*“Power” creator Courtney Kemp dished with Deadline about the Season 5 finale and where it will take the series next.
The EP also talked about how Starz’s most-watched show will end, having “the best cast in television” and the influence of the hit crime drama “The Sopranos.”
Check out a few excerpts below (CONTAINS SPOILERS).
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DEADLINE: So, the gunshot from Tommy down the staircase in the school, is Angela dead?
KEMP: At the end of the season, no, she’s not dead.
DEADLINE: OK, I’ll buy that cliffhanger but this really was the season where you upped the body count and truly, as the tagline says, nobody’s safe with the death of Curtis’ Kanan, William Sadler’s Tony Teresi, Tommy’s real Dad, and more, now Angela breaking the final bond between Ghost and Tommy, and the latter this is a whole new level, and that’s coming off a Season 4 that saw the death of Ghost and Tasha’s daughter …
KEMP: I appreciate you saying that. To me, it’s not a new level. It’s that the show is ending. So, we’re driving toward what the show’s going to feel like toward the end, which is I’m amping up Ghost’s powerlessness. He can’t stop the things he thinks he can stop. In his pursuit of a certain kind of power and a certain kind of life, he can’t help but injure those around him. Just think if he had trusted Angela, he would never have asked her to that school again. Just think, but he put her in harm’s way and that’s the result.
DEADLINE: Traditionally, Power season finales are the bridge to the next year, while the eighth episode is where the explosions occur. That ‘A Friend of the Family’ episode two weeks ago saw the sudden death of 50’s Kanan at the hands of the NYPD and indirectly Nautri’s Tasha. There was a lot of harsh reaction from the audience. It might be odd to say, but do you regret the decision to kill Kanan, even with 50’s expanding projects and time constraints?
KEMP: No. I had a whole year to plan that death, like no. I don’t regret. No. No. It’s an absurd question on its face because this takes so much planning, and so many conversations and so many different ways of doing it. So, the audience may be experiencing this for the first time, but I’m not. I made my peace with this decision when I made the decision, when we shot it, when we edited it.
DEADLINE: With that, you’ve spoken before about having an endgame for the show, so is this where you want Power to be?
KEMP: How I wanted it to be was five seasons. We extended because of needs at the network. So, am I happy to be going into Season 6, for sure because I know where the show is going now …I mean I always knew where it was going but the story we’re telling in Season 6 is so good, like it’s so good. It’s so much better because it is really about the inevitably of choices. It’s about the domino effect and it’s about the things that have happened between Ghost and Tommy and how they are not things that can go back to the way it used to be.
DEADLINE: So, how close is it to ending? I know you have an idea of how the story ends, but do you have an idea of when the actual broadcast series ends?
KEMP: I can’t say much more than what was contained in your question. The show is ending, but I can’t say when. That would be inappropriate.
(Source: Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images North America)
DEADLINE: You mentioned how good Season 6 is looking, so looking back now, how was Season 5?
KEMP: It was a rough season. This is the hardest season I think.
DEADLINE: Why?
KEMP: Put it this way, the person who started writing Power is not this person that you’re talking to right now. I wasn’t writing from a place of fun this year, but I also didn’t think we could make it fun. That would be weird. It would be weird if everybody was having a great time by episode two, when Raina (Donshea Hopkins) dies in episode 409. I just didn’t think that it was appropriate to be like you know shooting off firecrackers in the same way.
DEADLINE: And now a very harsh truth is Tommy shot Ghost’s true love in the chest at pretty close range, even if the bullet was meant for Ghost and Ghost was on the fence it seemed about what to do to Angela himself…
KEMP: Think of the dynamic between these two old friends now. You made me kill my dad, you shot the woman I love, in an attempt to kill me. Not a lot of conversation can be had there.
I know some parts of the audience were not enjoying this season as much as the top of this season because they were missing the kind of rollicking kind of fun of the first couple of seasons. Well, we couldn’t do that because Raina was dead and that would have been disrespect to her character and to the importance of the death of a child. The death of this friendship in some ways is going to control at least the beginning of next season.
Read the full Q&A over at Deadline.
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