Situations come to a head in Season 2 of ‘Power Book III: Raising Kanan’
Any actor will tell you that in order to play a character, they have to find some common ground with it.
Such is the case for Patina Miller. In playing tough-as-nails South Jamaica, Queens, drug kingpin/mama bear Raquel “Raq” Thomas in the Starz drama “Power Book III: Raising Kanan,” she had to tap into her own maternal instincts to draw a bead on the role.
“I am a mother myself and I think if my child’s life was in danger, what would I do?,” she says. “You know, you never really know until you’re in it. So I try to play Raq with as much vulnerability and as much humanity as I possibly could because the things that happened during the show aren’t because she wants to do bad things. It’s just kind of, sort of what happens when you’re in the moment of wanting more than anything to protect your family, protect your job, protect the people around you.
“It causes you to do things,” she adds with a laugh, “some things not so good.”
The drama returns for its second season Sunday, Aug. 14, and finds Raq in control of the city’s drug trade but in danger of losing her son Kanan (Mekai Curtis). After being sent away for his own safety at the end of Season 1, the boy returns to Queens uncertain of his future in the family business.
Raq, meanwhile, has a big secret she’s desperate to keep. At the end of last season, she had gotten her son to shoot Detective Howard (Omar Epps), the cop who unbeknownst to him is his father, so that situation threatens everything Kanan knew about himself and his family.
And then there are business demands. Not satisfied with merely running the city’s drug trade, Raq is eager to expand into hostile Mafia territory while getting no help from her younger brother, Lou-lou (Malcolm Mays), who is consumed with running his emerging record label. So there are some explosive developments that could come from that.
But Raq is a strong, smart woman who is unafraid to operate in a man’s world. So Miller looks forward to playing this woman of the 1990s who she says resonates with women today.
“If it was another time, another period, given the opportunity Raquel would be the CEO of a company,” she says. “But unfortunately we are in the ‘90s, we are in Southside Jamaica, Queens, where the disadvantages are seen and felt, and she decided to do something about that. And if all these men can do it and succeed, she can do it even better, even smarter and provide for her family with the hopes of not doing it for long. The hopes of going and not being this person.”