Raising Kanan: Newcomer Mekai Curtis to Play Title Role in Power Spinoff

Kimberly Roots
·2 min read

Ladies and gentlemen, primeras and distros: Meet young Kanan Stark.

Relative newcomer Mekai Curtis has been cast as the title role in Power Book III: Raising Kanan, a spinoff that will chronicle the adolescence of the character played by executive producer Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson in Power, TVLine has learned.

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The prequel series will be set in the 1990s and will chronicle Kanan’s early years. The official logline reads:

Smart, driven and still naïve, Kanan’s world revolves around his mother, Raq, who raised him by herself. She is his everything. At the same time, he is beginning to get a sense of not only the world around him, but his place in said world. Kanan wants to be just like his mother…and that’s the problem. He’s young and wide-eyed and doesn’t know how the hustle works. And even more importantly, his mother is not nearly as keen as he is for him to follow in her footsteps. Theirs is a complicated relationship that only gets more problematic as time goes on.

As previously reported, Madam Secretary‘s Patina Miller will play Raq in the offshoot, and Omar Epps also will play a “major figure” in the series. Details about Epps’ character are not yet available.

Curtis’ TV credits include Arrested Development, Girl Meets World and Kirby Buckets, as well as voice work on Disney XD’s Milo Murphy’s Law.

In addition to Raising Kanan, three others Power spinoffs are in the works: Power Book II: Ghost, starring singer/actress Mary J. Blige; Power Book IV: Influence, starring Larenz Tate as politician Rashad Tate; and Power Book V: Force, starring Joseph Sikora as Tommy Egan.

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