Starring in the hit Starz drama Power, veteran actor (and resident hunk) Omari Hardwick takes on his meatiest role to date as James "Ghost" St. Patrick, a wealthy New York City nightclub owner, husband and father who also happens to be one of the city’s top drug kingpins. He wants to get out of the game and become a legitimate businessman, but is faced with some unthinkable choices as his two lives converge.

B* Real chatted with Hardwick ahead of the show’s Season 2 premiere on Saturday, June 6 (9 p.m. ET). Executive-produced by 50 Cent (who also stars in the role of Ghost’s main antagonist, Kanan), Power is drenched with drama, deceit, murder and scandal. Basically, how we love to spend our Saturday nights in!
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As Hardwick tells us, things for Ghost & Co. only get more twisted in the coming episodes.

“At the end of Season 1, [Ghost] learns that you can take the boy out of that game, but it’s hard to take the game out of the boy. So with the game of drug dealing, he’s sort of forced to stay with it and says, ‘Well, I’ll just take it to a whole new level,’ and be the biggest drug dealer there ever was in New York City,” Hardwick says.

“After a whole season of him acting like he didn’t want to be that, in Season 2 we see him committing to it, in my opinion, just so he can use that money and still continue to execute that dream to be a corporate guy and go straight. But, you know, he’s hurt people in trying to go straight.”

One of those people is Ghost’s wife, Tasha (played by Naturi Naughton), as Ghost has started a torrid affair with his high school love, Angela. Tasha has been by Ghost's side throughout his rise to power and supports him through everything, his illicit business dealings included. She is, by modern definition, a ride-or-die chick.

Hardwick, who is married in real life to Jennifer Pfautch, had some insightful thoughts on the virtues of a true ride-or-die chick and why every man needs one by his side.
“You can’t be a complex dude, and you know by 11 years old if you’re a guy that’s different and God wants you to do different stuff [without her]. It doesn’t take 20 years to figure that out for a lot of us. You know very early that to get to that point, whatever your mountaintop is, that you’ve got to have Coretta [Scott King]. It just doesn’t work without it. So you go through your life trying to find her.”

He continues, “As more women embrace their power in life, guys will do the same thing. Many [women] have figured out how to do that without shortchanging themselves and to find a man that’s equally ride-or-die for them.”

So what, in fact, makes a woman powerful in his eyes? “Confidence. I would say, more specifically, a desire to not be a person that just matters to another person, namely a man,” he says.

“Mattering to yourself, and to a product and to a dream, to leave the earth with somebody speaking about you in ways that men have typically been spoken about as opposed to just going, ‘Oh, that person was married to so-and-so.’”

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