Aaron Mark’s darkly comedic The Horror Of Dolores Roach makes you think twice before allowing an empanada anywhere near your mouth. Mark’s delicious story of gentrification in New York City’s Washington Heights began its creative expression in an off-Broadway stage production at the LAByrinth Theater Company in 2013. Later, it was reimagined as a scripted podcast, and now, it’s a sharply funny television series. Just don’t eat the empanadas!

“I was living in Washington Heights. I lived there for ten years and I was watching it gentrify at the speed of light. I was really struck by the idea that I was watching the neighborhood I lived in feed on itself. I felt like I was watching my community cannibalize itself. And to me, that was really the light bulb. I went, ‘Oh my God, it’s cannibalism story,’” recalls Mark. Arguably, an unconventional takeaway about a community rapidly losing its character, but hey!

Aaron Mark is a musical theater kid who loves Sweeney Todd – purely for creative rather than culinary reasons. “I went back to the origin of the Todd story from the mid-1800s, the original Penny Dreadful. I went to the original stage melodrama that the actor Todd Slaughter did for thousands of performances. I was so fascinated by this character,” adds Mark.

“With seemingly nothing new to say about this character, I thought, there is a way to tell this story in a new way set in present-day Washington Heights. I had been a Daphne Rubin-Vega super fan and was simultaneously doing a series of one-person horror plays that nobody asked for. And I wanted to write something special for Daphne.” And so, Empanada Loca was created for the stage. Daphne serves as an executive producer on the television series.

Driven by his pursuit of one-act monologue plays and the idea of Washington Heights cannibalizing itself, the character of Dolores Roach was born. “Daphne and I had developed the play all around New York for about two years,” continues Mark. They coined the term “Grand Guignol horror in the style of Spalding Gray” to describe Aaron Mark’s play which culminated in a gory crescendo. (Spaulding Gray was a unique playwright and humorist who pushed the comedic boundaries of one-act plays).

“The play is about triggering the imagination,” continues Mark. Dolores Roach sits on her massage table and tells her story. “The audience is culpable in creating the imagery themselves. And that principle carried through to the podcast.” The podcast was produced in 2018, which starred Rubin-Vega, alongside the voices of Bobby Cannavale, Richard Kind, Vanessa Williams, Michael Urie, Lea DeLaria, Donnell Rawlings, and Amy Ryan.

Aaron Mark carried the principle of audience imagination to his podcast as he shifted the story to another medium – television. “We were actually gonna show people what we hadn’t depicted before. And I think to that extent, we revelled in the kind of macabre nature of it a little bit more.” Justina Machado plays Dolores Roach in the TV series, and once again, she works as a masseuse extraordinaire at “Magic Hands.”

Empanada Loca had some story changes beyond the constraints of a specific medium. “We didn’t want the podcast to be a facsimile of the play in 2015. The same is true for the story in the television version. We re-approached every character, every plot element to make sure that this felt true, current, fresh, and urgent above all.”

“There are different characters that have been incorporated into the TV series that are not in the podcast. There are characters that are mentioned in the play that are not in either other version. It was also very important to me that people who know the podcast and know the play, wouldn’t say, “Oh, okay, it’s just a visualization of the same thing I’ve seen before. It was very important to me to keep that audience on their toes and surprise them throughout.”

“The biggest change structurally that was made for the television version is the idea that the central story remains in 2019 pre-COVID because I felt that any story that incorporates COVID becomes about COVID. We now have a framing device that opens and closes the first season.”

In the television series, Dolores Roach has just been released from prison after sixteen years and wants to start a new life in her old neighbourhood. “She wants desperately to be left alone. She wants to live a peaceful solitary life under the radar, but instead, has now become world famous.” The theme of notoriety, celebrity, and infamy were expanded in the television series. Aaron Mark confesses that this was a byproduct of all the true crime television currently available.

The Gentrification Of Washington Heights

The specific part of New York city is integral to telling Dolores’ story. “I think from the perspective of the characters, gentrification is a personal experience. I couldn’t identify the original Washington Heights. Original is relative.”

“The story of our species is that we keep turning over and over. My endeavor with the character, with the piece, was not to make a statement about the original Washington Heights that must be maintained, but simply to say the experience of these individuals watching the community that they know being erased, is a very tricky, complicated, frustrating, terrifying thing. And I think that’s universal.” Change that you didn’t invite or can’t control is unnerving.

Aaron Mark

“I think we all relate to returning to a place that we thought we knew that was special to us, this forever frozen in time, and seeing that that’s not the way our species operates. And that can be quite horrifying and devastating.”

Other Influences

Apart from Sweeney Todd, Aaron Mark looked to shows like Weeds, Breaking Bad, and Dexter for creative inspiration. “We referenced other television serial killers and how Dolores was different than them. In terms of films, we talked a lot about Tarantino, specifically Jackie Brown, which is a huge reference point for me. It’s also Baby Jane, it’s Sunset Boulevard.”

Dolores Roach is not a bad person. She just does bad things… by accident. “I believe that Dolores wants desperately to be good. I believe that she is a serial killer who’s not a sociopath. Which is to say, she has a conscience and she spends the events of the season grappling with what she’s done.”

Dolores doesn’t justify her deeds or try to convince herself she has no other options. She’s neither a victim nor heroine. Somehow, trouble keeps finding her. Her internal monologue is, “What is wrong with me? Am I the monster? Am I the problem? I don’t recognize myself.” The absurdist comical nature of The Horror Of Dolores Roach thrives on her impulsive nature. Aaron Mark ultimately sees this as an addiction story. “There’s something that is set off chemically for her when the first kill happens. There’s a taking of power, taking control back that becomes addictive. She can’t stop. There’s a rush. It’s why every time there’s a kill, there’s a dissociative moment where she becomes very fascinated by the candle in her massage spa. She becomes momentarily, deeply at peace and connected.” Positively Zen.

Then the withdrawal symptoms occur. “She knows it’s bad for the people around her, but she she’s been activated.”

Dolores’ life isn’t comfortable by any stretch. She’s constantly enticed to return to drug dealing and money is always in short supply. She’s also realized that she was betrayed by the man that she went to prison for.

“She’s been backed into a corner. I don’t think she sees herself as a capital V victim. Certainly the world has victimized her. The systems have all worked against her,” elaborates Aaron Mark.

Despite her predicament, Dolores always maintains her wicked sense of humor. “And she keeps going. She’s unkillable. She’s gonna find a way. She’s gonna find a way and then she snaps.”

She creates mood boards to create a plan for her life. And she follows through. “She’s a survivor. Not necessarily a fighter, but she’s always moving forward.”

Comedic Style

Aaron Mark calls The Horror Of Dolores Roach a horror comedy. “I think of it as different than what a lot of mainstream horror comedy is. A lot of mainstream horror comedy  marries the horror and the comedy in the same moment. We tried to retain the grand principle of the hot and cold shower, which is the tonal vacillation between the two genres.”

“When we’re in a moment of horror, we try to keep it a pure moment of horror. When we’re in a moment of comedy, we’re in a pure moment of comedy. And that back and forth is what keeps the audience on their toes because that’s the experience Dolores is having. She’s trying to figure out, ‘Am I trapped in a horror movie or am I in a stoner comedy?’”

Maintaining the tone of the comedy is a narrow literary tightrope. “In terms of keeping me on track, it’s always about the awareness of the characters. I never wanted it to be the directors, the writers, the show making a comment. The characters are also experiencing this. So, we have a lot of moments in the season where Dolores and Luis (Alejandro Hernandez) are looking at each other asking, “What the hell is happening?” That was the way to keep it grounded.”

Dolores Roach (Justina Machado) & Luis Batista (Alejandro Hernandez) Photo courtesy of Prime Video

Aaron Mark is certainly mindful of pushing the envelope too far. He questions, “Can we really do this? Is this gonna hold water?” And ultimately in the cut we decided, ‘Yeah, no we have to go this far. We’ve built it this way. We’ve come this far We can’t back away now?'” After all, a cannibalism stoner comedy begs for it to swing for the fences.

After much deliberation, Mark perceives The Horror Of Dolores Roach as more of a horror than a comedy even though there are equal elements of both. One can’t exist without the other.

The Writers’ Room

The writers’ room began by taking inventory of all the source material from the play, the podcast and everything in between. There was also a large treasure chest of ideas that didn’t make it to either of those media to reconsider. Then, Aaron decided how to make the story as economic and streamlined as possible. “We chipped away at it from there. It was a very natural, iterative process. There are passages of text in the episodes now that are almost verbatim what they were in the play ten years ago. Ruthie, the character Cindy Lauper plays, was a total invention of the writers’ room.”

Dolores’ first kill was probably the most difficult scene to write. “I can’t count how many iterations of that there were. That was was rewritten and rewritten. We want to make sure we are aligned with what Dolores is doing and why, but we’re not excusing it. We understand that the individual on the other side of her “Magic Hands” must eventually meet an end.”

Aaron Mark defines himself as a horror writer above all else. “I’m always looking for grounded horror. I’m interested in human as a monster. I think a lot of horror in the mainstream are about fear of other, the supernatural, the vampire, the monster, the werewolf. I’m very interested in what we as a species are capable of. I’m very interested creatively in connecting the dots between a viewer (or a listener) and a character that they think they can identify with.“