Page 99 - Flaunt 170 - The Phoenix Issue - Kiernan Shipka

T here’s a scene from the final season of Starz’s highly-acclaimed drama, Power, in which the lead character, James “Ghost” St. Patrick, wakes his sleeping son, Tariq, out of bed with the muzzle of a gun pressed against his cheek. It’s a tense and raw few moments which outlines the pressures and mistrust that Ghost, a high-end drug dealer who also moonlights as a nightclub owner, endures throughout the six-year series’ run. Ghost—played by Atlanta born-and-raised actor, Omari Hardwick—and his relationship with childhood friend and literal partner-in-crime, Tommy Egan, played by Joseph Sikora, is showing signs of erosion after a string of misunderstandings and transgressions. “The moment you let Tommy into the penthouse,” he warns Tariq, “you were no longer my son, and now you’re my enemy.” Here is a blistering exchange of words and an apt encapsulation of Ghost’s role as a staunch antihero; one moment you’re rooting for him, and the next time you’re terrified of him. It’s a delicate balance, and one which Hardwick engages effortlessly. “I went to D.C. to the \[National Museum of African Amer- ican History and Culture\] to talk about wealth, the passage down of wealth, and legacy-building, and what that looks like in the Brown community,” Hardwick shares with me. We speak over the phone, I in Los Angeles and he in Georgia visiting his sister right before they spend dinner together. “So I actual- ly believe that what Ghost taught Omari was so much about economics and business. The evolution of Ghost was kind of ironically parallel to the evolution of \[me\] teaching; I’ve never been asked to speak about business, and I’ve been asked now.” Hardwick is beaming through the connection, disclosing his idols growing up (“Robert DeNiro was everything to me. The Sidney Poitiers, the Denzel Washingtons, Morgan Freemans, Danny Glovers...”) and some of those manifesting instances where one sketches a path forward. “Getting older, I started to realize this common thread in Atlanta, Georgia \[was\] this great awareness of self-abundance,” he recalls. “You could buy a piece of property if you were a Brown person—you could live in a way that a lot of people in our country don’t. There was this pride, a self-realization. That self-awareness has to come with, if not more so than, that which you’re not good at.” Growing up, Hardwick began watching films with his father, everything from The Natural with Robert Redford to A Great White Hope with James Earl Jones. “I did not necessarily find my art until my last year in college at the University of Geor- gia,” he says, “and it all sort of came from the theater program.” An accomplished athlete, Hardwick also competed in baseball, basketball, and football, the last of which Hardwick initially attempted to carve a career for himself. When that afore- mentioned self-awareness kicked in, Hardwick forged ahead, recognizing his performative strengths. Since then, he’s landed roles in BET’s Being Mary Jane, Tyler Perry’s For Colored Girls, Kick-Ass, Sorry To Bother You, and many others. While acting gigs can be sporadic, Hardwick’s reliable constant is poetry, a love he’s nurtured since the tender age of eleven, which he has also turned into a tool to inform and em- power. “I always say a poet is to be reborn,” stresses Hardwick. Years of making it onto the lonesome stage or being handed the microphone were definitive moments of clarity and honest critique. “You realize that people are jockeying for your poetry, and the slam poetry scene was big for me because you got to do a poem in three minutes, you got to make sense,” he contin- ues. “You’re being judged on it, delivery and all these things. The foundation of the work that I do is poetry workshops, poetry networks.” The networks Hardwick speaks of include imparting his knowledge and experience of poetry to less-for- tunate youngsters of color and rendering it more accessible. “I thought, well shit, poetry was baptismal for me and I grew up okay,” he says. “Imagine what it’s doing for these kids that didn’t grow up okay.” Hardwick’s commitment to the craft has also led to a pod- cast, called Poetics. “André 3000,” he says, when asked who he’d want to have the most as a guest. “It would be amazing for a guy that could go from Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik all the way over to ‘Hey Ya!’ I would like to have Eminem. Ironically, I would love for Garth Brooks to sit with me.” When he’s not acting, podcasting, or enlightening future wordsmiths of the world, Hardwick is intent on setting time for hobbies like writ- ing, working on motorcycles, specifically a Triumph, and spend- ing time with family. “My passion \[is\] getting back to things that seemed fleeting, because I’ve become so busy,” he confesses. “Do things like climb a mountain and not have to look at my watch and get on a plane in two hours to film something. That is the dream: luxury, time, and freedom to do as I please, when I please, and make money doing it.” This year, he’s starring with Dave Bautista and Ella Purnell in Army of the Dead, a zombie-caper flick written and directed by Zack Snyder, with further undisclosed projects under- way—Hardwick’s schedule is teeming with activity, and it’s a blessing. “I think about the fact that there’s been so many moments where I felt super low,” he confides. “In the back of my mind I’m reminded that I am somebody; there’s a lot of street in me and there’s a lot of education in me, which has allowed me to play these complex characters.” He pauses, re- calling a moment ten years ago when his wife conveyed some indispensable advice. “She kept saying, ‘you’re an eagle, and if you fly anywhere below that, you didn’t do what you were supposed to do on this earth.’” 93 PHOTOGRAPHER: MAX MONTGOMERY. STYLIST: BRITTON LITOW. GROOMER: AUTUMN MOULTRIE USING CLINICAL AT THE WALL GROUP. STYLIST ASSISTANT: MELISSA LEONARD.