Peckham-born Damson Idris is a huge name in the US.
But back here his star is still rising.
He talks to Tim Lewis about breaking out in Snowfall, his American accent, joking with Jay-Z and the joy of dressing upIn 2015, when he was a young actor from Peckham with a couple of theatre credits and, naturally, an episode of Casualty to his Equity card, Damson Idris somehow wangled a big TV audition in Los Angeles.
The part was Franklin Saint, a bright kid in South Central LA during the 1980s who becomes a drug kingpin just as the city is on the cusp of a crack cocaine epidemic.
Snowfall was the vision of John Singleton, the director of the seminal 1991 coming-of-age film Boyz n the Hood.
Word was that every tyro black actor in America, and beyond, wanted to be cast as Franklin.“The audition was about two, three weeks out,
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