NFL Star Lamar Jackson Thought Power Book III: Raising Kanan’s Creator Was ‘Lying’ About His Guest Star Role (Exclusive)

When Lamar Jackson tweeted about loving Power Book III: Raising Kanan in 2023, he had no expectations that he’d be making his acting debut in the Power prequel series two years later.

The Baltimore Ravens quarterback, 28, appeared in the penultimate episode of season 4 on May 9, and his character, E-Tone, wasn’t just there for fun — he made a mark on the story.

Jackson’s first scene was brief, and saw him appear from a bathroom stall and quickly and mercilessly murder David Kan (Yu Lu). Later, he’s revealed to be working for Unique (Joey Bada$$), who compliments him on his clean work, before Kanan (Mekai Curtis) shows up, demanding some face time with the resurrected drug dealer.

“I was really shocked with that part,” Jackson tells PEOPLE of his acting debut. “When I got to the dressing room, they were like, ‘You know what you’re going to be doing?’ I’m like, ‘Nah, no one told me anything.’ They were like, ‘Yeah, you’re going to be killing a guy at the club.’ I’m like, ‘What?'”

“I hope the world don’t think anything different of me, but it is what it is, we’re just acting, it’s fun,” he says. “I’m ready to see what people think of my acting skills.”

The NFL player was raised by a family of Power fans, he says, and he got “hooked” on Raising Kanan immediately after he started watching.

“I’m just starting to love it, fall in love with it, and I think it was about, I want to say two years ago, I tweeted about it, and then it got back to [showrunner] Sascha [Penn],” he explains. (“Raising Kanan so Gas ⛽I wanna be in a few episodes 🤣🤣,” reads his post from December 2023).

“And once it got back to Sascha, he was with it. I’m like, man, don’t be hyping me up and telling me I’ll be in it and I’m not in it. And he reached out and that was all she wrote.”

He admittedly had some doubts when Penn, who created Raising Kanan, got in touch. “To be honest, yeah, I was shocked. I was shocked, I was like, this can’t be real. Nah, they’re just talking, they’re lying to me.”

Ironically, that is the same reaction that many fans of the show — and some of Jackson’s own friends — had too to the news that he would be making his acting debut in the series, which PEOPLE exclusively announced in March.

“Some people still think it’s made up because I didn’t tell anyone. Obviously, close family who know about it, who were with me and stuff, they know about it. But other than that, nobody knew about it,” he says. “A lot of people, they keep hitting me up on social media like, ‘You weren’t in episode seven, you weren’t in eight.’ … They’re waiting impatiently.”

When it came time to film, Jackson admits he was “nervous” arriving on set “because I didn’t want to mess up.”

“I’m around Joey Bada$$ and these guys, I don’t want to mess up the line and have those guys redoing it. They’ve been here, they’re professional, that’s their job,” he says. “I just didn’t want to mess up and have them redo it. And I don’t think I really did, to be honest.”

He was also happy to get some screentime (sort of) with Kanan himself. “Mekai’s my guy,” he says of Curtis, who plays the teenage version of the character Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson originated on Power. “That was dope. Even though I wasn’t saying anything to him, it was just dope to be around him.”

“It was just dope seeing them from them acting and then them just on their downtime, like how cool they are,” he continues of Curtis, 24, and the rapper, 30.

 

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The two-time NFL MVP says the experience showed him he’s a “jack of all trades.”

“I tip my hats off to those actors and actresses because man, that’s a different type of world. Not just football — putting on pads and going out there and doing something physical — you got to really memorize and articulate your words and do something this way just to make the scene much better. A lot goes into it, so I tip my hats off.”