From show creator Graeme Manson (Orphan Black), the TNT drama series Snowpiercer is back for its second season, with the survivors of the revolution trying to pick up the pieces and figure out what comes next. With the train’s classes now merged and with Layton (Daveed Diggs) as their leader, they must also navigate what the return of Mr. Wilford (Sean Bean) means and just how dangerous their power struggle will become for the fate of humanity.

During a virtual press day to promote Season 2, Collider got the opportunity to chat 1-on-1 with Daveed Diggs about the collaborative relationship with the show’s creative team, what he’s jealous about with his character, playing a fish out of water, and Layton’s understanding of Melanie (Jennifer Connelly) and what she’s been through. He also talked about bringing his own thing to Sebastian for the upcoming live-action The Little Mermaid and why he worked so hard on the role, whether he’d ever want to make a horror/sci-fi film inspired by his work with Clipping, and how things are going with the animated series Central Park.

Collider: What did you enjoy about returning to this character? When you stepped back into him, were there things that you hadn’t realized you missed just a little bit?

DAVEED DIGGS: Yeah. Layton’s ability to process information very quickly is one that I, Daveed, is pretty jealous of, so it was fun to drop back into that and be like, “Oh, yeah, he’s really good at rolling with the punches and figuring things out on his feet, even when there’s so much noise around him.” That’s a fun element of Layton that I’m jealous of.

What sort of relationship do you have with your showrunner and the writers? Over time, are you someone who likes to give input or suggestions, or do you find that you just trust them more?

DIGGS: The relationship between all of us and the writers’ room on this show is pretty open. It’s pretty cool. There’s a lot of suggestion and a lot of back and forth and discussion. And a lot of it’s happening very quickly on set. Sometimes we’ll become aware, when rehearsing a scene, that things don’t really work or don’t add up to the vision of who we are or what we might believe we’re doing, so a discussion has to be had and sometimes rewrites have to happen, right then and there. Graeme [Manson], as a showrunner, and the whole writers’ room has been very agile, in terms of adapting to those things and really addressing them, not ignoring them, which has happened on some shows. I very much love that about this group.

Have there been any specific ideas that you’ve had for Layton, that have managed to work their way into the show?

DIGGS: I don’t know. Probably, but it ends up feeling like group think, mostly. For Season 2, everybody working on it is going for the same thing. We all trust that we all wanna make something good, so people just start throwing ideas in. If one of those ideas is the right idea, hopefully it ends up in the show.

Now that life is different for Layton and he’s not just a tailee anymore, where does he feel most like he fits in now?

DIGGS: To me, he feels pretty fish out of water, so he looks for comfort in like the relationships that he understands and trusts. Till becomes very important to him. Till and Roche are his confidants. Miss Audrey, oddly enough, becomes a place of comfort for him. The people who he gets and understands, like Melanie, to a degree. The people who insist that he let his guard down for a second become really important to him.

Who would you say he’s learned the most from, as far as his approach in leading others?

DIGGS: Probably Melanie, which is funny because they were enemies. When he came to understand the responsibility that was on her shoulders, I think he understood a lot of the choices that she made. He still disagreed with them, but understood why she made them. Understanding that his role now is a different side of the same coin that Melanie was on, as opposed to people from different worlds, is really important to Layton.

You’ve previously talked about how you were writing a movie with a friend during this and you had a mini writers’ room going for the Blindspotting TV show. What motivates you to juggle so many things at once? Is that just how you’ve always been, or have you felt that you’ve had to become that way out of necessity?

DIGGS: No, it’s just how I’ve always worked. Nobody cared before, so half of the things that we were working on, no one would ever see, so there’s just an added stress now. What I feel very fortunate about is that I’ve always been the kind of artist who just wanted to do and was doing a bunch of different things. I’ve been making music my whole life, I’ve been writing my whole life, and I’ve been acting my whole life, just nobody ever cared. Now, people seem to care about those things, but what’s nice is that I still get to do them. By whatever stroke of luck, the way that Hamilton landed on people and then the various deliberate choices that I and the rest of my team made immediately after that, have allowed me to have a career, at least for the moment, that is pretty diverse. That’s great because I haven’t had to change the way that I work.

What’s it like to be a part of something like The Little Mermaid, which you grew up with and now you’re not only a part of it, but you get to hear new songs before other people do?

DIGGS: It’s pretty cool. Working in the animation space is always pretty cool. I love that stuff. But something as big as Disney’s The Little Mermaid – and I felt this on Soul too, just because of Pixar, particularly for us from the Bay Area because it’s right there and it has this element of mystery about it – just to even get to be behind the scenes on those things is pretty wild. You get to hear a new song before it comes out and it’s amazing, and then you hear the performance of it by an actor you might not expect to be able to do that and that’s also amazing. There are so many cool surprises that I know and I’m just sitting on.

How cool is it get to bring your own thing to Sebastian?

DIGGS: I worked harder on Sebastian probably, than I have for any role in my life. It’s tricky. I wasn’t sure, and this is also true of Layton. I tend to say yes to things when I feel like I can do it, but I’m actually not sure I’m the smart choice or the person naturally who should be doing it. That’s true of Sebastian, for a lot of ways that are uncomfortable. I’m not of Caribbean descent, doing that kind of work and trying to immerse myself. I’ve spent a lot of time in Trinidad and I went to Jamaica to research, and I did a lot of voice work with Chris Walker and with the late Tony Hall, to try to get the voice right. But more than the voice, the thing about a dialect is that everybody’s voice is actually very different, so consistency is really more important than accuracy. Your speech pattern is based on culture, and that was the thing I didn’t wanna let down.

I want somebody who is from Trinidad or from Jamaica, depending on where we landed with the role, to be able to see themselves in this, in some way. Even though maybe my voice doesn’t sound exactly right, I wanted to feel like somebody connected to it. I had so many friends growing up for whom Sebastian was the first time they had seen themselves represented in mainstream American culture. As flawed as that is, that’s still important. So, that role stressed me out quite a bit, but also is incredibly fun. Like I said, I did more research for that role, than I have for any part, ever, and I’m literally a crab. It seems crazy maybe, in hindsight. And the amount of lifting I’m doing in that is nothing compared to Halle [Bailey], or any of the like incredible performers who are really carrying that. I just sing a couple of cool songs and call it a day.

Would you ever want to make a horror or sci-fi film, maybe even inspired by your work with Clipping?

DIGGS: I can neither confirm nor deny whether that’s already in the works. But yeah, of course. The last two albums that Clipping put out, every song is its own mini horror film, in a way. They’re pretty self-contained. And Bill [Hutson] is a screenwriter and writes for TV and film, and has a hundred horror scripts, just laying around. We’re genre heads, and those things lend themselves very easily to being adapted, we think.

Have you started work on the new season of Central Park yet? How do you feel about the recasting of Kristen Bell’s character for that?

DIGGS: I think it was the right choice to do, at the moment, especially because it came from Kristen. I think Emmy [Raver-Lampman] is phenomenal in the role. I think it’s gonna be great. That show is great. I love that show and I love being a part of that show. It’s super joyous. I have a recording session today. It’s so much fun. The creative team is amazing and it’s just a joy to work on.

Snowpiercer Season 2 airs on Monday nights on TNT.