“Power” Returns To Starz! For New Season July 1st

Last season on Starz!’s “Power,” Ghost’s protégé Dre Coleman became the man that viewers love to hate and number one on Ghost, Tommy and Kanan’s hit list.

And this year, we find out more about Dre’s character and his ruthless ambitions to rise in the criminal underworld – and take down anyone who gets in his way. We sat down with Rotimi Akinosho to talk about his character in the new season of “Power.”

BOSSIP: How did you prepare yourself to play Dre, who has really morphed into this sinister young gangster?

Rotimi: “I grew up around a lot of Dre’s. I grew up around a lot of people with a Ghost mentality. So I’m a sponge, so I studied people’s mannerisms…To make Dre, I actually had to re-watch what Ghost did in season one and two. His mannerisms, how he thought – even Omari (Hardwick’s) eye contact – I wanted to mirror that enough so in season five people see he’s similar to Ghost, but he’s his own man now.” He added, “I watched a lot of original gangsta old school movies too, where you can’t run from the camera, you have to act. I watched the original Godfather. Just seeing the subtlety, the choices..that it feels so real.”

BOSSIP: Tell us about Dre’s journey in this new season.

Rotimi: “I think this season, people are gonna see how intelligent he actually is, how brilliant he is, how calculated he is, but also how they’re going to be able to respect the fact that he didn’t have a Ghost and Tommy relationship, where brothers learn from each other. He’s going trial and error in trying to figure out how to be this kingpin he’s been wanting to be. So the journey of that and seeing how he’s going to handle that this season, when everybody is against him, is probably one of the most brilliant things Courtney (Kemp, the show’s creator) has done this season.”

BOSSIP: Dre seems to still have love for a fellow snake in the grass, Ghost’s son Tariq. How does their relationship evolve in season 5?

Rotimi:“I think Dre views him as a little brother, but at the same time, Dre is a chess player…He sees that he is a tough kid, and something happens in the first episode that makes him say, ‘Woah.’ He’s a tough kid, so I think from that, he’ll never forget that.”