‘Power Book II: Ghost’: Daniel Sunjata Says He Knew He Had to Play Mecca
Power Book II: Ghost centers on the life of Tariq St. Patrick (Michael Rainey Jr.). However, his employers the Tejada crime family are also just as vital to the story. Monet Stewart Tejada (Mary J. Blige), has run the family business and kept a tight hold on her children, Cane (Woody McClain), Diana (LaToya Tonodeo), and Dru (Lovell Adams-Gray) for the past decade. During that time, her husband Lorenzo (Berto Colon) was in prison. This season she even rekindled things with her high school sweetheart Mecca (Daniel Sunjata).
However, now that Lorenzo has been released everything has changed. There is still a lot of mystery surrounding Mecca and his true intentions, but Sunjata says he knew he had to play the character.
Mecca has a very dark agenda on ‘Power Book II: Ghost’
Over the course of the second season of Ghost, some of Mecca’s background has come to light. We know that his given name is Dante and that he and Monet were in a relationship with they were teens growing up in Brooklyn. We’ve also learned that Monet and Mecca are Zeke’s (Daniel Bellomy) birth parents and that after some trouble with the law, Mecca went to the military.
Cutthroat and vicious, Mecca only seems to care about Monet and getting to know Zeke. However, Sunjata has hinted that something else is amiss with his character. “In brief, Mecca is introduced in the very first episode,” he told TV Fanatic before season 2 began. “His place is revealed as the episodes unfold, but I can say he comes in with an agenda. He’s pretty much willing to do anything that he has to do in order to produce the desired outcome and gets a little messy.”
Now that Monet has rejected him and someone has stolen from him we think an even more volatile and chaotic side of the gangster will come to life.
Daniel Sunjata knew he had to play Mecca
Sunjata is known for playing leading men on shows like Sex and the City and Notorious. Since Mecca was such a different role, the actor knew he had to take it on. “The fact that Courtney Kemp, who I hold in very high esteem, just called to offer me the job,” he told Essence. “And who would turn down Courtney Kemp? She’s a Goliath in talent in television right now. All of my people called me. Any time I get a call from my representatives and I pick up the phone and there’s an assistant that says, ‘Daniel, we have Meg, Nancy, Nicholas…’ That’s always good news. It’s Christmas time!”
Sunjata added that learning more about Mecca promoted him to say yes. “We arranged the call with Courtney and she broke down the character,” he explained. “It was a character unlike any I’ve ever gotten the chance to play before: an international drug dealer, Mary J. Blige is your love interest. You get to wear Tom Ford and gorilla pimp fur coats. I was like ‘Oh my gosh! This is so exciting.’ There was no downside. There was no reason to say no.”
Will Mecca ruin Monet’s life on ‘Power Book II: Ghost’?
Now that the truth about Zeke has been revealed to Monet’s husband Lorenzo and the rest of her children, she’s been put out of her own house. It appears that she may have only Mecca to turn to. However, we doubt the gangster will take being previously rejected kindly.
In fact, his character description hints he may completely ruin Monet’s life. “Monet finds herself in bed with Mecca, a man who wants to show her a whole new world, potentially at the cost of destroying her old one, forcing Monet to lean on Tariq, who must decide what he really wants and what he’s going to sacrifice to get it,” the press release read via TV Line.
