As the 2025 Sarasota Film Festival heads into its closing weekend, it’s welcoming to town two creatives involved with the same show: Chris Brancato, executive producer and creator of the MGM+ show Godfather of Harlem, and a new star of the show’s fourth season, Rome Flynn, playing new-to-town real-life drug lord Frank Lucas. Both men will receive awards at the festival’s closing night ceremonies, with Brancato picking up the Innovation in Television Award and Flynn selected for the Rising Star award.

(A screening of the first two episodes of this season will take place during the festival, too, but it's sold out. The season bows April 13 on the MGM streamer.)

Brancato explains the genesis of Godfather of Harlem. “It all stems back to a dear college friend of mine,” says Brancato (who has also been behind shows including Narcos and Boomtown). “Paul Eckstein was an actor who became a writer. His dad was a professor and his mom a Black woman from Harlem. He told me from our 20s on about Bumpy Johnson [the show’s main character, also a real-life criminal, played by Forest Whitaker], who was a top gangster but also philanthropic. He helped Paul’s grandmother get through secretarial school. Paul was always fascinated by Bumpy’s dichotomy between good and evil.” (The new season is dedicated to Eckstein, who died in 2023.)

That mutual interest led Brancato to write the screenplay for the 1997 film Hoodlum, which starred Laurence Fishburne as Johnson in the era of the late 1920s and early 1930s. The TV show is set years later, in the 1960s, when Johnson is still plying his criminal trade but also becoming caught up in the civil rights movement.

“We saw that as a way to give the show a fresh take,” says Brancato. “We centered last season more on Bumpy’s relationship with Malcolm X. Now the fourth season is a bit of a reboot, following Malcolm’s assassination and bringing the Black Panthers into the picture.”

The new season also brings Frank Lucas into the picture. Audiences may remember Lucas as played by Denzel Washington in the 2007 Ridley Scott film American Gangster. The Lucas we see in Godfather of Harlem is much younger and just beginning to carve his way onto the Harlem scene. "Carve" is used literally here—Lucas is very good with a knife.

“Our audience has been clamoring for Lucas, so it’s time to bring him in,” says Brancato. “We wanted to show the evolution between Bumpy and Frank. Things start off with them not exactly close.”

Flynn, whose previous roles include work on the CBS daytime drama The Bold and the Beautiful, for which he won a Daytime Emmy, and playing a law student on the ABC drama How to Get Away with Murder, was eager to dive into playing Lucas.

“I saw in the news that they were looking to cast Frank Lucas,” says Flynn, a Chicago native. “I wanted to work with Chris and Forest; I was a fan of the show before I auditioned. I knew about Frank because I watched Denzel portray him in American Gangster. Once I got the role, I had to do a little research into who the man was before he got to Harlem. Frank is significant because of who he became, but the story here is not that yet; it’s 10 years before. He’s someone coming from the South to Harlem, and that’s like someone from America going to China. The cultural differences were vast. He’s trying to navigate that. We try to humanize him and give him some real qualities and an emotional arc.”

Both Brancato and Flynn say they are open to a fifth season of Godfather of Harlem, and that MGM+ has been standing behind the show. “These people are fun to write, despite the fact they do things society considers awful and are often awful,” says Brancato. “They’re charismatic figures; they’re smart; they’re interesting. They do things I wouldn’t do myself, but I like to write. The stakes are awfully high—life and death. We’re able to create a gripping drama that also has some nutritional value.”

For more details about the Sarasota Film Festival lineup, go to sarasotafilmfestival.com.