The TNT drama series Snowpiercer, currently in its third season, has seen Andre Layton (Daveed Diggs) and a small group of trusted allies commanding a pirate train that’s been in search of a possible location warm enough to restart civilization. At the same time, Mr. Wilford (Sean Bean) has been plotting ways to regain power, and with everyone’s life on the line, the passengers must decide what’s important to them and pick a side.
During this 1-on-1 interview with Collider, Diggs talked about how he never knows what’s coming next on Snowpiercer, what he’s enjoyed about spending so much time with the same character, how COVID affected the shoot, that Layton is not great at dealing with his feelings, and what he’s learned about acting and the craft from making this show. He also talked about the surprise success of the Blindspotting TV series and how much further they’re looking to push things in Season 2, how The Little Mermaid is shaping up, and how he would be content doing absolutely nothing, if it weren’t for all the really cool projects he seems to always have on his plate.
Collider: I appreciate you talking to me about the new season. Before getting into Snowpiercer, I have to say that the Blindspotting TV series was a real surprise for me last year. It made my list of Best TV of the Year because I thought the artistry was so beautiful. I loved it. Kudos to you on that.
DAVEED DIGGS: Thank you.
And congrats on season two.
DIGGS: Yeah, we’re deep in it right now. But yeah, thank you. Appreciate that.
What are you most proud of, with how that first season of Blindspotting turned out, now that you’ve done it and you can look back on it?
DIGGS: I think we pulled off a few things I’ve never seen before. When you try something like that, that we didn’t really have a good frame of reference for, you’re not really sure if it’s gonna work. And we had also never made a TV show before, so we didn’t know if it would add up to a TV show either, even if we thought the idea was good. Watching it, I was like, “Yeah, this is a TV show. And I’ve never seen things like some of these things.” And then, just on a friendship level, watching Jasmine Cephas Jones put a show on her back and carry it, that was really gratifying for me. The introduction of a lot of people to Benjamin Earl Turner was really gratifying. I’ve known that guy since he was 14 years old. There were quite a few things like that. I’m very, very proud of our cast. I’m proud of how this show was created during the pandemic. People didn’t get sick. That was very gratifying to me. There are a lot of things I’m very, very proud of, about that show.
When you do something like that and you see what you can get away with on it, does that make it feel like the second season is totally open to whatever you can do, or does it make you more nervous about what a second season would be, since now there’s an expectation from audiences?
DIGGS: The expectation doesn’t make us nervous. The thing that makes me nervous is, now we know how hard some things are and we know also what things cost, in a way that we didn’t before. We have a more clear idea of what is financially possible, but we’re still being overly ambitious. We haven’t started shooting yet. There are definitely a bunch of things written into this season that we can’t afford, but we’re gonna do it. It’s like we’re looking out on it and totally aware of how hard it’s gonna be, and we’re gonna do it anyway. So, we’ll see what happens.
It’s very exciting to be able to watch something like that, where I just really don’t know what’s going to happen, but I know it’s going to be really cool. Thank you for indulging me in those questions.
DIGGS: No, I’ll talk about Blindspotting all day. Thank you.
Back at the beginning of everything with Snowpiercer, if someone had told you that this is where Andre Layton would be, by the end of season three, how would you have reacted? Would you have been like, “Okay, yeah, I could see that,” or would you have been like, “How are we ever going to get there?”
DIGGS: Man, I don’t even know. I can’t talk about what happens at the end of season three. It’s so crazy. My whole approach to Snowpiercer is that I, as myself, as Daveed Diggs, just have to be happy with having no idea what’s gonna happen. We get scripts and, every single time, I’m like, “Really? This is what we’re doing now. All right.” That’s fun, in a lot of ways. It’s freeing. I think there’s a big part of my brain, that’s the writer side of my brain, and having to do that for Snowpiercer would drive me insane. There’s so much going on, all the time. My role on this show is exactly what I should be doing. I get to play a person who is constantly adapting to whatever is thrown at him. I think that is exactly the way I experience the story, so it’s good.
It’s the craziest show because it feels like a moving train with so many things going on, but it is a literal moving train. It feels like you could uncover some character, at any point, that nobody ever knew was there.
DIGGS: Yeah, and train cars. We’ve had wars, all the way up and down this train. How do we still discover new train cars? That’s amazing.
What have you most enjoyed about the three-season arc that you’ve gotten to play for this character? What’s it like to really inhabit and get to explore him, for as long as you have?
DIGGS: It’s the longest I’ve ever gotten to live with a character and acting is from a place of comfort in that. I’m at a point where I don’t have to worry about, would he or wouldn’t he do this? Or how does Andre approach this particular relationship? I just get to show up on set and he’s so comfortable. I know how it feels to inhabit that body and to speak in that voice, and the cadence, enthusiasm, and everything. It’s very freeing. I never knew I would have that experience. I come from the theater world, which generally has a prescribed end date. So, getting to hang out with Layton for this long, I’m not nervous about him anymore. He just is. It’s nice to be able to walk into a character like that. And I do like that he changes his viewpoints on things. I like how much they challenge him on the show, ideologically. I think it’s pretty easy to make him a good guy, and he certainly is oftentimes set up as the hero, but they complicate his journey a fair amount and I like that. I like that he’s always questioning, or he’s constantly having a crisis.
At the beginning of this season, you’re in your own little piece of the train with your own little group. What was that like? Did it feel very different to have that smaller group of the cast and be even more heightened with the intensity of everything that they’re dealing with? Did those shifting dynamics feel very different, at the beginning of the season?
DIGGS: This cast is very, very close, and this season, we shot entirely in the midst of this lockdown. In earlier seasons, you would notice when you weren’t doing scenes with somebody for a while because you wouldn’t see them. But none of us were allowed to leave Vancouver, so we saw each other and we were each other’s support. We were the only people we could really hang out with, due to the testing protocols and everything, so we partied. My memories of shooting the season are way more about what was happening off set than what was happening on set. Whoever had to go to work that day was like, “Haha, you’ve gotta go to work,” and the rest of us would keep hanging out because the world was burning. I think it was much more of a family affair than past seasons, so that was wonderful.
Did that help keep your sanity, to have that?
DIGGS: It was literally the only thing. All of us were away from our loved ones, and people couldn’t come in and we couldn’t go out. For the prior seasons, I would fly home every weekend, but that wasn’t happening. So yeah, the closeness of the cast was really the saving grace of this last year.
Andre is in an interesting place, early in the season, because he’s faced with his past and his present, with Josie and Zara. How does he find having to deal with feelings for each of these women?
DIGGS: He’s not great at it. There were several moments where I was reading scripts and being like, “Just tell her. What are you doing?” This idea of fatherhood didn’t come about in the way that he ever thought. I’m not sure how much he ever really thought about it. It’s always a morality thing. He’s like, “What’s the right thing to do here? I know that I need to save the world, so that my kid has a place to live. I feel very clear on that.” The mother of his child and the woman who he’s been in love with for a very long time, he has no idea what to do with. I think he just pours everything into the save the world part, and then has a lot of awkward exchanges with the very strong, reasonable women in his life.
You’ve said that you’re pretty much on the verge of shooting season four. Have you already read scripts for the season?
DIGGS: No.
Do you have any idea what’s ahead?
DIGGS: I have no idea. I don’t know how much you’ve seen of season three, but when you watch the end, you will also be shocked that there’s a season four. Or not that there is one, but you will wonder how it is going to be accomplished. I certainly do.
How does that work? Do you just get one script, at the beginning of the season, or do you get more than one?
DIGGS: You never know. I like to wait as long as humanly possible before I look at it, at this point. I’m comfortable with the character. I’m not doing a lot of world building for Layton, at this point. I think it actually helps. This is the only thing I’ve ever been like this on. Usually, I’m a crazy intense student of script, but for this show, for some reason, the way I am comfortable working on it is, if you can not show it to me until I show up, that’s great. But that usually doesn’t happen. Whenever they send it, I’ll read it, but I don’t ask for things early. There are so many surprises that, to the degree that it’s possible, trying to honestly adapt to something I don’t expect seems to me to play better than acting.
It seems like you’re always coming off of one project and going straight into another project while you’re already working on the next project or multiple projects that you’re juggling at once. Do you ever worry about burnout, or are you someone who’s always just in need of a creative outlet?
DIGGS: No. What’s funny about that is that I think that statement you made is true, but I’m actually someone who loves to not do anything. It just doesn’t work out that way. But I don’t get restless when I’m not working. I don’t have that things where I’ve gotta be making something. I’m so happy to sit down and not do anything. I’m constantly looking for the pockets to do that, but they often don’t really exist. I would just sit in my backyard all day and read books and stuff, but I don’t have many days to do that. But I feel very fortunate that I get to do all of these things. The vast majority of the stuff I get to work on are projects with my friends. And then, other things are like Snowpiercer, this thing that a lot of people seem to watch because we keep making it, and that is this thing that I’m also now very close to everybody on and we’ve been making for so long together.
It’s interesting, I feel very fortunate for the way my life is playing out, at the moment, where I get to work on so many different kinds of things, that are all very exciting to me and they’re all hard. I don’t get to coast very much, which I’m not really good at that either. If I’m gonna be doing something, I would like it to be challenging. That’s the order of preference for me. Top of the list is doing absolutely nothing. And then, next on the list is that I wanna do something hard. I’m in that second spot, most of the time, right now. I’m mostly working on things where I feel like I don’t know what I’m doing, and that’s a good feeling, with people I’m very close to. We all are figuring it out together, and that’s cool. I’m doing a lot of producing right now and helping bring some other stories into the world, from artists that we haven’t necessarily heard of yet, who have great things going into production. I feel very lucky to be attached to it all and to have my hands in all of these different, really cool projects.
I think it says a lot about the wide variety of things that you do, when you can do the Blindspotting series, you can do Snowpiercer, and then you also can do The Little Mermaid.
DIGGS: What’s funny about basically nobody caring about the art that you make until you’re in your early or mid thirties is that most artists do a lot of different things. I don’t know very many performing artists who are like, “This is my one thing that I do.” It isn’t until you start getting paid to do one thing that you start to specialize in that. I spent 33 or so not really getting paid very much from it, which means that I only know how to work in this like pretty varied way. Fortunately, I’ve managed to find a path that allows me to continue doing that. I’m pretty set in my ways, at this point.
Have you gotten to see any of The Little Mermaid, to see what it actually looks like?
DIGGS: We’ve had to go out and do a little bit of ADR, so I’ve seen tiny snippets, but nothing even close to finished. It’s animatics still, so I couldn’t actually tell you what it looks like, even though I’ve seen stuff. I’ve seen little, very small pieces, but it’s gonna be real cool. I can tell you, it sounds amazing. The performances are incredible. The animated performances are incredible, even without them being fully animated, so that’s usually a good sign. I remember that feeling when I was watching early cuts of Soul. It was literally storyboards with audio, and it was still so entertaining.
Have you started to have any conversations about how many more seasons Snowpiercer could go and how many seasons they want to tell this story over, or does it still feel very open to you?
DIGGS: By design, it’s a closed system. It never felt particularly open to me, but I think that’s what’s amazing about what they’ve managed to do. They keep finding new things to do on the train, so I don’t know. I’m not having those conversations yet. I let everybody else figure that out. I really try to be along for the ride on Snowpiercer. We’ll see. I’m here. I am on the train. We are doing it.
It’s just such an interesting show because, every season, I wonder where it’s going to go, and somehow it keeps surprising me.
DIGGS: I agree. The kind of thing I’m attracted to is not knowing how we’re gonna do it. Snowpiercer is an ultimate example of that for me. I never have any idea what they’re gonna come up with, and it’s fun. I love stuff like that.
This show has always had so many things going on at once and it seems like it would take a lot out of you, physically, emotionally, and mentally. What has being a part of this show and doing all the things that are required of you by doing this show taught you about acting and about the craft?
DIGGS: That’s a great question that no one’s asked me before. Really, this show, more than anything else I’ve done, has taught me about the need to be able to let things go when you’re not on set. You’re right, it’s pretty full out, and some of the things you deal with are also not the happiest of things, particularly in that first season. There was a lot of grief in that season. Season two, also. Season 3, there’s a fair amount too. We’re always dealing with these things and, for me emotionally and also physically, with all the stunt work, I’ve had to figure out how to reset, at the end of the day, as quickly as possible. The turnarounds are short and you’re gonna be right back, the next day. The show has taught me a lot about how you reset yourself, so that you can come in and still work the next day and not be dealing with leftover frustrations from the day before, or be limping because you didn’t ice properly. I just turned 42, so this is a different game than it was when I started, on the physical side of things like that. Everything takes a little bit more out of me than it used to. That’s been the lesson, in terms of the craft, on this one. It’s really about the resets. It’s not a game anymore.
Snowpiercer airs on Monday nights on TNT.