Most actors are lucky to snag one good role. But Wendell Pierce boasts three. Pierce is co-starring in Starz’s “Power Book III: Raising Kanan” now in its fifth and final season. He not only plays a gangster on that show, but portrays a cop on the procedural “Elsbeth,” and was the CIA boss on the “Jack Ryan” ventures via Prime Video.

Pierce says he managed to negotiate “Elsbeth” and “Raising Kanan” at the same time. “So it was like going across town, and for an actor to be able to literally play cops and robbers — I'm playing a New York Police Department captain and then just one of the most coolest, laid-back gangsters in South Jamaica, Queens.

“As an actor, that's what you want. You want that diversity, and it gave me an opportunity to actually do three projects at the same time. And the thing about ‘Raising Kanan’ is the fact that I never get to play a character like that. And so I leapt at the opportunity, and especially to be on a show which I think is demonstrating some of the best work in American television.”

He thinks the cop and the robber share a commonality: they’re both old-school. “Most cops will tell you, a lot of Black cops, actually — I learned from doing research — became cops because they knew the gangsters in their neighborhoods,” he says.

“They knew that they were a small percentage of the neighborhood, and they wanted to make sure that the ‘Miss Ann's’ and ‘Mr. Joe's’ — which is 99% of the neighborhood — was taken care of. And they tried to stop the knuckleheads of the 1%. And so I would think that Captain Wagner (from “Elsbeth”) knows Snaps, (from “Raising Kanan”) from the neighborhood. They have a lot of similarities that way.”

Sascha Penn, creator and showrunner for “Raisin Kanan,” is convinced that the actors who portray his characters have experienced life’s tribulations just the way their fictional embodiments have. “Snaps is, he's a gangster. There's a lot of humanity there,” says Penn.

“And frankly, humanity is the thing that's interesting. Just being a gangster, not so interesting. What's interesting is when that guy is in love with that woman, and that's where you start to find really amazing things happening. And you have to have a tremendous amount of trust in the people who you're working with. And I trust everyone (in the series) implicitly. I mean, their talent speaks for itself. I don't know what their lives were like before I met them, but if, in looking at their work, I can see the depth of their experience.”

Pierce’s experience is deep all right. He earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Juilliard, landed a Tony Award for his rendition of Willy Lohman in the revival of “Death of a Salesman,” played a high-powered lawyer in “Suits,” Judge Clarence Thomas in “Confirmation,” a pastor in “The Fighting Temptations” and a closeted gay man in “Four.”

Despite all that diversity there’s one role that marks a fulcrum for Pierce. “The first line of my obituary will be ‘The Wire,’” he says. “You want to build a body of work. And that's why I wanted to be on ‘Raising Kanan’ because it is populated by great writing and great actors. And I don't think it's getting the attention that it deserves,” he says.

I don't say it lightly when I put it in that rarefied air of ‘The Godfather’ series ... The intrigue of the writing and the thrill ride that Sascha and the writers in that writers’ room have put together. I hope that people understand and see that it is populated by people that have that humanity that Sascha's talking about,” says Pierce, 63.

“And that's important that we put it out there ... That film noir, toss-and-turn with every episode has already been established by Sascha and the writers’ room. So I'm looking forward to the response.”

Launching the final season can be complicated, says Penn, who also scripted “Power,” “The Magnificent Seven” and “Main Justice.” “The trickiest thing is answering all the questions if you can,” he says, “and telling a complete story.

"No one's ever going to be fully satisfied. I mean, you sort of have to accept that going into it. But you really hope that the questions that you asked in subsequent seasons get answered at the end. And what you really hope is that — look, people will ultimately spend 48 hours of their lives watching this show. And what I hope is that the final seconds tick off of episode eight of season five, that they're like, ‘This was worthwhile. We got a complete story.’ That's really what you aim to do,” he explains.

"In this day and age where people have such close proximity to the creators and actors of the shows, you get instant reaction in a way you didn't before, which is sort of problematic in its own way,” he says.

"So you try not to think too much about that. But look, I do want people to have come away from this feeling like they got a full story that had a beginning and a middle and a conclusion. That's kind of what you aim to do in a final season.”

Metcalfe sizzles in 'Sparks'

Jesse Metcalfe stars in a comfy summer romance free on Roku starting July 7. He plays a single father who accompanies his competitive son to a summer cookout in “Summer Sparks.” There (of course) he meets a single mom played by Kathryn Davis and sparks begin to flash from there.

The 47-year-old is probably best known as the sexy teen gardener in “Desperate Housewives,” or in “John Tucker Must Die,” “Dancing with the Stars,” and his double scoop of Hallmark movies.

And Metcalfe seems perfect for the Roku role. “I’m a very emotional person and I don’t really have a filter as far as expressing my emotions are concerned,” he says. “Obviously society dictates that you have to have a filter, but it’s very easy to let my emotions come to the surface,” he says.

"Be it anger or sadness or what have you. So I think I had a natural inclination to being an actor. But also, I think the thing that really drove me into this profession is that my father used to take me to a lot of movies when I was very young. He started taking me as early as 5 and 6, he’d take me to the movies. And movies just had a very big impact on me. They made me feel so much. They’d stay with me for days afterward.

“One of the first movies that really impacted me was ‘The Breakfast Club’ in 1985. I was only 7 years old, and he took me to see that movie, and it really moved me, so I really got interested in the movies.”

Holly Hunter rules on 'Starfleet'

On July 1 “Star Trek: Starfleet Academy" Season 1 arrives on digital. The series is about young cadets hoping to become Starfleet officers and the testy Holly Hunter plays the Chancellor of the Academy. The star of such projects as “Broadcast News,” “Blood Simple” and “Raising Arizona,” tells me, “I was very, very, very feminine when I was little — always loved to dress up, always loved to do female things. Then I went through a tremendously aggressive, tomboy period where I was always in trees, running around and making my friends execute tests.

“We'd go through tests like, ‘Can you jump over this ditch?’ ‘Can you hop from one tree to another?’ These daredevil things. Then I got into boys.

"I broke into a couple of people's houses just to see if we could, just to see if we could break into people's houses, maybe even when they were in them. That was the worst thing we ever did. We never stole anything. We just wanted to see if we could trespass without being detected. We were never ever busted.”

‘Silo’ built for Season 3

Apple TV’s sci-fi epic, “Silo,” returns on July 3 with its third season both produced and starring Rebecca Ferguson. The show’s executive producer is Graham Yost, a terrific writer who penned shows like “The Americans,” “The Pacific,” “Band of Brothers” and “Justified.”

Ferguson, who is Swedish but speaks with an English accent, tells me, “I wasn’t born in an acting family so this was not something I had from childbirth at all. I went to music school because my mother said, ‘You can sing.’ I judge her for that. It was a very good music school, and I was randomly asked to cast for this television series. It was a night soap opera in Sweden. I said no in the beginning because I was sort of a clown in class. At the same time, it’s one thing to ask for attention and receive it. When you receive attention when you haven’t asked for it, was something I couldn’t really handle. I did go for the casting. And it worked, and I found my element. And it was a wonderful sort of escapism into not taking the consequences of (one’s) actions.”

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