‘Snowfall’ sets the stage for ’80s crack epidemic
As an aspiring cocaine dealer in Los Angeles, smart but naïve Franklin Saint has to navigate some nasty bumps. He has no idea about the earthquake that’s about to hit.
The poised 19-year-old is at the center of FX’s Snowfall (Wednesday, 10 ET/PT), which explores the crack cocaine epidemic that ravaged South Central Los Angeles and many other communities in the 1980s.
“These dealers didn’t really understand what the effects would be,” says Damson Idris, whose character is expanding from marijuana to powder cocaine as the 10-episode season opens. “Although Franklin is intelligent, he has no idea of the impact it’s going to have on his community.”
Executive producer John Singleton, who directed 1991’s acclaimed Boyz N the Hood and other films set in his South Central neighborhood, witnessed the damage growing up.
“The South Central Los Angeles of my childhood was beautiful. There was an undercurrent of danger, but it was never as bad as it would get” with the introduction of crack, a powerful cocaine variation that made the drug affordable in poor neighborhoods.
Snowfall begins in 1983, before the events of Boyz, and is “all about what happens before cheap cocaine makes that transition into what became the crack epidemic,” Singleton says. “Crack devastated that part of the city.”
Snowfall tells stories about three separate but eventually intersecting players: Franklin and his shift from marijuana sales to big-bucks powdered cocaine; Lucia Villanueva (Emily Rios), who wants to expand her family’s drug empire; and, in what’s perhaps the most controversial story, disfavored CIA agent Teddy McDonald (Carter Hudson), who aids a drug operation raising money to arm Nicaraguan contras.
Executive producer Dave An- dron acknowledges there’s no proof of CIA involvement in contra-related drug smuggling, but “what I can safely buy into is that they knew it was being brought over, and looked the other way.”
Snowfall hired a CIA consultant. Franklin, despite the support of his mother Cissy (Michael Hyatt) and his enrollment at a school in a wealthier neighborhood, feels a lack of opportunity as a poor African-American teen.
“In the pilot, he says, ‘I’ve been to the other side. I learned the game is rigged, so I’m changing the rules,’ ” Idris says.
Snowfall’s story remains relevant today, says the British actor.
“A lot of people will say, ‘Do we need to hear about the crack cocaine epidemic anymore? Do we need to see black people in hard times?’ But we also get to see black people in great times. If anything, this epidemic forced people to adapt, and for their killer instinct to come in.”
Singleton says he was a stickler for authenticity.
“Some of my pictures have been uniquely identified with Los Angeles,” he says. Snowfall “puts you in a time and place. We were very careful not to have fashions that looked passé. The music had to pop and be of the time and give a gravitas and soul to the show. ”