![]() And it's a shame, because it keeps landing on the same race. The same situations that Franklin's going through happens to a young person in Peckham, it happens to a young person in Thailand, in the Dominican Republic, in Nigeria, it happens everywhere. It's a world problem-as I'm getting older, I'm starting to realize this. And that's the correlation between 19 in the United States. That's because he doesn't want to have to change in order to fit in in a world that doesn't accept him anyway. Why? And that's because he doesn't want to be a mascot. If they weren't in these circumstances, what would they be doing? Franklin's a smart kid, you know? He's very intelligent, he studied in the Valley-he could be a lawyer, he could be whatever he wants-but for some reason he sells cocaine. The reason a lot of these young guys today are doing what they're doing-we need to think why. It's because of the programming, it's because of the situation and manipulation of a particular race, and that's resonating today. Yes Franklin's doing bad things, but we need to remember why he's doing these things. It lets us look at our past in order to navigate our future. How does it feel to be a part of that conversation, as someone from England? While Snowfall is fictional, it's portraying a very real, pivotal moment in America's relationship with race. But his soul being chipped away is something that continues to happen, and will happen even more in season two. So that's the one thing that will stay with him. He's just this young kid trying to provide for his family. When you're playing Franklin, he doesn't know that in 2017 if he walks down Skid Row, everything he's doing is still gonna be there, you know? There's still gonna be crackheads. Because at the same time you have to detach yourself, empathy-wise, from all the things that are happening around you. It's really, really complicated, playing Franklin. We know that's going to mean a horrible tragedy for the African American community, and for other people. But we're torn, because we also want him to sell that crack, we want him to sell that cocaine, we want him to get his mom out of the house. ![]() We know that he's a sweet kid and he's boyish and youthful and for those reasons we love him, we want him to win. I had to play him in a sense where a viewer would still root for him even though we know the things he's gonna do are going to be tragic. Whether that's in how he changes-it was really complicated. Just a young guy, a coming of age story, transitioning from a boy into a man, and what the consequences are going to be. When I first saw Franklin, I saw him a lot like myself, actually. With the first season of Snowfall now wrapped (and a second season on the way), we caught up with Idris to talk about Franklin Saint's transformation from nice kid to ruthless criminal, why it's worth examining the crack epidemic today, and his hopes for Season Two. As Saint, Idris plays a complicated character with remarkable nuance, conveying the internal conflict of a young man coming of age and into crime. At the center of it all is Saint, a bright, boyish kid who, over the course of a few weeks, goes from hustling to make some money to help his mom pay bills to nascent drug kingpin, almost singlehandedly bringing crack to his Compton neighborhood. Over the summer, the charming, Peckham-born British actor starred in the lead role of Franklin Saint in John Singleton's FX drama Snowfall, the story about the beginnings of the crack epidemic in 1983 Los Angeles, and the disparate stories that made its rise possible. Damson Idris has had a hell of a TV debut.
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