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Omari Hardwick and Naturi Naughton are two very attractive people and they deliver some very convincing love scenes on Starz’s new gritty crime drama, “Power.” But Omari admits that some real challenges came along with bringing Ghost and Tasha’s passionate relationship to life on the small screen. These challenges were primarily due to the fact that Omari and Naturi have maintained a big brother “baby sister” relationship for years.

“She was the only actor that I knew in the show. I didn’t know anybody else,” he recently explained to Rolling Out. “Obviously, I knew of other people’s work and was a fan of certain people that we worked with, [but] Naturi was like a baby sister.”

Ironically, although Naturi and Omari are playing husband and wife in the series, the “Being Mary Jane” actor says that there is an interesting father figure element that appears in the relationship between their two characters.

“The irony of [our] on-screen chemistry was that we had to put that relationship to the side. [Though] there is this sort of big brother or father figure [element] within our characters’ relationship because we had to cast a girl that’s younger in Naturi. [The part] was originally for an older actress. But once we went with Naturi, Courtney flipped the script and did a great job of creating the character to circulate around Naturi’s age and experiences in life. So it’s qualified to say that we had to put the brother-sister relationship down, because I think it’s still in Ghost and Tasha; the big brothering or father figure that certain romantic relationships, even, can attest to.”

Another challenge faced by Omari was learning to put his ego aside and allowing his “baby sister” to take the lead at times.

“It was challenging at times because of how much we loved each other prior,” he continued. “She’s a strong personality; whenever you’re dealing with a bright female who’s talented, you’re also dealing with an opinionated female who’s talented. So for me, as the number one on the call sheet, it required a lot of moments of letting her be the queen; and imparting my moments where I needed to be the king and sort of teach her a thing or two about this craft that I probably have more years at. So it was great, it was all good; even the moments of frustration — beauty came out of it. I don’t think you really have chemistry in the way that you want between two actors unless frustration is there as well. So, we had frustration, we had magic, we had days of exhaustion — both of us. But she is a great partner.”

Check out more photos from Omari’s Rolling Out spread on the next page.

 

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