‘Snowfall’ Star Angela Lewis Doesn’t Mind Being the Villain: ‘Everything Is on the Table’ Ahead of Series Finale
Warning: This story contains major spoilers for Season 6, Episode 7 of “Snowfall.”
Angela Lewis opens the latest episode of FX’s “Snowfall” as a grieving widow. Her character, Louie, has lost her husband Jerome Saint (Amin Joseph). Now, the actor says that all bets are off as the series enters its final episodes.
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In its final season, Louie seemingly has jumped out of fans’ favor, as her war with her nephew, Franklin Saint (Damson Idris), comes to a boil. The family feud first started in house. With Franklin’s $73 million stolen by former CIA Agent Teddy McDonald (Carter Hudson), he’s started to take drastic lengths — like stealing all of his aunt and uncle’s illegal inventory — to keep himself and his growing family afloat.
Because of their back-and-forth fire, Louie found herself kidnapped by Kane (DeVaughn Nixon), branded, tortured and almost at the point of being brutalized, when Jerome saved her from the warehouse and was killed along with Kane in a shootout.
After learning just exactly what Louie might be capable of and how far she’s willing to go, it’s not surprising to see Louie’s immediate response being anger. In her first conversation with Cissy Saint (Michael Hyatt) since Jerome’s death, Louie explains that, unlike Cissy (who also lost her husband to the drug war in addition to her brother), she no longer has anything left in her world to care about.
“It means that everything is on the table and everything is off the table,” Lewis says of the scene. “She doesn’t need to be careful and she doesn’t want to be careful. She doesn’t need to mince words that she doesn’t want to. Her partner in all things is gone so there’s no need for protection. I feel like in that space, she’s like, if somebody tries to kill me or go back to me and they take me out, they take me out.”
“She’s not hiding. She’s not strategizing to stay in the game as long as you can anymore. It’s all bets are off,” she adds.
Truthfully, all sides of Louie reveal themselves in her deconstruction. It’s in her breakdown that she finally slings off her armor and reveals her vulnerability — a point that Lewis says she worked with the writers on.
“She really did lose everything and she really is shattered. I don’t think she has the ability to put on a face the way she has the rest of the season,” says Lewis.
Louie journeys through most of the episode straddling the ideas of forgiveness or revenge as she makes several trips to people. But perhaps what is surprising is one of Louie’s first moves. She takes a trip to Skully’s (De’aundre Bonds) home to ask how she could possibly get rid of her anger. Fans who’ve been watching “Snowfall” since the beginning may remember Skully’s first war with Franklin and Leon (Isaiah Johns), which peaked after he lost his girlfriend and daughter to gunfire.
It took Lewis some time, she says, before she came to the conclusion that her character went to the unlikely source for “understanding and for a refuge from her pain.”
“Skully is the character that consistently, since he lost everything, was trying to bring everybody to a place of forgiveness, to a place of reconciliation, even within themselves. She recognized or she realized that about Skully and she wanted to know, ‘How did you do that? How did you get to this place of calm and this place of not wanting revenge? This place of forgiveness… How did you do that?’ Because right now, she is riddled with all of those destructive feelings and thoughts.”
But if fans continue to see Louie’s truth and continue to find her as the villain of this season, the actor isn’t too upset by that. It’s actually something that’s been in the works between her and showrunner Dave Andron since before Season 5. “It is not surprising and I’m not mad at it,” she reveals.
With only three episodes left in the final season, it’s still unclear which side Louie will choose. But one thing remains certain: she’s not the only villain in this tale. After Franklin reveals that the only reason he saved his aunt from torture was because he needed allies in his feud with the U.S. Government, she closes Episode 7 at Jerome’s funeral, asking Franklin, “You are the devil, you know that?” To which, he responds with a solemn, “Yeah, I know.”
“Snowfall” airs on Wednesdays at 10 p.m. ET/PT on FX.
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