, everyone loves him, and he says no, a lot. I didn’t expect him to say yes, especially because it’s an ensemble. He wasn’t the lead role, and he’s one of the biggest movie stars. So, my expectations were very low that he would say yes to this, but he was our first offer because why not? For the first offer, why not go to your dream choice, pie in the sky? And then, lo and behold, he said yes and he wanted to do it. It was just so thrilling to have him on board. And then, you get all of these other great actors because I’m not the only one who loves Michael Keaton. Everybody loves Michael Keaton. All of these actors were dying to be in a project with Michael Keaton. And then, we had Barry Levinson directing the first two [episodes], and that was the same thing. These two icons were in for the show, and it was just a magnet for talent. And then, the show came together with this incredible cast, once we were out of the gate with Barry and Michael.

Were you thinking about or picturing Michael Keaton at all, when you were writing it, or do you not like to do that when you’re in the writing stage?

STRONG: For the most part, I don’t picture anybody when I’m writing something. This may sound weird, but when I’m writing, I’m playing all the parts as I write, so I’m literally just playing every role and trying to find the voice of the character through my own interpretation, as a character actor. That’s how I put it together. And then, once you have it, you start thinking about who it should be and different ideas come. The studio and the network start giving you lists of names of their top choices and it’s always the most famous people and, hopefully, the most talented people. For Dr. Finnix, Michael Keaton was there, and I was like, “Michael Keaton? Oh, my God, that would be unbelievable, if Michael Keaton was Dr. Finnix.” I didn’t believe we would be able to get him and was just stunned when he said yes.

will-poulter-dopesick
Image via Hulu

How hard is it to become invested in a story like this and have a hand in telling this story, knowing that there really is no resolution for the lives of these people and these families? They’re still destroyed, no matter what the outcome is. How hard is it to tell this story and not really be able to close the book on it and move on because there isn’t a good answer?

STRONG: There were two elements. Partly, I wanted to tell the origin story of the crisis, so that people could see how this all began, and there was a natural ending to it following this U.S. Attorney case because the case does have an ending to it. There’s a partial win, and partially not, and that enabled the crisis to balloon even more because of the not of that win that these U.S. Attorneys put together. It was a great case that they put together, so why didn’t it ultimately put Purdue out of business, or really curtail Purdue? That, in and of itself, is a fascinating story and that’s where we end with, by showing what ultimately foiled this great case these Assistant U.S. Attorneys and these prosecutors put together.

The other thing is that I’m hoping that this can give maybe some sort of closure for people that don’t understand what happened, that were victims of the crisis or had family members that were victims. In the last few episodes, there are solutions and pathways out of an opioid abuse disorder. You should absolutely go to a doctor and not just trust the show, but there are solutions that are offered to people that can be really effective and really life-saving to many people. There was a goal of promoting ideas that can help us turn the corner and that we could maybe find a path of recovery, in a way to never forget what happened, but to hopefully be able to start the beginning of healing.

It also seems like it would show people that the stigma is really in the wrong place.

STRONG: Yeah. That was a big part of Beth Macy’s motivation with the book Dopesick. So many people think that their brother, their sister, their cousin, or people themselves think that they’re just losers, screw ups, junkies, and drug addicts. What this show does, and what Beth showed so beautifully in the book, is that it’s so much more complicated than that. Your brain chemistry has been changed with opioid use. It’s not just Oxycontin, but used over a long period of time, it actually changes your brain chemistry, to the point where you think you’re going to die and you’re in so much pain, if you don’t get more, your next fix. The term for that condition is called dopesick. That’s what being dopesick is. Hopefully, it will give people an understanding of what either they, themselves, are going through, or what people they know are going through. That can also hopefully lead them to new ideas and solutions, moving forward.

Dopesick is available to stream at Hulu.