Watch: Omari Hardwick Talks ‘POWER,’ Chasing His Dream on ‘Access Hollywood’

POWER’s Omari Hardwick on ‘Access Hollywood’

Star of the hit crime-drama POWER , Omari Hardwick sat down with Access Hollywood to chat about his role and his journey from teaching to acting in a successful series this week.

Now in its second season, POWER follows James St. Patrick aka “Ghost,” owner of a popular New York City nightclub and a drug kingpin running one of the city’s biggest illegal drug networks.

His struggle to balance these two lives increases when he realizes he wants to leave the drug game in pursuit of his legitimate business and commit to his childhood love, Angela Valdez.

On Access Hollywood, Omari explained that while he enjoyed being an educator, he was compelled to chase his own dreams as an actor.

“It was intimidating at times,” he said. “California can be a lonely place, Southern California can be as lonely as New York is… Anybody that’s chasing a dream–which Ghost is chasing a dream, he’s got a little bit more money than I did when I was chasing mine but he’s chasing a dream too–and that can be a very lonely thing of people not understanding what you really want.”

Following a highly-rated season 2 premiere on June 6, 2015, the show was renewed for a third season.

Of Ghost’s complexity Omari said, “When we were dressing this guy and making him, I told [ Courtney Kemp Agboh ], our show’s creator, I said, ‘Courtney let’s make sure that we make him a doting father. Let’s juxtapose everything that is bad about the guy and make him as empathetic as possible.’ That’s the fun part of it… sort of playing that dichotomy between the two worlds–the dark world and light world.”

He also talked about what co-star Lela Loren (who plays Angela) does to piss him off during their many, many love scenes.

Watch below and tune into POWER on Saturdays at 9pm ET/PT on Starz.

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