SPOILER ALERT: This article contains pivotal plot points and details of Nemesis, which debuted all eight episodes of its first season Thursday night on Netflix.
“I always say to people at Netflix, it’s marriage and mayhem, or it’s mayhem and marriage,” Courtney A. Kemp says of her new series Nemesis, which launched on the streamer Thursday. “It’s both things,” the Power boss adds of the chart-topping L.A. crime drama led by Matthew Law, Y’lan Noel, Cleopatra Coleman and Gabrielle Dennis.
While full of the twists, turns, sleights of hand, blood and guts, the fine cloth and clobber that defined the 2014-2020 run of the Starz drama that launched a franchise, Nemesis, co-created by Tani Marole, also reveals layers to Kemp’s work that will probably surprise many of her hardcore fans – in a good way.
“You’re playing with fire,” Law’s rule-breaking and revenge-seeking LAPD Detective Isiah Stiles tells Noel’s sleek thief Coltrane Wilder when the two come face to face at a fancy City of Angels soiree. In a line that sums up Nemesis in more ways that one, Wilder replies: “You’ve got it all wrong, I’m Prometheus. I bring the fire.”
With her first show of her Netflix deal inked in 2021, Kemp aims to bring the fire, and certainly the result has been on fire over the past two days; Nemesis stormed into Netflix’s Top TV shows rankings right away. In the immediate aftermath of its debut, the showrunner spoke with me about where the new show came from, her plans for more Nemesis, and the real power of mayhem and marriage. With some Power in the mix, Kemp also discussed making an L.A. show in L.A., being on streamer time, and the power of characters that keep you coming back.
Courtney A. Kemp on the set of ‘Nemesis’
Saeed Adyani/Netflix
DEADLINE: So, the show dropped early on May 14, and the reaction from viewers seems ASAP big and buoyant – they love it. Knowing that so many eyes were on you to see what you did after Power, how does that make you feel?
COURTNEY A. KEMP: I’m so excited that people are responding in a positive way. This show is really a love letter to the fans and a love letter to Los Angeles. I’m grateful that Tani and I were able to bring people entertainment, joy and most of all L.A. production jobs.
DEADLINE: Well, let’s go there. Nemesis is a real L.A. show. The city, the neighborhoods are characters in many ways, along with Coltrane, Isiah and everyone else …
KEMP: Dom, production needs to come back to L.A.
We know how to make TV. We know how to make film. Some of the greatest artists in the world, like below the line, and above the line, are here. Studios will pay for the above-the-line people to go somewhere else. They will tell you, “Well, you have, can have more budget. Your budget will go further if you go somewhere else.” I don’t want to go somewhere else. I want to make shows here. I want to help people pay for college here.
You know, this is the first time I ever shot a show where I live.
L-R: A guest, Y’lan Noel, Dawnn Lewis, William Allen Young, Matthew Law, Gabrielle Dennis, a guest, Courtney A. Kemp, Cleopatra Coleman, Tani Marole and a guest at a ‘Nemesis’ special screening this week
Getty Images
DEADLINE: I mean, full-on, but I would say too, beside the economics of it, there’s the legacy and appeal of it. L.A. carries a lot of weight as a location to viewers around the world — for the glamor, for the intensity, for the spectrum of it and for the sheer bad-assness. I noticed in Nemesis how you put the camera in parts of L.A., Black L.A., that are often freeway adjacent in most shows – what was behind that?
KEMP: Yes, we were specifically trying to show parts of Black L.A. that you don’t see.
I mean, Insecure did a great job on that before us. I never wanted to get away from Isa (Insecure creator Issa Rae), but we wanted to be in View Park, we wanted to be in Baldwin Hills. We wanted to show people that there are these communities, and they are part of the history of L.A.
So, when you hear Amos [played by Moe Irvin] at the Thanksgiving table in the show talking about when the highway went through, and those little like we’re dropping pieces of knowledge about the history of Los Angeles.
DEADLINE: Why, with Power being so New York in its scope, was that so important to you as a Nemesis creative choice?
KEMP: L.A. is an important place for a lot of different reasons, not just Hollywood. We need to keep it alive, right? So it’s like, I just feel really passionately about shooting it here, and that was, as a showrunner, one of the hardest parts of doing this, and thank God we had it, because the fires happened right before we started shooting.
DEADLINE: Jesus…
KEMP: Yeah. So the hardcore work of getting a show shot in L.A., L.A. for L.A., getting an L.A. crew back to work, getting a Black and brown crew and everyone else, but really trying to keep this show in L.A. — that was hard as a showrunner.
DEADLINE: I brought up Power, which can be a curse and clearly a gift. So how is Nemesis different than Power to you?
KEMP: Well, I’ve matured as a writer.
DEADLINE: For sure…
KEMP: Obviously, they’re both about family, but they’re about family in different ways.
DEADLINE: How do you mean?
KEMP: Nemesis has a lot more hope in it. It’s not as unrelentingly grim in the ways that Power was. Power was very much about, about driving into darkness. And in a lot of ways, even though both of these men kind of destroy their lives and trying to destroy each other, there’s also still this optimism. And I think some of that optimism I have to credit Tani. We’re not the same. He’s a much more upbeat, hopeful writer than I am.
L-R: Matthew Law as Isaiah Stiles, Y’lan Noel as Coltrane Wilder in ‘Nemesis’
Saeed Adyani/Netflix
DEADLINE: Do you think that’s a difference between feature writers and TV writers – the sense of completion, the upbeat quality?
KEMP: That’s a great question.
I think that feature folks, they still are concerned very much with how people leave the theater, whereas I was not trained that way. I was trained to write to get people to come back for next season, and they’re not the same.
DEADLINE: How?
KEMP: So in other words, when you do say there’s a completeness to the end of this season of Nemesis, this finale there is, it’s not where I would have ended it.
DEADLINE: Really?
KEMP: There was another scene.
DEADLINE: After Coltrane runs off and escapes and Isiah tends to his vengeance-seeking son Noah’s leg wound?
KEMP: Yeah, I admit it, you know, it’s my episode, the finale. That’s the episode I wrote on my own. The fact that there was another scene is about driving more into darkness and into what the next season could be, and all those things. And it wouldn’t have felt as complete. It would have felt like it was in the middle of a thought. I’m so glad we ended it where we did.
So yes, I absolutely think that there’s something about the feature that is a complete story. For me, I have been taught that the first season is book 1 of…
DEADLINE: Literally in your case …
KEMP: Yeah literally in my case, of an ongoing series of stories that interconnect.
So, for example, Ghost saying at the end of Season 1 of Power, “I’m going to be the biggest goddamn drug dealer in New York.” Well, the audience coming back wants to know what does that look like? That’s not a complete thought. That’s TV.
That’s not how Tani, even as a fan of Power, would likely have ended it. But I always would say to him, in conflict I got you to come back. That was my job, to get you to come back. And he’s like, yeah, but also, how does it make you feel? And that’s really important, you know, he always talks about feeling, and I always talk about structure.
Also, Coltrane takes lives, Coltrane steals, he’s absolutely complicated. Yet, his sense of right and wrong is very clear and it’s very clean. I think it’s nice to make a noble thief. Ghost was not a noble thief. I know people are going to compare Coltrane and Ghost, but they’re not similar at all in a lot of ways. One thing is that Coltrane is a good man. He’s a good man. Ghost is far more complicated.
L-R: Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson, Joseph Sikora and Omari Hardwick in ‘Power’
Starz
DEADLINE: And yet you are so big on betrayal in your writing…
KEMP: Well, hold on – Tani and I both went out of our way to have two couples where the primary conversation is not about adultery, like in Power. Ebony and Coltrane are sort of Hero Black Love. At the end, he doesn’t save himself, he goes to get his wife. So no, actually, there’s no betrayal in that couple at all. The betrayal there, if there is any, is Ebony betraying her sister for him. However, outside of romantic betrayal, there’s not being able to trust people.
So, there, I mean, probably my entire childhood is why I write about betrayal. Also, I feel, first of all, conflict is drama. Second of all, human beings, whenever we trust each other, we’re always making a statement against personal interest, right? Which is that, we’re programmed to be survivors, you know? With the Selfish Gene, we’re programmed to do what’s best for ourselves and our own survival that’s only superseded by the survival of our children, right? So the when you ever you make a pact with anyone, you’re always compromising what is best for yourself.
DEADLINE: How does that work in the creative process?
KEMP: When Tani and I started talking about what we wanted to do, he wanted something that was hardcore action and fun and aspirational for people of color. You know, I always want aspirational for people of color, and I always want action, but I also really wanted to write about marriage.
DEADLINE: Marriage?
KEMP: I was at a period of time in my life where I was falling in love in a serious way for only maybe the second time in my life. And as a I’d say, as a person, as a parent, you know you fall in love differently as a parent, because now this person has to really matter to your child, and we started to have conversations that I never would have had in my 20s or my 30s about what that long term looks like, and what are those dynamics that make a marriage work. And then that’s where the show came from.
DEADLINE: That must have been quite the pitch to Bela Bajaria and gang…
KEMP: [laughs] I always say to people at Netflix, it’s marriage and mayhem, or it’s mayhem and marriage. It’s both things. The show’s really, I mean, you watched it, it’s deeply about marriage, what it means to make a commitment to someone, a lifetime commitment to someone, and when the chips are down. Nemesis is what does that commitment look like?
DEADLINE: In that, with Nemesis surging to the top 3 series on Netflix from the jump, what are the differences for you working with a streamer from, well you know, on cable a decade ago with Starz?
KEMP: Let me put it this way, the way Netflix counts views and completion rates is very different from the creating of something in 2014. So, it changed the way I write in the sense that I need you to stay for the next episode.
DEADLINE: Which come fast …
KEMP: Right! I didn’t obviously have that pressure with Power and Starz. Then I needed to come back a week later, so I needed to go out on a cliffhanger for Power. A cliffhanger that you were going to talk about all week and that you were going to have conversations about.
At the end of each episode of Nemesis, I need to leave you with a question that you need answered right now.
You need that answer right now because, if it’s not about speculation, it’s like, what the f*ck happens now, the end of every episode should have what the f*ck happens now, and to know that, I need you to sit in your seat and watch the next one. Netflix is helping me by counting it down, right? It’s coming in, 5,4,3,2,1, right? It’s not that lingering effect. What I have to do on Netflix is keep your butt in the seat, and I have to make you go, I can’t go to bed yet.
Y’Lan Noel as Coltrane Wilder in ‘Nemesis’
Netflix
DEADLINE: So, where does Nemesis go next? Will we learn where Ebony and Coltrane end up? Where, in a different way, do, Isaiah and Candace end up?
KEMP: We’re not done with these stories. There’s a natural two more good seasons I can think of for this show. More stories about these two men and the people that are connected to them, and how we can make those stories cross in interesting, surprising, yet inevitable ways.
DEADLINE: That’s a tagline unto itself…
KEMP: For me, television is always about characters that you want to bring into your home.
I watched all those episodes of Murder, She Wrote, and the ones where she’s away are great, but the ones where she’s in Cabot Cove are a little better. You know? Maybe it’s just me, but I still think there’s still room in the world for great multiseason TV that makes you fall in love with characters.
L-R: Tre Hale as Stro, Quincy Isaiah as Deon, Y’lan Noel as Coltrane Wilder and Jonnie Park as Choi
Saeed Adyani/Netflix
