Season 4 of Godfather of Harlem is just days away, set to premiere Sunday on MGM+. Though Rome Flynn is new to the cast this season, he tells ABC Audio he was very familiar with the show.

“Kelvin Harrison is one of my homies. So he told me about the show when he was filming it. And I was like, I’ll start watching it just for him. And then I got hooked,” Rome shares.

Now he stars as a young Frank Lucas, a real-life drug lord in the 1960s and ’70s, portraying him “at a stage of his life where we haven’t seen him.” To prepare for the role, Rome says he “looked into the average everyday life of a man during that time period,” as well as the experience of a man in his early 20s and a man from the South, and integrated those “to create this amazing storyline of [Frank] kind of coming out of his cocoon and being a butterfly.”

“He’s about to ascend into Harlem and he has no idea what he’s going to become, but he has big plans for himself in the future,” Rome says of Frank. He notes his character is an integral part of the story of crime boss Bumpy Johnson, portrayed in the show by Forest Whitaker.

Much like he did when he worked alongside Viola Davis on How to Get Away with Murder, Rome says he took mental notes from their time on set together.

“I learned just his professionalism but also his approach to the work,” he says of acting with Forest. “When you see people who are great at what they do, I think part of it is just allowing them to do that and staying out the way and just watching it happen.”

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