‘Snowfall’: John Singleton Reveals How Damson Idris Got His Role In FX Series

Damson Idris went through a very unique audition process for the upcoming FX crime drama series “Snowfall.”

In a recent interview with TV Guide, “Snowfall” co-creator John Singleton revealed that after Idris did a great job during a script read, Singleton decided to bring the British actor to South Los Angeles, specifically in the streets of Crenshaw and Vernon, for a real-time audition.

On “Snowfall,” Idris plays the role of Franklin Saint, an early ‘80s teenager who goes to an upper-class school and follows the rules of his strict mom. That is until he is introduced to cocaine business and starts selling crack in South Central Los Angeles — a neighborhood often depicted in pop culture as dangerous after alarming levels of gang violence and murder took place in the area in the mid ‘80s.

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Singleton, who grew up in the area, brought Idris to the neighborhood to see if he could blend in. “I took him out on the streets and had him hang out with some folks, and nobody knew he was a Brit,” Singleton shared. “He knew how to change his physicality and talk a certain way. I figured if he could do it in real life, he could do it on the screen and I was like, ‘Wow. You got the part man.’”

“Snowfall” follows the stories of several characters whose lives are doomed to intersect. One of which is Franklin, and the others are Mexican luchador Gustavo “El Oso” Zapata (Sergio Peris-Mencheta), CIA operative Teddy McDonald (Carter Hudson) and Luica Villanueva (Emily Rios), the daughter of a Mexican crime boss.

“It's an untold story,” Singleton said of “Snowfall” in an interview with the Los Angeles Times last May. “It's the story about how cocaine changed Los Angeles. There’s a whole kind of oral history, folk tale about this era. And no one has dramatized it. I wanted to do that. It's a nostalgic show. But very, very edgy.”

When asked how he thinks viewers will react to the show, Singleton told Los Angeles Confidential: “I hope the experience will be like when someone first sniffs cocaine. I want viewers to become as addicted to it as soon as possible. … Seriously, it’s going to be like nothing anybody has ever seen before.”

“Snowfall” will premiere on Wednesday, July 5 at 10 p.m. EDT on FX.