‘Snowfall’ Season 2 Will Hit The Ground Running Says Dave Andron – TCA

FX’s Snowfall has been picked up for a second season. The show, which depicts the beginnings of the 1980s crack epidemic in Los Angeles, centers around Franklin (Damson Idris) and his friends as they search for ways to support their families and land on crack as a solution to their financial woes.

Season 1 spent some time carefully setting the scene of South Los Angeles both before the advent of crack, and then during its initial, devastating effects. At TCA, co-creator Dave Andron said Season 2 would move forward at a fast pace, having benefitted from the Season 1 set-up. Of the first season’s slow burn, he said, “I do think that part of the challenge of setting up three different worlds, and three different characters is it requires a little more table setting unfortunately, and we wanted to take a little bit of time.” But moving forward he said, “We would certainly like to hit Season 2 very much with the ground running.”

EP Thomas Schlamme said that for him, the Season 2 pick-up was proof of their stellar cast and writing team. “It’s the privilege of getting to watch them act more,” he said, “and getting these guys to write more. But it’s really this phenomenal ensemble cast that we’ve put together.”

Co-creator John Singleton said the show’s success also lay in the fact that its premise reaches across generations, tapping into a “potent mixture of emotion that people have, and we have a whole new generation that looks at this show from a pop culture standpoint, because their only references to these events and the type of characters in this show is hip-hop music. A lot of things that are happening in this show have only being chronicled in music, specifically in West Coast hip-hop in the last 30 years. So I think the younger people are looking at it serendipitously as, this is the kind of, like, the lore that they’ve heard about, but never seen depicted.”

Singleton also noted that the intent was not to glamorize drug dealing in some way. “We’re not necessarily glorifying the whole thing of being a drug dealer,” he said, “and the quick fix of going from rags to riches and then crash and burn. The drugs are actually the backdrop for the stories of these three characters who have these needs and wants.” Instead the show takes a clear look at what crack cocaine did to destroy those urban areas and ruin the lives of the occupants. “You’re seeing the slow decay of not only the environment, but the structure of these characters,” he said.