Actor Damson Idris on Snowfall, the perils of social media, and Black Lives Matter.
What strikes me most when speaking with Damson Idris over Zoom is not his charming British manner or well-documented good looks (which, unfortunately, I’m deprived of seeing, as he’s on set and not allowed on camera), but his humor. Idris doesn’t take himself too seriously; he’s somehow simultaneously charmingly cocky and refreshingly self-aware. “There are no nipples showing on this side!” he almost apologizes when I tell him I read about the time he joined a Zoom call while shirtless in bed, only to find Jay-Z in one of the boxes before him. When I congratulate him on turning the big three-O in September, he mischievously quips, “I still look two-O, though. You can say it—it’s OK.”
Although Idris’s unlined face doesn’t divulge his age, the breadth of his résumé does. Idris treaded the boards in various plays in London, including Pandora’s Box at the Arcola Theatre. Then came Hollywood via a starring role in the TV drama Snowfall (which he’s now a producer on), the lead in the racially charged film Farming (alongside Kate Beckinsale), and roles in an episode of the apocalyptic hit Black Mirror and the Netflix action film Outside the Wire. Idris now resides in Hollywood, but he misses his beloved “mum” (and Nando’s, Britain’s famous chicken chain, which he still pines for like a former lover).
In Snowfall, now filming its fifth season, Idris portrays Franklin Saint, a big-hearted high school graduate who, after studying hard and going by the book, realizes that as a young Black man in the ’80s, racism will always stymie his chance at a better life. The show follows his character’s role in propagating America’s crack cocaine epidemic, the CIA’s involvement in cocaine distribution, and the drug’s impact on American culture, particularly in South Central L.A., where his character comes through the ranks.
Idris is mindful of the responsibility that playing such a character carries, especially in a world where drug addiction and criminality are often met with judgment instead of empathy. “I wanted to play a character that, although he’s seen as a monster and he’s doing all of these horrible things, is also boyish and vulnerable,” he says. Idris is working to humanize those involved in gang culture, because “everyone who got into this didn’t necessarily get into it to wave the gun and be gangsters. Some of them actually just wanted to come out of the situations that they were placed into,” he says. “This drug could ruin anyone’s life.”
Because he is apparently a mommy’s boy, I ask what the Idris matriarch thinks of her son’s rapid rise to stardom. “My mum is Nigerian through and through,” he says fondly. “She tells me she’s proud of me, man.” At the beginning of his career, however, she (amusingly) had difficulty deciphering Idris’s actions from those of the characters he played on-screen. When Idris appeared on the TV show Casualty (a medical drama that is the U.K.’s Law & Order for budding thespians), he had to kiss a girl. “The whole family watched it. She asked me in front of my girl at the time, ‘Oh my gosh, how could you cheat on your girl? Doing it in front of the whole family—we’re all sitting here. Have you no shame!?’” Idris chuckles while recalling the story. Although she’s “a pro now” and regularly tunes in to Snowfall, she still ends every phone conversation ironically imploring him not to try cocaine.
To read the full interview download our digital edition here.
All imagery by Julian Burgueño. All clothes by Calvin Klein.
