Imagine that Stringer Bell from “The Wire” decided he no longer wanted to be a ruthless drug dealer, but a glamorous nightclub owner. That’s the concept behind Starz’ latest original series entry, “Power.”
Omari Hardwick stars as James “Ghost” St. Patrick, a man who came up in the drug trade with his home boy, Tommy Egan (Joseph Sikora), wife Tasha (Naturi Naughton) — the mother of their three children — and first love Angela Valdes (Lela Loren), who’s suddenly returned to his life.
Now he wants to turn his nightclub, Truth, a front for his drug-distribution business, into a legitimate international enterprise.
“Power” and Ghost are loosely based on the life of rapper Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson, who created the show with Courtney Kemp Agboh. Jackson already had an idea for a show based on his own experience growing up in South Jamaica, New York. Agboh has produced “The Good Wife,” “Hawaii Five-O” and “Beauty and the Beast.”
“I was driven to tell this story based on my own personal experiences,” says Jackson, who appears in the show, via e-mail, as Ghost’s now-jailed mentor. “Overall, it’s an outline of what a lot of people are trying to accomplish. It’s showing a person at the point where he has made it to the top, and is struggling between creating a new direction and staying with that type of lifestyle.”
Hardwick, who’s also an ex-NFL player and poet, understands Ghost’s duality as he struggles to be a good husband and father — while keeping his illegal and dangerous business afloat.
“With me being spiritual and a poet, it was difficult to get any other version of Ghost,” says Hardwick. “I brought to the character that, right after he breaks someone’s face, he’ll make the sign of the cross. He’s a complex individual.”
“Here are the elements you need for Ghost to work,” says Agboh. “He needs to have a hyper-intelligence, you need to believe that he would pull a gun and use it — but you also have to believe that he’s a lover and a good father.”
“Ghost is a person who is in one lifestyle and would like to be in another, someone that is in a legitimate business while functioning and doing things on the illegal front,” says Jackson.
“There was a point in my life where I could definitely identify with some aspects of him.”
Hardwick, who worked closely with Jackson to develop the role, compares Ghost to some of TV’s great anti-heroes, including Tony Soprano (“The Sopranos”) and Walter White (“Breaking Bad”).
With its multicultural casting — black, white and Hispanic actors all play major roles in the series, and many scenes are shot in Spanish — “Power” is right on trend.
“Our objective was to make a beautiful show of many colors,” says Hardwick. “This guy looks a lot like those great dynamic characters that we still find ourselves rooting for. I never wanted to think of Sidney Poitier or James Earl Jones differently than Paul Newman.”
“Hopefully what makes this show stand out is its multi-layering, with its elements of crime, romance, family and spiritual redemption,” Agboh says. “We wanted the show to look like something that wasn’t on TV … This world looks great from the outside but it’s rotten on the inside.”