‘Power’ Star Michael Rainey Jr. Says This Tariq and Ghost Fight Scene Left Him Stunned in Real Life: ‘I Wasn’t Ready’
Power arrived on Starz in 2014 and had audiences hooked immediately. Created by Courtney Kemp, the series told the story of James “Ghost” St. Patrick, a drug dealer trying to build a legitimate life as a New York City businessman. He made major strides to achieve his dream, but it was shattered when he lost his life to Tariq St. Patrick in Power.
Ghost’s death in Power was the culmination of a major rift in their relationship that began seasons earlier, starting with Ghost’s affair with Angela Valdez. There was one fight between Tariq and Ghost in Power specifically that Michael Rainey Jr. says even left him stunned in real life.
Michael Rainey Jr. was stunned by a fight scene between Ghost and Tariq in ‘Power’
The fight happened in the sixth season of Power when Ghost was trying to get Tariq to turn himself in for Ray Ray’s murder. He became enraged when he felt Tariq wasn’t listening to him, snatching him up by his collar and violently slamming Tariq down on a table. Ghost even threatened to kill him if he tried to go against him.
Rainey (Tariq) spoke about the moment on The Crew Has It, the podcast he hosts with fellow Power actor Gianni Paolo (Brayden Weston). Reflecting on the sequence of their fight, he said he was stunned when Omari Hardwick (James “Ghost” St. Patrick) grabbed him up and slammed him down.
“I remember there was a scene we did that me and him did,” he said of Hardwick around the 35:00 mark. “This was like toward the end of the season where we were actually going at it a lot, and he was staying in a hotel. And I came to him, and this was the scene where I’m like, ‘Tell me everything. If you want me to confess, you gotta tell me everything. What happened to Breeze?'”
“And um, we were rehearsing it and, you know, in the scene, he slams me on the table. And that was never written,” Rainey continued. “So we were rehearsing it, and then we actually did that. I’m like, ‘Oh s***. What the f***.'”
“I wasn’t [ready],” he added, laughing. “You know, we were just blocking it out. But we were in it, though. … I was like, Oh, I didn’t know that was coming. But that s*** worked, though! I liked that s***.”
The tension resulted in Ghost’s death a short time later
Determined not to go to jail, Tariq conspired with his mother Tasha St. Patrick to kill Ghost. He did so in the show’s final season, ambushing his father when he was alone at his nightclub Truth. But Ghost had the last laugh as he made it so that Tariq cannot receive his inheritance until graduating from college with honors.
This paved the way for Power Book II: Ghost, the first of the Power spinoffs. Tariq ends up signing up for school at the prestigious Stansfield University, where he’s on a fast track to graduate. But that future is put at risk when he begins selling drugs out of his dorm room. The show is currently filming its third season and is expected to return later this year.
Will Omari Hardwick return to ‘Power’?
Although Hardwick’s character is no more, he could, of course, come back in either a ghost form or in a flashback. While there don’t appear to be any active plans to do that at the moment, Hardwick has said that he’d be open to reprising his role in the future.
“I never close the door,” he said on the Higher Learning With Van Lathan and Rachel Lindsay podcast, around the 40:00 mark. “… I’m never not open. Hell, you name the guy Ghost and so there’s always, to me, a possibility of being just that.”
“I would come back but perhaps in a spinoff just in a space to give leverage to the show to go, OK, Ghost is speaking to Tariq, but we know he’s not actually there. OK, Ghost is in Tommy’s head, but is he really there? You know, just leaving that mystique. But I’d always be open. [Power] changed my life,” he concluded.
