Dara Resnik on How ‘The Horror of Dolores Roach’ Finally Made it to the Small Screen [Interview]

Earlier this year, viewers were treated to an updated adaptation of a deadly Broadway musical in The Horror of Dolores Roach.

The dark comedy adapted from Aaron Mark’s podcast of the same name and musical Sweeney Todd, brings plenty of fascinating characters, intriguing storytelling, and a shockingly sympathetic anti-hero to the small screen.

I recently had the chance to speak with Showrunner and Executive Producer Dara Resnik about the long road to the screen for The Horror of Dolores Roach and writing such a dynamic, sympathetic, murderous protagonist.

“I was sent the podcast at The Horror of Dolores Roach by an old friend of mine, who was the manager of Aaron Mark, who created it,” Resnik began.

“He was a playwright in New York and hadn’t done any [TV] before. So, they needed a supervisor to see him through the pilot process. And then the TV pitching process.”

Though not Latine herself, Resnik said that there were aspects of Dolores that intrigued her. When it came time to pitch her involvement in the project, she wanted to make sure everyone in the room felt she was the one for the job.

“I said, I want to be clear. I’m in love with this project, but I’m not Latine. I am, however, a very rage-y woman with a lot of urges, that I feel like this really scratched for me.”

What followed was a lengthy and arduous journey to take Aaron’s story of a woman out for revenge from podcast to television show. 

“That meant guiding us through the process of adapting the podcast into a pilot, helping [Mark] with the pitches to all the networks when it was time to take it out to Amazon and the other places that we pitched it to running a writers room,” Resnik shared.

“We had two different writers rooms, one that took place over the pandemic, which obviously, was a little bit different than some of them had been in the past. I didn’t even know what Zoom was before we chose this project. And now it’s in all our lives constantly,” she said.

Though the writers attempted to set the series in a pre-pandemic world, some of those experiences and emotions still slipped in.

“The thing that was interesting about Dolores was how influenced it was [by the times]. I mean, sure, some of these themes were in the podcast to start with. But her agoraphobia, her xenophobia, her feeling like the world outside that basement was dangerous for her just got that much more acute.”

“When we were breaking those stories, in the pandemic itself, even though we started it intentionally in 2019, it felt very influenced by 2020.”

The writing and production process even took Resnik and the entire team into lockdown. 

“Amazon requested that we do what they call piloting it, rather than picking the whole thing up to series at once, which we were totally fine with doing. We shot a pilot in the summer of 2021. And then they took a minute to decide what they wanted to do with this very strange cannibalistic show,” Resnik said.

Through the breaks in production on Dolores Roach, Resnik found herself on another genre show, Marvel’s Echo, when she got the news about the series getting picked up.

“This was not [Amazon’s] sort of down-the-middle choice normally. And so, we knew it was risky for them and they were really great along the way of championing this very strange thing that we’d given them. And then they asked us if we would pick up the next seven episodes the following summer so that it would match the pilot.”

With such an entertaining season following Dolores and her circle of friends and acquaintances, the conversation turned to casting, the writers room, and the directors. She praised Justina Machado’s performance in particular.

“She was able to do this thing where, in one breath, she was desperate and knocking on the door, and then the next you were worried she was gonna kill you,” Resnik said of Machado’s performance and range.  

The way Machado brings Dolores to the screen in a way that makes her simultaneously sympathetic and vengeful is impressive.

“She has that sort of sweet smile. She almost looks like a woodland creature. You know what I mean? She’s just so innocent and sweet-looking. She’s like a Disney character. And then and then she and then she just turns and she’s full of rage. And you’re like, oh, that this tiny person is going to kill me,” she said.

Machado’s range, paired with the increasingly chaotic events unfolding in the latter part of the season, leads to a surprisingly grounded and memorable moment when Luis, played by Alejandro Hernandez, shares a part of his traumatic history through an engaging monologue.

Resnik explained how the writers approached heavy topics, specifically with the co-writer of Episode 7, Joe Hortua.

“It was a lot of really, cautiously talking in the room,” she said.

“But how do we all feel once we’re in a visual medium about these moments? How much do we need to see, how much do we not need to see? How much of a break does the audience need from some of this breathlessness?”

“Joe and I went back and forth on that draft a lot. It was interesting. It’s painful. It’s painful for him to think about that and to write that in,” Resnik said.

“To me, that was especially the reason to do it. One of the things that we talked a lot about in that episode, not only was Luis victim and yes, Alejandro, is incredible in that scene. But also, Dolores is really the sexual aggressor there. Calling that out making sure that that was clear to an audience in 2023 who know what consent is,” she continued.

“I love that episode so much. Because the show is so go, go, go. You’re so in the binge at that point. And there’s a few places in that episode where you sort of get to take a deep breath.”

The Horror of Dolores Roach is available to stream on Prime Video.

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