Nemesis is a story about cops and criminals, heists and gunfights, but it’s also a story about family. As Detective Isaiah Stiles (Matthew Law) and his criminal quarry Coltrane Wilder (Y’lan Noel) mount battles on the streets of Los Angeles — both openly and covertly — they also find themselves at war with their own loved ones.
Above, you can take a behind-the-scenes look at the series in the new featurette that showcases its mix of high-stakes action and family drama. That dynamic started at the very top, with series co-creators Courtney A. Kemp (Power) and Tani Marole. The two are partners in art and in life; they’re engaged. “When I first created Power, I was in a marriage that was falling apart, and now I’m in a different relationship,” Kemp told Netflix. “I was really interested in marriage, parenthood, all these family themes, but also still being super entertaining.”
The series is a classic cops-and-robbers tale in the mold of Heat, but its creators didn’t want to stop at homage. “We came in with these very conventional ideas and basically explained how we’d flip them on their heads,” Marole told Netflix. “You’d fall in love with the criminal, you’d be dealing not with infidelity, but with the faithful marriage.”
Those marriages are haunted by Wilder and Stiles’s intense relationship with one another. As the two men face off, they’re hurting themselves, and their wives. “A nemesis is someone who takes you down because of you,” Kemp says in the featurette. “You make all the wrong decisions because of them.” And that can have an impact on everyone else around you — no matter what side of right or wrong that they’re on.
“Different reason to run the streets, different reason to own a gun, same working hours,” Stiles’s wife Candace (Gabrielle Dennis) tells him in a clip from the series.
“The familial … situations always manifest themselves,” Marole tells Tudum. “And for us, this is a very entertaining way to show both sides of that coin of worship and idolization.”
And who better to tell this crime story filled with fraught marriages than a happy couple with a taste for drama and mutual respect for each other’s way with words?
“Tani, your last answer was dope,” Kemp adds. “I was sitting here thinking, ‘This is why I fell in love with him.’ ” No nemeses here.
Nemesis hits Netflix on May 14.
