The women of ‘Claws’ take a final run at Fla. drug game
TNT’S narco drama “Claws” is ending its four-season run in a flurry of drugs, guns and fantastic nail art.
The black comedy, which returned Dec. 19 for its final season, finds its gang of south Florida nail technicians-turneddrug dealers back at square one, having burned – sometimes literally – through both their allies and stash.
“In the realm of rags to riches, they have gone back to rags,” Jenn Lyon, who plays mother-of-two Jennifer Husser, told the Daily News.
The beauty of “Claws,” though, is in the resilience of its five women: leader Desna (Niecy Nash), Polly (Carrie Preston), Quiet Ann (Judy Reyes), Virginia (Karrueche Tran) and Jen (Lyon).
Though Desna grew more ambitious and vindictive by the season, the wannabe gangsters she leads have decided that peddling prescription pills is the only, or maybe just easiest, way to get ahead.
“We’re going to watch ‘Breaking Bad’ and watch this chemistry teacher become a drug dealer and we don’t even really think that’s out of the box. So why not let these women take their power back, get their piece of the pie?” Preston told The News.
“We’re taking it to an extreme … but at the core, it is about how you find your power when it has been yanked away from you over and over.”
As the fourth season kicks off, Quiet Ann has isolated herself from the group, reeling from Desna’s betrayal that left her wife dead. But she never drifts too far away, even as she and Desna unravel.
Desna’s shifting loyalties, from her friends to mostly just herself, have shaken the group. They are no longer part of a collective, but instead scrambling to keep up with her decisions that have put them squarely in the crosshairs of Uncle Daddy (Dean Norris).
“You unite when you’ve got nothing else,” Reyes, the 54-year-old Bronx native who plays the pregnant Quiet Ann, told The News. “You understand how key the loyalty is and how it’s grounded in just absolute love for each other.”
Desna holds the group together in a way that goes beyond maternal, said Preston.
“Desna saved all of these women’s lives in one way or another. Even when you’re feeling conflict with her, that loyalty is lifelong because none of us would be there without her,” Reyes said. “She becomes all members of the family for these women.”
“Claws” lives and dies in the chaos, in the burning casinos and the death doulas and whatever Uncle Daddy is running out of his den of iniquity on any given day. Pandemonium rules – but hidden beneath are quieter moments, particularly with Jen’s family.
The women still come back to each other.
“It’s an undeniable love,” Tran, 33, told The News. “At the base of all of this is love and friendship. It’s hard to 100% break away from that.”
After four seasons, there’s no such thing as too big for “Claws” – Preston joked that they jumped the shark in the pilot episode. On a show with no limits, the nail techs too have discovered that they’ve lost their own boundaries.
“They’re always talking about getting theirs. Secure the bag and they won’t have to fight anymore,” Lyon, 36, told The News.