‘Power’ on Starz: Lela Loren Knew [SPOILER] Was Going to Die For A LONG Time

Yep. She’s dead. For some reason, I didn’t seem to learn my lesson in the six years I’ve been watching Power which is consistently that yes, they would dare to kill off that character. And yes, they just did that. So even though we see Angela (Lela Loren) take a bullet to the chest, one that was intended for Ghost (Omari Hardwick) and fired off by his BFF Tommy (Joseph Sikora), I still had hope that she would be okay.

But as the first few minutes of tonight’s Season 6 premiere revealed, Angela is in fact dead. And things are about to get real dangerous on this show.

When I explained my feelings to the show’s executive producer Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson after screening the first episode he said, “You’re feeling these feelings from previous programs that we watch.” But Power, as the Starz drama has proven time and time again is not like shows we’ve seen before. “They make these twists,” Jackson continued, which is all part of the series “trying not to be traditional.”

Though there was a very short period of time where the story almost didn’t go this way, as creator Courtney Kemp revealed. “At one point I said to [showrunner] Gary Lennon, ‘Maybe Angela should live,’ and he was like, ‘Stop that.’ Because I had this great idea and it was very big, it was not a good idea at all, but sometimes you’re struck with an idea and you’re like, oh this is great! And he was like, ‘Let’s not do that.'” Plus, as Kemp said, “You’ve got a whole network, you’ve got a whole bunch of people that are giving you notes so it’s not like you’re just out there in the void,” when it comes to making such pivotal decisions for these characters.

But even harder than actually performing that scene for actress Lela Loren, was keeping her character’s fate a secret — and for a long time. Like, a much longer time than most even realize.

“I’ve known since January of filming Season 5 [in 2018], so it’s been a long time,” she told me. But that’s not to say she was completely shocked by the move. “I had a little side bet going,” Loren revealed. She started working out the math in her head after Raina (Donshea Hopkins) was killed at the end of Season 4, and then Season 5 saw Kanan’s (Jackson) death, and the stakes were getting higher and higher. “I started thinking about the consequences of killing the four of us,” she said, referring to the show’s main characters. “If they killed Tasha (Naturi Naughton) that doesn’t set anything up. If they killed Ghost, that’s problematic for various reasons. If they killed Tommy then everybody goes home holding hands. But if Angela gets killed then it creates a whole other world of conflict. So I was like, I don’t know, but 70/30 I think this is what’s gonna happen.”

And when it did? “I was strangely ready,” Loren admitted. “I’m grateful for that place because I’m sure I will be at a point in my career where I get killed off before I’m ready. I did everything I wanted to do as Angela and so I got to be really generous and say thank you to everybody instead of being freaked out. And so [in those terms] I feel like I got really lucky. Had I gotten killed off [earlier] I’d be like [fake sobbing]. It came at a perfect time and also it’s such a badass way to go and it sets up Season 6 in such a perfect way. There’s a poetic justice that my own storyteller is like, yeah, taking a bullet for her dude.” Angela is hardly the last character to go this season…but who could possibly be next?!

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