Friday, March 29, 2024

‘Power Book III: Raising Kanan’ Producer Unpacks Latest Installment in Series Franchise

Power Book III: Raising Kanan Season 1 2021

*”Power Book III: Raising Kanan,” the third book in the “Power” universe, debuted on Starz over the weekend. The prequel series focuses on 50 Cent’s character Kanan, and his rise to infamy. 

This latest installment in the “Power” franchise hails from Sascha Penn, who was hand-picked by series creator Courtney Kemp to bring this new world to life.

“Power is a family drama,” Penn told Complex. “It was always going to be some version of a family drama, so when they came to me and said, ‘Look, we want to do this origin story,’ I went back and said, ‘All right, let me figure out what that would look like,’ and I really felt the central relationship would be [between] mother and son.”

Penn unpacked the new series with the outlet and dished about his approach to producing this section of the Power-verse. Check out excerpts from the conversation below. 

READ MORE: ‘Power Book III: Raising Kanan’ Cast Dish On New Season | Watch

I know you’ve written and you’ve produced on Power before, but how do you go from, “I’m creating an episode,” to now, “Give me this entire section of the universe?”

I think part of it is I was a writer on Power Season 1, so I have a lot of the OG Power DNA in me. I’ve done a lot of feature work, some of which probably isn’t even on IMDb, and a big part of feature writing is creating a world and that’s very much the skillset that you need as it relates to a series, too. Now obviously, it’s a much longer road ahead of you and you have a lot more time to explore characters and stories and narratives and whatnot, but it’s still a very similar process in terms of visualizing and thinking.

Look, I was really, really fortunate. Courtney, who is a good friend, and 50, who’s also a good friend, came to me and said, “Look, we have this idea.” And really, all they had was, “We want to do the origin story of Kanan”—they were using GoodFellas as the template, or as they called it, “HoodFellas”—and they said, “What do you think?” I thought about it and came back with what I thought was an interesting, compelling… It’s a daunting job to do an origin story for a character that’s as compelling and as fully realized as Kanan.

Did it always start out as Raising Kanan, as it’s going to be his origin story but also be as much the story of his mother, and his mother really being the one to driving a lot of that going on in his life?

It didn’t start off at that. That was something that, excuse me, in talking to 50 about his mom, his grandmother, his extended family. As I started thinking about that stuff, the larger world started to come into focus for me, as it relates to the series. The best shows like this are family dramas. Power is a family drama; this is a family drama. It was always going to be some version of a family drama, so when they came to me and said, “Look, we want to do this origin story,” I went back and said, “All right, let me figure out what that would look like,” and I really felt the central relationship would be [between] mother and son.

What was it about Patina, specifically, to you guys that said, “Hey, this is Kanan’s mother right here?”

It’s one of those things where you sit in a room, and someone walks in, and they read the stuff that you’ve written, and you’re like, “Wow, you just made that about a million times better than what I ever thought it would be.” And she just has… You see what she has.

It’s there on the screen.

Yeah. It’s pretty undeniable, man. And it was that way in the room too, by the way, the first time. She came in. She had already worked out the New York accent on her own. She came in fully prepared, but aside from all that, she is just truly an amazing, amazing actress. I was saying to someone earlier, I’ve seen all 10 episodes and I can tell you, I was like, “She deserves an Emmy award.” If she doesn’t get one, it will be yet another crime that’s been committed in Hollywood.

She’s incredible. Everybody on the show is incredible. Her, Mekai [Curtis], who had the real daunting challenge of basically fitting into 50’s shoes and capturing what 50 established beforehand, but then London Brown, Malcolm Mays, Omar Epps, Shanley Caswell, Joey Badass, who’s an absolute revelation, Haley Kilgore, who is incredible. She’s in the new Aretha Franklin movie that’s coming out. It’s been amazing. The best part of this job is when you have something that exists on the page, and then you give it to these actors, and they take it, and they just make it their own in ways that you never expected. It’s a pretty humbling and powerful experience.

In pressing play on the first episode of Raising Kanan, I was prepared for the theme, because of how iconic the theme song of Power became. I had a feeling that Raising Kanan was going to have a theme song that would live up to or at least do justice to “Big Rich Town.” When it came to the theme for Raising Kanan, “Part of the Game,” were you in conversation with 50? Talk about how the show’s theme came to be.

From the beginning, 50 said, “The theme song needs to feel like the South Side. I need it to feel like the South Side in ‘91. It has to have that vibe.” 50 always talks about this show being set in what he calls “the golden era” which, in ‘91, he was hustling. That was always the creative mandate for him. I don’t tell him how to do his job because he knows how to do it a lot better than I do, so I just waited. When I heard the track the first time, and I heard a very rough version of it, I was in New York at this time, or shortly thereafter. I was like, “Yeah, it brings you back. It brings you back, and it’s iconic in the same way.”

Now listen, “Big Rich Town” is its own thing. “Big Rich Town” became a movement. This song, I think, is equally amazing, but very, very different. I think he captures time and place in the same way that “Big Rich Town” captured time and place.

Read the full interview here.

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