Dre Takes Center Stage On New Season Of ‘Power’

Rotimi Akinosho is returning to “Power” as ambitious kingpin Dre, who takes a leading role on the Starz series heading into Sunday night’s Season 5 premiere.

As the new season kicks off, Dre is preparing to take over the drug cartel in a power struggle with his former boss, James “Ghost” St. Patrick (Omari Hardwick), and his ex-friend Kanan (Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson, also the show’s executive producer).

“I want to be the best villain on TV. As an actor you want to make people feel, even when the show isn’t on,” says the Nigerian-American Akinosho, 29, who joined “Power” in Season 2. “So the fact that I can affect your emotions this way is the best feeling in the world.”

On last season’s finale, Dre solidified his relationship with the Jimenez siblings, Alicia (Ana De La Reguera) and Diego (Maurice Compte) in a bid to become a feared leader.

“I think Dre would be the best boss because he’s the most cerebral,” Akinosho says. “He’s underestimated on how smart he is, and that gives him his own power. He’s in his 20s and has his own restaurant and his own club — and I think he’s doing everything faster than Ghost did at this age.”
Akinosho says there’s much more going on between Dre and Ghost than meets the eye.

“The misconception is [that] Dre does not want Ghost to get killed. He basically says, ‘Leave me alone and I’ll leave you alone,’ but that’s just in [Sunday’s opening] episode,” he says. “Dre is like, ‘Look, there’s gonna be a problem if you want it but I don’t want this problem.’”

When asked about how it all ends up for Dre this season, Akinosho has a simple answer: “It ends how I want it to.”

Aside from his role on “Power,” Akinosho is also an accomplished R&B artist — he’s opened for Jennifer Hudson and appeared in Keyshia Cole’s “Trust and Believe” video — and plans to drop his next single (as yet untitled) later this summer or early in the fall.

“Music means more to me than acting because I grew up doing music and music is me,” he says. “I know what I’m up against in terms of breaking the stigma of the ‘actor/singer.’ But I love competition and I want to break all barriers.”

Akinosho is also set to star opposite Erica Ash in “Singleholic,” a big-screen romantic comedy whose cast includes Vanessa Williams, Tyson Beckford and Stephen Bishop.

“It’s about this woman who is having a hard time finding love, and the character I play is someone who’s an artist — he’s a real-deal painter and he wants to be with her,” he says. “So we’ll see whether she chooses him or not. Basically he’s the best choice for her, but you know how things happen — you don’t always go with the best choice in life.”

Akinosho, meanwhile, is adamant about not being labeled — which explains his comedic videos on Instagram, winning him the nickname of “Mr. Sexy Nigerian Buttascotch” and celebrity fans including Snoop Dog and Wiz Khalifa.

“I wanted to go into another lane and it just made sense to do my Nigerian accent because every time I did it in a clay mask people laughed,” he says. “So I just thought about this character and if it works it works. If it doesn’t it doesn’t. I want to impact the culture in any way I possibly can.”

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