‘Snowfall’ Cast, Creative Team Talks Balancing Fact And Fiction On FX Drama

“It’s not a documentary, but you will be educated,” Damson Idris, star of FX’s Snowfall, told International Business Times.

“Snowfall” is FX’s new drama about the rise of the crack cocaine epidemic in 1983. While the characters are fictional, they are going through what many people in Los Angeles struggled with at that time. The producers of the drama, which premieres Wednesday, wanted to make their fact and fiction blend seamlessly.

Co-creator Dave Andron said he tried to find all the information he could about that period. “Be a little bit wary of what’s on the internet because you can find kind of the extremes on both ends, but read all the books, the stuff that’s been published that seems fairly reputable, you can get your hands on,” he told IBT before the “Snowfall” screening at ATX Television Festival in Austin, Texas, last month.

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“And then talk to as many people [as possible],” Andron continued. “Try to find people who were in the CIA at the time, who were in South Central at the time. Talk to as many people as you can in East L.A. and try to figure out as much as you can what really happened. And then acknowledge we’re not doing a documentary here, and take the basic thematic stuff that seems important and don’t mess with that and make it special, make it fun, make it weird.”

Executive producer Thomas Schlamme noted that making sure the audience emotionally connects to the story is a top priority. “Having done ‘The West Wing’ and I did a TV show called ‘Manhattan’ that was about Los Alamos, my whole desire in those kinds of historical shows is — I’m not making a documentary,” he emphasized to IBT. “I’m not even trying to write real life characters, but hopefully, there’s some emotional truth to the story about how crack entered South Central.”

The emotional connection for many viewers will likely be through the protagonist of “Snowfall,” Franklin Saint. Damson Idris plays the young drug dealer, or as Idris calls him “a street entrepreneur.” He’s a young, poor marijuana dealer, and he doesn’t seem to have many opportunities until he realizes that he could finally make money off of crack cocaine.

“He’s a product of his environment,” Idris explained. “He’s working really hard to get out of it, and as the show goes on, this amazing beautiful soul that he has is slowly being chipped away.”

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Franklin doesn’t realize what the effects of crack are, and he doesn’t know that it could destroy his community. He just sees a quick way to get out of poverty. Franklin is one of many characters trying to help himself in this ensemble drama. His story crosses over with a Mexican wrestler, a CIA operative and the daughter of a Mexican crime lord, all of whom play a part in the epidemic. Unintended consequences will be a theme for the entire group.

“They’re, at a baseline level, just trying to lift themselves up in a number of different scenarios and socioeconomic groups,” Andron said. “But I think all of those people get into it with good intentions, and I think the unintended consequences of good intentions is a big thing of what we’ll play with the first year until they start to realize what they’ve done.”

Before Idris could worry about Franklin facing consequences, he had to make sure the character sounded real. The English actor had to research not only on the time period but also his California accent. “I watched all of [co-creator John Singleton’s] movies, and I spoke to him intensely and people like [rapper] WC, who is like my dialect coach,” Damson told IBT. “He hates that title, but he’ll tell you, we went down those streets and we sat in that car for hours. He gave me a history lesson, so it’s not hard when you have those people in your corner.”

It’s not just the creative team that is standing behind Damson and the drama. The producers had nothing but praise for their network, FX. “I always have to smile saying the words ‘not afraid’ because they’re tagline is fearless and it sounds super cheesy, but the reality is they are not afraid,” Andron said. “This is touchy subject matter. You really will see. It’s going at a portion of our history that maybe there’s a reason a lot of these places don’t want to touch it or go directly at it. But those are the things they kind of really push into.”

“Snowfall” premieres Wednesday at 10 p.m. EDT on FX.