Finding the line of demarcation where Damson Idris and Franklin Saint, respectively, begin and end, was once clear. But by he reached the sixth and final season of “Snowfall,” even the actor had lost sight of it.
The FX series gave viewers a front seat ride through the onset of the 1980s crack epidemic in South Los Angeles as Franklin transformed from a local corner store clerk to the biggest drug kingpin in the West.
Unbeknownst to the naive young man, Franklin was helping the U.S. government fund its war against communism in Nicaragua. He would later learn the hard way when his empire began to crumble.
In real life, Idris, who hails from South London, tapped into a world he had never experienced. He pulled on the works of show creator John Singleton and learned how to hide his accent from voice coach WC, a rap legend of the Golden State, to embody his character.
By season 6, the drug game had groomed Franklin into a monster set on reclaiming $5 million by any means necessary, even if it required bleeding those he called family and friends. In the latest iteration of The Hollywood Reporter’s “Actors Roundtable,” Idris shared that he was left tormented after embracing the dark and ruthless character.
“I was hitting a block, right. I was like, ‘I’m not doing it right,’” he recalled about an especially challenging plot in the storyline — though the amount of sinister acts he commits in season 6 makes it challenging to pinpoint which one he refers to in the conversation.
In the final season, Franklin had become a thief and a cold-hearted killer. A stark contrast from the bright scholar who had his entire life ahead of him when he was indoctrinated into the drug game by CIA operative Teddy McDonald while attending college.
To get through the block, Idris said he summoned dark energy. “So I went in the corner, and then I was looking at the wall, and I was like, ‘Come on, devil. Come on, devil,’ right. ‘Come to me, like, come to me,’ because I had to do something, like, crazy, right,” explained the 31-year-old.
As a result, he found it even more difficult to shake off the atrocities of his work, even after the final yell of “cut.”
“I had nightmares for a month. Like, I had nightmares every day, like, I felt, I just felt that energy. And I had to pray and do all this stuff to get rid of it,” said Idris. “You know, you call your mom up, and you’re like bring me back to life. And that stuff is real. That stuff really is real.”
In episode 7, his co-star Angela Lewis, who portrayed Aunt Louie, blamed Franklin for the death of his uncle, her husband, Jerome. She even went as far as calling him “the devil” while at Jerome’s funeral.
She said the audience’s ability to desire redemption for Franklin, while viewing her as the true villain, is a testament to the show’s writers.
“He has turned into a monster,” Lewis stated in a previous interview. “He’s been a monster for a while now, but people think that they are Franklin, so they take certain things very personally.”
In the series finale, Franklin has lost it all, his mother, his fiancée, a son he never met, and any semblance of the man he once was. He is reduced, by his own doing, to join the population of unhoused alcoholics roaming the streets of Los Angeles with tall tales of the past.
Idris previously told GQ that his commitment to the story surpassed memorizing lines to prepare for the final scenes.
“I didn’t shower. Luckily, I didn’t smell too bad,” he told the outlet. He continued, “I’d get some alcohol and I’d palm it on my hand and I’d rub it on me so I could smell it. And all of those things contributed to just disappearing in it.”
Since closing the chapter of portraying Franklin Saint, Idris’ film opportunities have opened up. In April, it was announced he will co-star alongside Brad Pitt in a Formula 1 racing flick for Apple Original Films.
