'Power Book IV: Force' brings production to Chicago, reuniting actor Joseph Sikora with his hometown

by Suzanne Hanney

It’s just Tommy Egan and Chicago now in the Starz TV spinoff, “Power Book IV: Force,” which debuts Sunday, February 6.

In the original “Power” series that drew up to 10 million viewers in 178 countries per episode, Tommy was the crazy, ruthless, fearless operations manager (code for “enforcer”) of the Manhattan-based, international drug empire led by James “Ghost” St. Patrick (Omari Hardwick), his best friend.

Tommy left New York City in the rearview mirror of his royal blue Mustang after the sixth season finale in 2020, when “Ghost” was shot dead by his own son, Tariq (Michael Rainey Jr.) and his wife, Tasha (Naturi Naughton), took the heat. Ghost had dreamed of going legit and building a Fortune 500 empire with proceeds of the nightclub they used to launder money, but along the way, Ghost also reconnected with his long-lost high school sweetheart, Angela Valdez (Lela Loren) -- a federal prosecutor.

Angela is now dead and so are Tommy’s girlfriend, LaKeisha (LaLa Anthony), and his father, mob boss Tony Teresi (William Sadler). The feds think Tommy’s dead, too.

As the spinoff begins, Tommy is essentially homeless. He leaves New York with nothing but money, guns and burners, “just everything he had on his person,” said Chicago native Joseph Sikora, who plays Tommy, in a live conversation on Instagram. “So you’re gonna watch Tommy rebuild himself in real time.”

He’s headed to California for a fresh start. But first, while stopping in Chicago to close an old wound, he runs into a maze of family secrets.

“Tommy was always in pursuit to find where he belonged,” Sikora told Entertainment Weekly (EW). Growing up in Queens, NYC, Tommy was often the only white person in his neighborhood; he became friends with Ghost after the latter defended him. He knows he is a product of the streets, a hustler who owes his life to the game.

“Tommy was the most honest character on ‘Power,’ so I think this comes back to the roots of Tommy,” Sikora said. “Now that he’s an empty shell, what are the qualities of Tommy that keep him going? It’s almost like watching a flashback in the future, in some ways. Because what we’re doing is seeing how Tommy became Tommy – but after he lost everything. What does he do when he has nothing? How does he make things work?”

Chicago will be a major character in “Force,” just as New York was in the original “Power” series, said multi-platinum rapper Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson, in a video with Sikora on XXL. Jackson is co-creator, executive producer of the “Power Universe” and a co-star, as Kanan Stark, former mentor to Ghost and now a foe. “Knowing Tommy’s temperament, knowing that he’s headfirst with everything he does, it’s just exciting out the gate. Like from episode 1.”

Actor Joseph Sikora as Tommy Egan in "Power Book IV: Force"

(Starz photos).

As the consummate New Yorker, Tommy will be confounded at first by Chicago’s segregation, “so I think that is going to be a really interesting topic for us to tackle, the separation of Black and white and Latin people in terms of neighborhoods,” Sikora told EW.

According to prepared “Force” material, Tommy will insert himself between the city’s biggest drug crews, “ultimately becoming the lynchpin that not only unites them, but [that] holds the power to watch them crumble.” He will bank on his outsider status, “breaking all the local rules and rewriting them on his quest to become the biggest drug dealer in Chicago.”

Sikora admitted that being a native Chicagoan turned New Yorker of 20 years, playing a Chicago newcomer, was messing with his head. But he doesn’t give up any local cred.

When NBA analyst Jalen Rose said on the ESPN2 show he shares with ESPN host David Jacoby that Sikora came from the “Chicago area,” he immediately corrected him to say he came from the city proper.

Sikora has said that he grew up on the Northwest Side, between the Jefferson Park and Harlem stops on the CTA Blue Line. He went to Notre Dame High School for boys in Niles. In an on-camera interview with Real 92.3, LA’s home for hip hop, he said that he learned from his Polish grandmother that his surname meant “titmouse,” a tiny bird. His father questioned why, as an American, he was curious, and he responded that he simply wanted to know.

At 9 years old, Sikora was in a McDonald’s commercial with Michael Jordan, who told him he didn’t need to be so angry, he didn’t need to prove himself. But Sikora termed his blond hair and blue eyes an “urban curse.” At 12, he started boxing, where he met Mexicans and Puerto Ricans. Much later, at the behest of his wife, he took anger management classes. He knows now that much of his anger was fear-based. He’s calmer and can walk away without starting something, he said.

Sikora was on a graffiti tagging crew in his early teen years. When kids don’t feel listened to, they want to be seen and heard, he said. “They write their names big,” he told IwillgraduateTV, as posted on his Instagram page. “If I were going back to school, I would do it more for knowledge than the pressure of failure.”

The 45-year-old Sikora makes a point of saying he has been in the entertainment business for 30 years. He studied acting at the Piven Theatre Workshop in Evanston and received a bachelor’s degree in theater from Columbia College Chicago. He remains an ensemble member of Chicago’s Shattered Globe Theater and was nominated for a Joseph Jefferson Award for his role in its production of “Frozen Assets” in 1999.

Sikora in person and video interviews is affable, with a more relaxed speech cadence and muscle tone than the tightly wired Tommy. Sikora matches Tommy, however, in the intensity with which he goes about his job.

Since some of the show is based on Jackson’s experiences growing up in Jamaica Queens, Sikora modeled Tommy’s mannerisms on the rapper’s first “How to Rob” (1999) videos: “dozens and dozens, maybe even hundreds of hours of 50 Cent interviews; that the cadence, word choice, the feeling, the vibe is a lot of it,” he told Jalen Rose on the New York Post’s “Renaissance Man” podcast. He was also the best prepared of the “Power” cast members, the least likely to laugh off-script, LaLa Anthony said in a cast interview with Michael Strahan and Sara Haines.

Actor Joseph Sikora as Tommy Egan

(Starz photo)

EW told Sikora that the production “was not messing around” when it cast Tommy Flanagan as Irish drug chieftain Walter Flynn. Flanagan is a Glasgow-born actor who played Filip “Chibs” Telford on “Sons of Anarchy” and its spinoff, Mayans MC. Flanagan was previously known for his role as Cicero in “Gladiator” (2000), as Morrison in "Braveheart" (1995); as Martin Connells in HBO’s “West World;” in James Gunn’s “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2" for Marvel Studios and Disney. At the New York City International Film Festival, he won the Best Leading Actor Award for his performance as an emotionally tortured painter trying to keep his family together after the sudden loss of his wife in Heidi Greensmith’s independent film “Winter.”

“Oh my God, this guy is the realest deal,” Sikora responded regarding Flanagan. “It is a race for me to catch up to him when we are in scenes together, just to make sure I can hold my footing and bring my A game. It’s such a wonderful challenge that I look forward to every single time I see him on the call sheet.”

He also praised the talent and diversity of his “Force” cast, many of them long-time Chicagoans. Playing J.P. Gibbs will be Anthony Fleming (“Divergent,” and “Other World”), who was nominated for a 2007 Joseph Jefferson Award for actor in a principal role for “Denmark” at the Victory Gardens Theater. Fleming received the 2015 Jefferson Equity Award for actor in a supporting role for "Moby Dick" at the Lookingglass Theatre Company with The Actors Gymnasium.

Isaac Keys (“Get Shorty”), a Morehouse College grad who was an undrafted free agent with the NFL’s Minnesota Vikings and on the roster of the Arizona Cardinals, will play “Diamond,” a “gentle giant” who headed a drug-running outfit respected by all of Chicago’s crime families before he was imprisoned for 15 years.

Others include Kris “Lambo” Lofton (“Ballers” and “Empire”); Lucien Cambric (“The Chi” and “Chicago PD”); Cedric Young (Goodman Theatre, Lookingglass, Steppenwolf; movies including “The Paper,” “Home Alone 2” and “Backdraft”); Guy Van Swearingen, who co-founded A Red Orchid Theatre Company with Lawrence Grimm and twotime Academy Award nominee Michael Shannon. The cast also features Phil Conlon, Lili Simmons, Gabrielle Ryan, and Shane Harper.

Sikora’s Instagram page shows him filming last year all over the city. You can find him under the sign for the Chicago Housing Authority’s Altgeld Murray Homes at 976 E. 132nd Place last February; in Bronzeville last April with Young; downtown on East River Walk with Fleming; at Lowell Thompson’s rainbow diversity circle sculpture in Uptown with Keys; with director Deon Taylor at Rush and Chestnut Streets; at the Adler Planetarium crediting the “unsung heroes: the crew."

Anthony Fleming III as JP Gibbs filming "Power Book IV: Force"

(Starz photo)

“Power Book IV: Force” was one of four shows filmed last spring at Cinespace Chicago Film Studios on the Southwest Side. Each show brought 200 to 300 new jobs to Chicago, according to screenmag.com.

Jackson’s business skills were the topic of a video he and Sikora did for XXL magazine. “Fif thinks strategically [as executive producer], many steps ahead… He lifts everyone up with him,” Sikora said. Instead of taking a plus-one to special events, for example, Jackson brings his stars, so they can make connections.

Responded the rapper, “I’m not afraid of talent.”

As conceived by Jackson and Courtney Kemp, the Power Universe is only ostensibly about drugs. Filled with cliffhangers and plot twists, the show is a mixture of detective story, cops and robbers, soap opera, love triangle, family drama, business drama, Kemp told the Washington Post.

When Kemp and Jackson pitched the show to Starz executives, Kemp talked about code-switching, her father and opportunities in the business world. Jackson said the conventional wisdom about drug dealing on the corner was dated.

“I thought the combination of the vision they had for a show would make something I had never seen before,” said Carmi Zlotnick, former head of programming at Starz. “‘Power’ has lifted us up and introduced us to an audience that we didn’t have, and a fan base and a strategy and a way of thinking.”

Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson, executive producer and rapper

(Jeremy Deputat photo)

To many, “Power” is either a morality play – or a tragedy. After killing his father, for example, Tariq needs money. He turns to the very same methods, as shown in Power Book II, out now. The prequel, Power Book III, meanwhile, will chronicle Kanan’s (aka Jackson’s) early years, starting this summer.

When Jackson mentioned the idea of a Tommy spinoff, Sikora thought there was more to the saga of two “brothers.”

“Again, I keep using the word ‘grateful,’ but I am so grateful,” he told EW. “We’re filming ‘Power Book IV’ and people are just yelling, ‘Yo, Tommy!’ Or they see the Mustang and they’re like, ‘Where’s Tommy?!’ To have somebody that is iconic in that way, it just makes your heart that much bigger. And to be a white actor, knowing that we made this show with African American leads, and to have transcended race and been accepted by the culture, it’s a true honor. I always say that is better than any award I could ever possibly win. I already won.”