The end is near for Tommy Egan and Diamond Sampson. Power Book IV: Force Season 3 is testing both characters and their relationship in new ways, leaving fans of the Starz show to wonder if these allies could end up on opposite sides. But there’s still a lot of conflict left to resolve, and no guarantee they’ll both make it out alive, either.

Actors Isaac Keys and Joseph Sikora joined TVBrittanyF.com to talk about how they perceive Diamond and Tommy’s dynamic as Power Book IV: Force moves toward the finish line. They discuss what each of their characters are searching for with the time they have left. Plus, Sikora talks about stepping outside the Power universe for his starring role as Bill Sterling in Hulu‘s Reasonable Doubt.

How do the two of you look at your characters, and the relationship that they’ve built, in Power Book IV: Force Season 3?

Joseph Sikora: When I see Diamond, and I think about Diamond and Tommy, I think about family. I think about Jenard being the Achilles heel for Diamond, and that JP is the Achilles heel in a lot of ways for Tommy. It’s also interesting that Tommy and Diamond have kind of gone against their own families’ wishes to carry things out with each other.

I think that there’s a huge mutual respect… Tommy and Diamond do things very differently, but they see the results, and they’re both kind of results guys. But it’s interesting that Tommy is becoming a little bit more by any means necessary, and that is not jiving with Diamond’s more moralistic and really kind of honest approach to to getting to the top of this game.

Isaac Keys: With Diamond and Tommy, the relationship was one that they were both trying to figure out. They’re trying to figure each other out. They continue to grow. They’re trying to create. They’re trying to make both of their personalities merge together. And over time—you see that in any relationship—it’s like, can they merge together? Or the difference is going to separate them apart.

Family is one of those things that always will kind of pull you down or pull you up, depending on how you let it happen… And we both have different motives. We have different motivations about how we want to move. And I think as you see the layers start to develop, you’re just trying to see which direction is it going to go? How’s the relationship going to form or unform?

How does Season 3 compare to the previous two and the journey that Tommy has been on since coming to Chicago?

Sikora: One of the good things that we had about the first season of Power Book IV: Force is that it kind of showed Tommy going through Chicago like a hot knife through butter. Oh, this is just another borough in New York; I’ll take over this. It was kind of like these kind of globular ideas… Tommy was like oh, this is easy. And it was. It wasn’t until we got to Season 2, though, where Tommy found out real hard, real fast that it’s not easy—that Chicago is not a soft city.

What we’ve been doing is making the world more and more and more complex. Tommy’s seen that not only within CBI—all the little different factions within CBI—but within what we’re setting up as the South Side of Chicago… We’re representing all of these different real neighborhoods in Chicago and diversifying it from the West Side of Chicago, which are all in their respective areas very different. We’re showing the difference within what we’re establishing as the Black community within Chicago, and then adding a Latin layer there, which Tommy is getting to know very, very well inside and out.

I think that what that’s doing is not only representing Chicago very real, but it’s making Tommy really question everybody’s motives and what people are doing. Just like Mireya questions Tommy’s motives about learning Spanish. Why are you doing this? Why are you doing that? We’ve got a lot of people questioning a lot of different things, whether it’s Diamond questioning his brother‘s sobriety and commitment to their idea that they built together and that he was the commander of, whether that is Miguel going within his own group to show that pain will happen for treachery, or whether that’s Tommy trying figure out where he exists in the world.

And then also with Tommy, is Tommy going to be loyal to the people he said he’s going to be loyal to? Or is he going to be loyal to the thing that he said at the end of Power: he was going to be loyal to the game and the game alone, and getting to the top of that and running things… I think that any time Tommy thinks he’s doing a good job, he’s doing a bad job. If Tommy’s keeping it moving, then Tommy’s doing a good job. So we’ll just have to see how long Tommy lasts in Season 3.

Keys: The dynamic is great, because I also feel that Diamond is trying to be a team player. That’s what he’s trying to do. He’s saying okay, what do we do next? Tommy, what’s your plan on that? But then he’s also like, well, I’m going try to insert my authoritativeness, being a boss in CBI as well. His ability to try to be observant and be meticulous in what he’s doing also puts him in a place of trying to figure things out, where the loyalty lies.

But in this game, I think Power does a great job of reflecting that there really is no loyalty. It’s only loyalty until it’s not. Everybody [is] trying to get what they can out of the situation. And the other thing that’s going on, love is in play. Tommy’s definitely in love. Diamond at this point, in Season 3, he’s now all for the game, but he wants peace in a violent society. He wants this coalition to really take place, because he wants things to settle down, so maybe he doesn’t have to do all the nasty things that come along with his job. But Tommy’s all for that.

Joseph, between seasons audiences got to see you playing Bill Sterling in Hulu’s legal drama Reasonable Doubt. What was it like to step away from Tommy, and did you see anything in common between the two characters?

Sikora: Coming from the world of the theater was really helpful. It’s great when you have this background of like, hey, you’re here to commit to the character and fully flesh out these characters to the best of your ability, until they say action.

There’s actually more similarities to these characters than most people see, because they’re both going to get what they want, kind of by any means necessary. But they’re also very loyal people who are deeply conflicted, with with themes of family and making it to the top. I think that there’s just similarities in life in general for ambitious people. But Tommy’s ambition in Season 3 is out of control.

Another thing that’s interesting about Bill Sterling is that Bill Sterling, wisely written by Raamla Mohamed, who I adore—she has him as kind of [with] a foot in the white community and a foot in the Black community through his marriage and his children. And so in some ways, Bill Sterling is living Tommy Egan’s dream of having a family, which is not necessarily Tommy’s fate, until now. Now Tommy is in a place with Mireya where who knows what this could bring for him. Is this the fruition of his dreams? And is this the girl of his dreams, who knows gangsterism, who knows that life and is all in for her man?

What it did, going in and out, is similar to what it did when I went out and played [on] Ozark, or when I played Frog Jack in Underground. All the characters reverberate in a way that you have to commit fully 100 percent and do your homework, to have a real character that the audiences can have transcend and see themselves within that character.

Power Book IV: Force airs Fridays at 8:00 p.m. ET/PT on Starz. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Starz.

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