Omari Hardwick and Lela Loren Talks Power’s Season 2by Brad Balfour
June 2, 2015
As they came into the room, actors Omari Hardwick and Lela Loren demonstrate that they are clearly extroverts who make an expressive power couple both on and off screen. We may not know how they relate to each other off-screen at their more intimate moments but, in their intimate on-screen moments — in the second season of Power, the hit Starz series created by 50 Cent and Courtney Kemp Agboh— they display incredible passion.
They are the couple at risk. He’s the popular club owner and, behind the scenes, a drug baron, and she’s his original high school flame rediscovered, who outwardly challenges his marriage with their hot and heavy affair and challenges his life, covertly as an undercover FBI agent out to destroy his drug cartel.
Former college athletic star Hardwick had a passion for the arts that he carried him throughout school, writing poetry and studying acting. Once an injury doomed a pro football career, he fully explored acting landing parts in television and film, and ultimately Power’s lead, James “Ghost” St. Patrick.
Born as Lela Maria Loren Avellaneda Sharp, beautiful actress Loren first established herself in roles on television (Gang Related) and by being in such high-profile films as The Hangover Part III (2013), Snitch (2013) and Reign Over Me (2007). But in Power, she’s Angela Valdes, whose searing hot scenes with Ghost contrast with her other life as a hard-charging undercover agent out to bring down the drug dealing empire he helps run.
Sadly they only joined our roundtable of journalists all too briefly in handling a day of interviews in advance of the premiere of this series. Here’s is the dialogue that followed at New York’s Park Hyatt Hotel.
If the series wasn’t called “Power,”what name would you name the show?
Lela Loren: “Play Pussy, Get Fucked” [laughs].
Omari Hardwick: What did she even say?
You want me to repeat it? Play pussy, get fucked.
OH: Wow. This one’s got some surprises.
Wow, how are you going to beat that?
OH: I can’t beat that. If it wasn’t called “Power”, I would say, oh, man, I would say, “Strangers and Lovers”… Yeah, “Strangers and Lovers.”
How do you walk the fine line between–
OH: Strangers and lovers? [Laughs.]
Yeah, “Strangers and Lovers” — that’s not a bad point, but the fine line between evil and tragedy, or destruction, is it in this title? How do you negotiate it in your own mind, as the character and as the actor playing this character?
OH: I would say just the — a long time ago, the innate, and all-embracing — which I guess all people that are born to be artists, whether you think you’re going to be an artist or not. I’m looking at Lela, she’ll let you know why. We are born as artists, right? And I think that there’s an innate embracing of the fact that, there’s good and bad that lives in all of us, so, naturally, I would say the genesis of it for me is that I truly believe in that. I am a kid who was the middle boy and often I would hear, “Where’s Omari?” as much as I heard, “Where’s Waldo?”
I heard, “Where’s Omari?” So, maybe, Omari’s constantly asking, “Where’s Omari?” “Which Omari is Omari?” I try to be as cool and collected and as gathered as the athlete in me forces me to be, but those who love and know me also know that there’s a lot of weird oddities and idiosyncrasies and intense power to Omari, so I negotiate it by really just embracing me. I have to confidently cool with O to play somebody like Ghost.
And for yourself?
LL: I think especially for us females, we have a thousand women inside of us, and…
OH: Not all of y’all.
LL: [Laughs] And we are tortured by each one in turn. I always look at characters almost like with painting a picture, and we use the palette that is sort of inside of us. There’s this wonderful term in the Spanish language, this Spanish concept called duende, which [the legendary Spanish poet, playwright, and theatre director] Federico Garcia Lorca talked about it. It’s this idea of — there’s sort of the golden muse, the light colors — and the duende is the opposite. It’s the blood and guts, it’s the thing that comes up from the soles of your feet and chokes you on the way out. And you know, a lot of these characters have that.
It’s the thing that you find in blues music and flamenco guitar, that kind of gets deep inside and there’s a pain in it and a sadness. But then it’s a vital life force as well. And I think you give yourself over to it and you trust that feelings don’t kill you, you just surf them and you ride them.
So when you play these dark characters, and you also find the light parts and the parts where they’re goofy and girlish and selfish and manipulative; it’s fun as an artist [to do] because we really are like, exploring the human condition.
OH: We get to be kinder with you guys and with the fans.
LL: And when you have great writing [like there is here], you’ve just got more avenues.
Courtney Kemp has sort of said that season two is the season of Kanan, how does that affect you guys’ characters, that statement?
OH: Well, I would say that subliminally it affects Lela’s characters in a sense that Angela is trying her hardest to figure out and crack this case, that at the pinnacle of the treachery lies Ghost, who she thinks is Jamie. And so there is no Ghost without Kanan, and so she’s equally affected by Kanan in that way. I would say directly with me, he’s every bit of what I knew I could become and more.
So now that he’s back, there’s a battle of egos, you know? Mine obviously being larger. There can never be an ego larger than someone that knows that they can outsmart the next person. Intelligence is the most dangerous thing on this planet, and so Ghost is very, very bright in ways that Kanan is limited. But Kanan is full of ferocity and he’s into like, “Well I’ll destroy you, and you can’t think that much if you don’t have a heartbeat.”
Do you have any thoughts on that as well?
LL: In terms of Kanan? I’m as excited as every other viewer to see his storyline because he’s such a–my character doesn’t even know of his existence, right? Because our worlds are so separate. You know, it is the season of Kanan, but Angela is still ignorant as to…
OH: And she aptly named these characters, she very much took on like [author John] Steinbeck did, you know, with how he named characters, like Hester Prynne and Chillingsworth, the character’s name’s Chillingsworth. And Courtney’s just, you know, another intelligent human being, and you make Angela Angela because she’s an angel, or at least Ghost’s angel, And you make Kanan–she literally got it from Cain and Abel. The Canaanites, that’s where she [took it from].
How hands-on is [50 Cent] and what is he like to work with?
OH: Pretty hands-on. And for me as a friend, pretty unbelievably hands-on. We’re extremely close and constantly–I’m never not texting him or calling him because I’m playing a character loosely based on his life, so he’s got to be close to me. He also said if we can’t have this show without Omari, don’t do it, so that’s one of the greatest compliments ever. He kept saying, “I’ve got to get this guy.”
He had watched me in Next Day Air. And I always try to bring a duality to characters, but Courtney has obviously graduated my opportunity to do so with the writing, but he was like, “I’ve got to get the right guy to do this,” so originally he was going to do this in less or minus the time that he obviously didn’t have, he’s always juggling. They wanted somebody else to play it. So he’s very hands-on. I guess you don’t get to see him as much.
LL: [No], because he’s not in my world. So it’s like, he’ll come by and watch a scene, and he’ll give you a big hug and a smile and root you on and it feels really good. For me, he’s like a mama bear, rooting you on in the corner.
OH: He’s a big teddy bear.
LL: Which is surprising when you think, because there’s a piece of you that expects — you know, when you’re that much of an alpha male, you don’t need to walk in with the [attitude] — you can be the sweetest, kindest person on the planet, which is interesting.
How does it feel to play the role of a female with so much power in an office full of men?
LL: Oh, god. That’s a great question.
OH: There aren’t a lot of women in your world.
LL: There’s isn’t a lot of women in my world. You know what’s so funny, is that has been a large part of my life so I haven’t even thought about it. Like when I was in high school I was on an all-boys crew team. Yeah, I went to an all-girls high school and on an all-boys crew team. I helped pay for college by doing commercial fishing in Alaska. I was the only girl. And so I’ve always felt like Wendy in a sea of lost boys.
But I do say the office environment has always been more antagonistic than in my real-life environment. I’ve always found men to be incredible allies, particularly with their perspective. Like, we use women like, to get into our [drama] — and a guy’s perspective can just like, cut through all of that and we’re like, “Damn, he’s right.”
OH: I’ll be cutting through that stuff [laughs].
LL: But I think it’s something for Angela to push off of, and you get to see her sort of femininity on display because it’s a counterpoint to all of the masculinity that’s around her.
Season 2 trailer
