The Hollywood Reporter (Weekly)
Malcolm Mays
‘He’s ice,’ says the actor-writer of his role as a drug dealer in Starz’s new Power Book III: Raising Kanan
In 2007, Malcolm Mays, then 17, was touted in a New York Times profile as a promising young director working on completing Trouble, a $5,000-budget film about
Black and Hispanic turf wars in L.A. Still in high school, he had interned in director Martin Campbell’s office, made two shorts and gotten a UTA agent.
Mays — who grew up in South L.A., the son of a football coach and a mom who worked in the corporate and nonprofit worlds — thought he was on course to blaze a trail as a director. Instead, “the shit didn’t go,” says Mays. “It was a beautiful experience, but my career didn’t take off.”
Now, more than a decade later — after working as a music video director and getting into acting (the 2015 film Southpaw, FX’s
Snowfall) — the stars again seem to be aligning for Mays. He can be seen in the new Starz drama Power
Book III: Raising Kanan, a prequel in the cabler’s hit franchise, bringing a cool intelligence to the role of drug dealer
Lou Lou. “He projects such strength, such masculinity,” says executive producer
Courtney Kemp,
“and he also brings a believability.”
Mays’ writing career also is at full tilt, with him having penned a
New Jack City sequel for Warner Bros. and having been tapped to
write a biopic of escaped slave Robert Smalls for Amazon Studios.
How did you end up doing Raising Kanan?
MALCOLM MAYS Honestly, I didn’t want to do this, man. I’m a bougielike snob. I ain’t never watched Power, and I had only heard about it in a pulpy context. I auditioned, I left, I got a call. And then I was convinced to say yes, and I am so glad I did. I love to be fucking wrong.
What drew you to the part?
Black Michael Corleone. He’s just cool, calm, collected. He’s ice. He’s tired of his job, and there was something very, you know, “man of constant sorrow” about him.
What were the ’90s like for you growing up in South L.A.?
There’d be gang shootings, everything, but it was just a community to me. There was a Mexican street gang called 18th Street, and their initiation was to murder a Black male in a white tee. And so I would jump from