*“The Drop” showrunner Malcolm Spellman says the first season of the “Snowfall” spinoff only scratched the surface. He already has a plan for Seasons 2 and 3, and the record business sits at the center of it.
“This is a show about a family, a makeshift family,” Spellman told The Hollywood Reporter. “The music business destroys families, and this family will spend its entire existence in this show trying to survive. What we just saw was a dash of what’s coming.”
FX has yet to renew the drama, and Spellman says he hasn’t heard from the network. But he’s not concerned, pointing to strong community support.
The series is set in 1991, when Spellman says labels began pushing gangster rap over conscious hip-hop by design. That shift will drive future storylines.
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“Record executives took a culture and decided it was easier for them to make money pushing violence and gangs and all that shit than conscious hip-hop, and these labels literally destroyed an entire dimension of hip-hop and took it into the gutter over the next 30 years,” he said.
For the show’s central family, walking away isn’t an option. Spellman explained that going independent wasn’t realistic in that era. “The label has all the leverage, and they are going to be forced into very uncomfortable situations, and there is no place to go,” he said.
The characters will feel that pressure. Lamar (Asante Blackk) ends the season leaning on his family, but Spellman says “he’s going to get pulled away from it in the next season.” Leon (Isaiah John), meanwhile, is headed down a road that echoes his arc in the original series.
Then there’s Leon and Wanda (Gail Bean), whose romance draws on Spellman’s own marriage. “In my opinion, they are the heart of the show, and will they or won’t they should be a major question every f**king season,” he said.
Spellman says the audience response has been overwhelming, especially among viewers who lived through the era.
“Every single prison in this country is locked in on our show, and those are our fans, people who came from this era and who saw it. Those are the people that if we can convince them, then we did the shit right,” he explained.
“This to me feels like a private party for Black folk right now, and it’s the most fun until the mainstream audience comes,” Spellman said.
All episodes of Season 1 of “The Drop: A Snowfall Saga” are streaming on Hulu.
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