Yes, crime world has room for savvy veterans

Even in a show about a young drug dealer, there’s room for wizened character and veteran actors.
Consider “Power Book III: Raising Kanan,” which starts its fifth and final season at 8 p.m. Friday on Starz. The show began with a teen druglord-wannabe; still, it also has room for people who have done Shakespeare, Broadway and situation comedies, including:
— Tony Danza, 75, who began doing sitcoms almost a half-century ago. Now he’s a Mafia godfather.
— Wendell Pierce, 65, who jumps between Shakespeare’s “Othello” onstage and a good-nature police captain in “Elsbeth.” Now he plays what he calls “just one of the coolest, most laidback gangsters in South Jamaica, Queens.”
— And Patina Miller (shown here), 41. She’s been a vibrant musical-theater star on Broadway and in London. Now she plays what Pierce calls “a character we’ve never seen before — a Black woman leading a crime family.”
They were at a Television Critics Association virtual press conference, along with other actors and Sascha Penn, the show’s creator and producer.
The show is going according to plan, Penn said. “It was always supposed to be five seasons …. That’s what I pitched.”
That doesn’t guarantee a happy ending but it does mean a complete one. “People will ultimately spend 48 hours of their lives watching this show ….I do want them to come away from this feeling like they got a full story.”
At the core is Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson, who knows the turf. He began dealing at 12, was arrested at 19, then become a Grammy-winning rapper (with 30 million albums sold), an actor and producer of the “Power” shows.
The original “Power” started with Kanan Stark (Jackson) in prison. This third one goes back to when he was a teen, learning the business. That sets up the surprising roles around him:
— Danza has been an amiable sitcom guy almost forever, from “Taxi” to “Who’s the Boss” and beyond. We don’t expect to see him ordering retaliation. But there he is as a godfather, working out of a fish store in the Howard’s Beach area of Brooklyn.
Geographically, at least, that makes sense. “I think I know this territory a little bit,” he said. “My fish stores was very close to my old neighborhood where I grew up in Brooklyn.”
And he was, one assumes, a tough guy. He wrestled in college and won his first six Golden Gloves boxing matches, all with first-round knock-outs, before reaching a losing streak and a new career.
Now he’s playing the leader of tough guys. “This particular character has so many different faces.”
— Pierce has seemed to be in perpetual overemplyment.
“The first line of my obituary will be ‘The Wire,'” he said. But he had a steady stream of roles before and after that. Lately, he’s done theater — Willy Loman on Broadway, Othello currently (through Jne 28) in Washington, D.C. — while zipping off for work in “Power,” “Elsbeth,” “Jack Ryan” and more.
“The producers were familiar with each other, so we were able to do them at the same time,” he said. “I was going across town and literally (playing) cops and robbers.”
Now he’s both — police Capt. Wagner in “Elsbeth” and drug boss Snaps here. It makes sense, he said; most cops are familiar with the key crooks. “I would think that Capt. Wagner knows Snaps from the neighborhood.”
— Miller first drew attention in zesty musicals. She drew Olivier and Tiny nominations as a disco queen in “Sister Act,” then won a Tony for being “The Leading Player” in the reboot of “Pippin.”
tense dramas followed, leading to being Kanan’s mom Raquel, the druglord.
“Our characters have been on these crazy journeys, where we’ve been able to do everything,” she said. That has peaked lately. “In the later seasons, Raquel got to show … a more damaged, traumatic, vulnerable side.”