"It's been a life-changing experience for me": How a play about drinking helped Andre Royo get sober

Television and movies have a bad habit of portraying addicts as toothless, run-down, bent-over stragglers who can barely walk and communicate. This couldn't be farther from the truth — many addicts look just like the person sitting next to you on the train or across from your desk at work. Actor Andre Royo spoke to me candidly on "Salon Talks" about his own recent journey with addiction and the dangers of attaching stigmas to addicts — all part of his performance in the one-man show "Drinking in America," written by three-time Obie Award winner Eric Bogosian and available now on Audible.

In fact, taking on this project felt like fate during a dark time in his own life, Royo shared with me. "I felt a sense of loneliness. I was really into drinking at that point and I just wasn't happy. I'm thinking to myself, 'I'm going to get f**ked up and I'm on a one way ticket,' like 'Leaving Las Vegas.'"

When Royo called up Bogosian, an old friend, his outlook began to change. "He was like, 'I've got this play, "Drinking in America."' I was like, 'I'm drinking right now. I don't know if I can do a one-man show. It's been 15 years since I've been on stage.' He was like, 'Well, I did it back in the day, and I wrote it when I was a year and six months sober.' If I said yes to this project, I'd be doing the rehearsal when I'm a year and six months. I felt like it was kismet."

According to the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services, 46.3 million people aged 12 or older (or 16.5% of the population) met the applicable DSM-5 criteria for having a substance use disorder in the past year, including 29.5 million people who were classified as having an alcohol use disorder and 24 million people who were classified as having a drug use disorder. But addiction stretches far beyond narcotics, which "Drinking in America" proves out in the 12 to 13 characters Royo portrays — from how we ride our ambition toward that good ole American need for success, womanizing, overeating and spending. With the legalization of sports betting and casinos popping up across the country, more and more Americans are finding themselves chained to things and activities that they don't need.

Royo is best known for a pivotal television role that taught him and America so much about addiction — playing recovering heroin addict and police informant Reginald "Bubbles" Cousins on HBO's "The Wire." Recently, he has appeared in the film "To Leslie" and the series "With Love," "Truth Be Told," "Empire" and "Hand of God."

Watch Andre Royo's "Salon Talks" episode here or read a Q&A of our conversation below to learn more about why Royo is sober today, his journey with fatherhood and how he found his way back to the stage. 

The following conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

How does it feel to be back home in New York City?

I'm feeling great, man. It feels good to be back home. I've been in LA for a while now, and I forgot a little bit about that New York energy. It's fantastic. The minute you land at the airport, you just feel yourself getting revved up. "I've got to get my luggage, I've got to get that cab, I've got to get to my Airbnb." You just feel alive again. That's what New York does, it hits you with a jolt of electricity. It's good to be home.

People know you as a talented actor. People know Eric Bogosian as a talented playwright and actor as well. You two linking up on this project, I feel like it's something special. Take us back to the beginning when you decided to do this.

Well, it's a long beginning. It comes in sections. I was with a dear friend of mine by the name of muMs. I don't know if you know him, muMs, the poet. That's my high school buddy. We were doing a play at The Lab called "The View From 151st Street." Every night after the show, muMs would go to Eric Bogosian's house to play poker. He invited me one day, and I went to Eric Bogosian's house, and he was a fan of "The Wire." He was telling me about his dealings with heroin and stuff like that. He was telling me how much Bubbles meant to him. We just hit it off, and we started playing poker. I'm not a good poker player, so I would lose my money. 

I love his writing, and I wanted to do "Talk Radio" one day. He wrote this play called "Talk Radio" that Oliver Stone did a movie about where he played the lead character. I fell in love with that play and that movie, so I told him, "I want to do 'Talk Radio' one day." Cut to, you know the game, I'm in LA doing shows, living my life, and then COVID hit. Once COVID hit, it just seemed to me, at that time, that things were over. Broadway was closed. I'd never heard of that. New York City was shut. New York City, we take pauses, but shut down? I just was like, "It's over." 

All of a sudden, we started coming back, and I got back into doing some TV, and it didn't feel the same. I felt a sense of loneliness. I was really into drinking at that point and I just wasn't happy. I'm thinking to myself, "I'm going to get f**ked up and I'm on a one way ticket," like "Leaving Las Vegas." I'm dealing with deaths in my life. I've lost some friends, and COVID hit, and I went through a divorce. I'm unhappy, and I said, "I've got to find my joy because I love the craft too much. I need to go back to New York and get on stage." 

I called Eric Bogosian up and said, "Yo, I want to get on stage." He was like, "I've got this play, 'Drinking in America.'" I was like, "I'm drinking right now. I don't know if I can do a one-man show. It's been 15 years since I've been on stage." He was like, "Well, I did it back in the day, and I wrote it when I was a year and six months sober." When we were talking, if I said yes to this project, I'd be doing the rehearsal when I'm a year and six months. I felt like it was kismet.

I said, "Eric, I'm going to take you up on that. Let's do 'Drinking in America.'" Once I said that, it just seemed like the universe was speaking for me. It just lined up. Audible called up. I don't even know how they heard about it. We were in Indiana, me and my director, Mark Armstrong, and met Jesse Eisenberg, who was working with Audible at the time. Again, we were thinking about "Talk Radio," and when we got to New York, "Talk Radio" couldn't happen because of some rights, or some legality. "Drinking in America" was all full steam ahead, and they said the same thing you said. They were like, "Eric Bogosian is writing, and you're acting. We want to do it."

I was like, "OK," and two, three months later, we're here. It's been a life-changing experience for me to be on stage back in New York, in front of my family, in front of my friends. My daughter never saw me act on stage before, so it was the first time for her. You've got to show her the reasons why dad's been away for moments in her life because of the craft. It's just been a monumental moment. I would put it right up there with my experiences with "The Wire."

The key in "Drinking in America" is stamina. You were on 1,000% from minute one, all the way to the end. The one thing that came to mind, I was like, "How's this guy not tired? He must have a Bowflex and a Peloton and a shake weight."

It's called a two-liter Coca-Cola and a lot of green tea. When we said yes and we were really getting into the complexities and the preparation, Eric Bogosian said, "You put your foot on the gas, and you don't let go." I'm a New Yorker; we move fast. Everything about us is just, go, go, go, get it done. Food to go, breakfast to go, get to work, get on the train. I would say it's in my DNA. You go as hard as you can until the buzzer buzzes. When the curtain closes, then you pass out. Believe me, when the show's over, I go out, I sign a couple of playbills, I say hi to a couple of people, and I'm running to bed.

I'm running to bed just to hit the bed and recharge. It's just energy that I think I'm born with, or grew up in. When you get on stage and you see that audience, there's an obligation, there's a relationship, and they're feeding you. When I walk out, and I see the audience, I see you in the audience for a second, I'm going, "Y'all came here for a show. Let me give you a show." That's my responsibility. If I feel myself getting low, I just close my eyes, or I just concentrate in the moment of my character, and I could feel you guys in the audience feeding me, "Do it, Dre. Do it." It's a give and take, and if you give me the energy, I'll give you the show.

There are some funny parts, too. Does the funny come easily to you? 

For me, the funny has come easy because I'm not trying to be funny. I'm a student of the craft. There was a moment when I was in school and my acting teacher at the time was telling me about Jack Lemmon. He said, "Any actor trying to be funny is the kiss of death." It's not something you should try to do. You should try not to be funny and that's funny. When you have an emotional scene and you're trying to get to a point where in certain roles or certain scenes, you're expected to cry, for me, it always worked where, when you try not to cry, when you're trying to stop yourself from crying, that's when you cry.

I think it's the same with comedy. I'm not a comedian and I think that's the hardest job in the business. I think those guys deserve more than they get as far as accolades, as far as awards, because to walk into a room where people are expecting you to be funny, "Make me laugh right now," that's a pressure I don't like to mess with, I don't f**k with. When I'm doing my roles, I would say I'm a comedic actor, where I know that there are moments that are funny, because we as an audience have a f**ked up idea of what's funny. When somebody busts their a** in front of us, we laugh.

I'm like, "S**t, I wish I was recording, so I can show it to my family at dinner."

Listen, Worldstar became famous, the phone became famous with that camera, from cats and people getting f**ked up. We have a horrible sense of humor. We laugh at anything, even when we are uncomfortable, it's an uncomfortable laugh. I don't know why it comes easy. Like I said, I just think, because I try not to be funny, I just try to be honest, and I think I leave it up to the audience. Most of the time, the audience is just as f**ked up as I am.

There's a collection of characters in your one-man show. Can you walk us through them?

It was interesting. There's about 12 or 13 characters in the show. When I was trying to memorize this goddamn 70 pages of lines, it was hard for me. I would memorize one monologue and forget the next one. What helped me digest the words was, I looked at all these characters as one. I felt like, in my relationship with alcohol, I'm a year and eight months sober now, but in my relationship with alcohol, I felt like I've been each one of these characters at one point in my life.

That's what weaves them together.

That's right. It is an addiction to something. They have different substances, but the addiction is the same. When you really want something, and you lose control of your desire for it, you're addicted. Some of these characters are addicted to the American dream, like the melting pot. It's about the immigrant from Havana who came in America and he really believes that if he works hard, all his dreams will come true. He gets caught up into that American dream, and he's just working, working, working, working, not having time for anything else, losing family, losing sleep, but he believes, if he works that hard, the dream will come true. Unfortunately, for five out of 10, it doesn't.

You just be caught in that hamster wheel, just working, and you forget how to live. Then, you've got the agent, Wired, who's f**king doing coke and drinking and he's into the Hollywood fame. He wants to be number one. Jay-Z said it best, fame is one of the worst addictions in the world. It makes you do s**t that you don't want to do just to be noticed, just to be seen.

Then, you've got the dude, the ceramic tile salesman, and he's addicted to despair. One thing that we know as artists, and you're a writer, a fabulous writer, sometimes you're in different hotels in different states, it's lonely. You sit around, bored out of your mind. I don't want to lose any sponsors, I would love to get on hotels.com, but any hotel, from one star to five star, week after week, it's a nightmare.

You're just sitting there, just lonely. You go down to the bar, you sit around, you're trying to make friends and cordial conversation with people that you don't know and you're not going to keep in touch with. You're just trying to make a connection for now. He's addicted to that, so he finds himself caught up in celebrating, hookers and champagne. These guys are all addicted and all lost in a certain bottle. It describes the alienation of men in post-modern time, where we as men built this idea of what masculinity is. We go, "We must protect, we must provide, we must stay strong." 

When I was growing up, and I look at my dad and my uncle, you had men that just were so hell-bent on being strong, not showing weakness. If you were too smart, you were a geek or a nerd. If you show vulnerability, you were a sucker or a marshmallow. Good guys finish last. This idea where men have to be strong and couldn't show emotions, work is hard. It wears you down, and all of a sudden, you can't go to anybody and go, "I'm f**king tired. I need a break," or else you're considered soft.

At what point in your life did you understand the flaw in that thinking? It took me a long time.

When I had my daughter. A daughter changes everything.

I just had a daughter three years ago.

It changes everything. And I knew it. I was in a club when I found out my wife at the time was pregnant. I'm celebrating, I'm in the club just getting drunk, hollering, hoping for a boy. "I'm going to get a boy, it's going to be hip-hop, it's going to be this, this and this." I remember going to the bathroom, and I took a piss, and I'm looking in the mirror, and I'm drunk as hell. I looked at myself, and I was like, "If I have a boy, I'm not going to change. Nothing is going to change about my lifestyle right now. It's going to be partying and bulls**t, and teaching my kid how to get laid and how to be a man. If I have a girl, I don't want her to be with a guy like me. I'm going to have to change. I'm going to have to be vulnerable. I'm going to have to open up, and really try to be a different idea of what a man is."

Once that opened up, I started looking at my dad, I started understanding my uncles, and seeing how they never showed me emotions. They busted their asses and worked hard for me, but I never saw them ask for help. I never saw them show any emotion but strength. I also saw them go to the bottle.

A lot of men have daughters, and they don't go through that change. I wonder, why did you have that change? Why did I have that change? Maybe we are good people.

You know what? I'm a mama's boy. I'm a mama's boy all the way, and she told me, she didn't care what I became, she didn't care what I did. She knew the hustle out in the streets was going to be . . . one way or another, she wanted me to just be a good person. Whatever job you had, even if you've got that illegal job, whatever job you've got, just try to be a good person. For me, that stuck. For me, understanding what a good person meant was breaking outside of barriers, thinking for yourself, and trying not to get caught in a cycle that you know is wrong. I always had this idea in my mind. 

When I hung out with my crew, we did some bad s**t. Everybody was doing bad s**t, but there were certain people within the crew that didn't know that they were doing bad s**t. They convinced themselves, "If I'm stealing, I need it. I've got to have it." It's about, only strongest survive. There were certain guys who knew they were doing bad, and when they did it, they got worse karma, because they knew they were acting outside of who they were. For me, I knew everything about myself. At one point or another, I had to at least gauge it to, are you being a good person? Maybe that's what opened up that moment of me looking into the mirror, drunk as f**k, about to have a kid, I was like, "I've got to be a good dad."

I wasn't acting at the time. I was doing a little theater here and there, but I was doing construction. My mind was telling me, "I'm about to tell this little kid, you could be anything you want to be," and I'm saying that with true belief. I didn't want my kid to look at me and go, "You wanted to be a construction worker? Is that what you wanted?" I was like, "I can't have that. I've got to have my kid look at me and believe what I'm about to tell them by action." I want my kid to look at me and say, "You're an actor. You always wanted to be that. You're speaking truth." I had to open up a vulnerability and just change my game.

Especially for you, "Drinking in America" is such an important piece of art because you played Bubbles on "The Wire," who was one of the most memorable, lovable addicts in television history. Do those worlds connect for you? Was there any inspiration in that?

I had a long stint with alcohol. In my preparation for Bubbles, I saw and met a lot of people in different variables of an addiction. Again, as a New Yorker, growing up, I saw guys and women coming out of offices in the middle of zero-degree weather having to have a cigarette, you had to have a smoke. I just looked at everything and realized: we're all addicted to something. Sugar is number one.

Even with the hard stuff, too. When I was on the corner, dudes in suits would pull up to buy crack, because it's Friday. A little Friday crack.

It's the accessibility to just get away, to escape. I've had many aspects of understanding that addiction is not the problem, it's the problem of self resilience. When you quit drinking, it's not like your life gets better. You still have the same problems. What happens is, you're just saying to yourself, "I don't need the liquor to handle my problems." Then, you've got to build a certain strength. I think we all have that strength. We just get worn down. 

Once you get a little taste of something that makes you feel better, you are going to do it, and you don't know you have a problem until it becomes a problem. Alcohol is something in our society that's just used and commercialized as a celebratory thing. We pop bottles when you want to celebrate. It's, "Happy New Year," drink all day. When you have a bad day, "Go get a drink; it'll make you feel better." 

It's medicine, and we do it all the time. We have beers and watch sports. Alcohol is connected to everything, and the person drinking doesn't know he has a problem until it becomes a problem. I think that's with anything, with sugar, obesity, with nicotine, with caffeine, we all have it. Once you, the individual, recognizes it, and understands that it's gotten away from him, he's doing it now when he doesn't want to do it, then he can start deciding on whether to make a change, and it's not easy. For me, I don't even know if I would be sober right now if I didn't make a decision, or things didn't start happening to me that made me have to make a real, rock-bottom choice. I lost some friends, I went through a divorce, my daughter graduated. I'm an empty-nester and I'm feeling like s**t, and I'm just drinking.

Trader Joe's was selling Japanese whiskey at $30 bucks a bottle. That's easy, I'm just going in. I get a phone call, and I don't mind sharing this with you, because we're family, and if it can help people out there, so be it. I got a call, and like I said, I'm a mama's boy, and my mom was diagnosed with Alzheimer's.

Sorry to hear that.

At first, I was boo-hooing. I'm talking to my friends, and most of my friends are like, "I lost my mom three years ago," or, "My mom is going through that now." I realized, I'm 50-something years old. It's just my turn to deal with grown-up s**t. If your mom is calling you and you're finding out that she has Alzheimer's, I have no time to be drunk. I have to always be ready. If that phone rings, and you need me, I'm ready. I can't be like, "I've got a hangover. I can't do it right now." Or, forget that you even called in the first place. 

Playtime is over. For me, that was my, for lack of a better word, bottom. I don't think there is a bottom. I think you make a choice after you get a couple of hits, and whatever your hit is that you can't take no more, you're going to make a choice to go one way or the other. My way was to put the bottle down, and make sure I could always pick up the phone. That was it, cold turkey, enough said. 

I realized once I put the bottle down and started going through my sobriety, it wasn't the liquor that I was addicted to. I was addicted to the lifestyle. I like being in the bar, I like talking s**t. I like going whoo-ha for the team, and knocking back a beer. I realized, I can do all that woo-hollering with a cup of coffee, or another vice, Coca-Cola. 

"Drinking in America" came in at the right time, we were saying how the universe speaks, where I was like, "Wow, I can take all my issues, and all my experiences with alcohol, and put it in my craft instead of my liver." This is my way of being able to go on stage, and saying, "Thank you liquor for all the good times." There were good times. Sometimes liquor gave you the courage to talk to the right girl. Sometimes liquor calms you down, so you can go into that audition and book a job. I had great times with liquor, and "F**k you for all the bad times." I'm on stage going, "Good day. Bravo, and I'll see you later."

Is there a formula for Audible? Do they record every play, or is it just one?

I don't know, bro.

The one I went to, you didn't miss a beat. You didn't skip a word. 

Thank you, I hope they recorded that. Knowing how the universe works, they probably missed that one. I know, from what I understand, they bought the Minetta Lane Theater, a wonderful theater that I used to go to back in the day. I think it's set up to be able to record, I just don't know what they choose to record, or what day. I think they were going to tell me, but I told them not to tell me, because I don't need extra pressure. I know that it's set up that they can record when they want to, and I know that there's a couple of shows throughout the run that they probably did record. Hopefully, they recorded the good ones, and if not, they'll just do a whole bunch of splicing, and get it right.

Audible has been fantastic, man. Audible has really set up a certain standard in theater, where they really respect and treat the artists the way they should be treated. We go out there, and we try to give our blood, sweat and tears to perform, or entertain, and when you go backstage, they make it real nice, and really set you up with a lot of caregiving. They got me a a personal trainer to stretch me out. They make sure that I've got the right type of dietary needs to keep my stamina up.

Six two-liters of Coca-Cola?

When I need it, that's right, and a two-liter of water, just to make sure I mix it up a little bit. It's been a great experience. Like I said, I hadn't done theater in about 15 years, so to come back and take this on, and have this type of lift, it just makes me really appreciate the love of acting, and the love of the audience, and that relationship that we always share. The theater is the actor's medium. It's the most spiritually satisfying experience that any actor can have. Television, it's the writer's medium. You guys [the writers], pen the paper, it's where y'all can tell eight episodes, y'all can tell a real gripping story, and it pays very well for the actor. Movies are the director's medium. The director is the boss, the God. 

Any actor out there, if you get a chance to step on the stage, I always say, go for it. It's a jolt of creative juices that I never experienced. Once I got a taste of it back in the day, I knew I was going to find my way back there. Your first question, "How does it feel to be home?" It feels like love. I'm glad to be back.

What's next for you?

What's next for me is a nice, long nap. Then, I go back to the hustle. I go back to LA. I live in Ojai now, but I go back to LA. I tell the people, "OK," because when you tell your agents and managers you want to do theater, they get pissed off. They go, "Aww, s**t." Now, they've got to make up for lost time, and hopefully, I'll end up on another show somewhere, or do some movies. I love independent films. The last film, "To Leslie," did well. There's talks of this going other places, talks of maybe taking "Drinking in America" to London or to LA. "Talk Radio" is still something I want to tackle. I think this experience on stage has just opened up another avenue, where I can now travel with my creative aspirations, and do it all.