Will Jukebox and Lou Get a Happily Ever After in ‘Raising Kanan’ Season 4? Hailey Kilgore and Malcolm Mays Weigh In (Exclusive)

Raising Kanan explores the delicate family dynamic of a queen pen helming the drug business in Southside Jamaica Queens, New York in the 1990s. Raquel Thomas (Patina Miller), takes her son Kanan Stark [Mekai Curtis] under her wing as a hopeful successor. But Kanan isn’t the only one involved. Her brother, Louis “Lou-Lou” Thomas and niece Laverne “Jukebox” Thomas play vital roles. But unlike the others, Lou and Jukebox want something different.

Lou has been viewed as the black sheep of the family, with his contributions not valued as much as others. Marry that with his alcohol addiction and his family thinking his music executive aspirations are a joke, he just can’t seem to get his life together. But after a stint in rehab, Lou is ready to tackle the world on his own, and he’s done with the family business. Despite a new opportunity in the music business, his environment may only be more of a devil’s playground to sucker him back into old habits.

“I was hoping to say that it’s an easy peasy path from now on, but in real life, the demons that we all have that we think are external – in real life they are pretty internal,” Mays says of Lou’s journey this season. “So don’t (sic) matter if you switch your environment or not, if you’re working on yourself it’s gonna be hell regardless. So you gotta work through that. I think it looks nice, but there might be some treacherous activity along the way.”

Like her uncle, Jukebox has had her share of trouble, but she remains the family rock throughout it all. It’s a pressure she takes on the chin. In three seasons, Jukebox has lost her mother whom she was estranged from most of her life, had a girlfriend die of an overdose, deal with a complicated relationship with her father, and have her musical dreams snatched. This season, Jukebox is on a journey of self-discovery. For Hilgore, she hopes there’s a happily ever after for her character. 

“I just want her to get a break. That girl needs a break and a hug. And a juice box,” Kilgore jokes. “I feel like she’s on this hamster wheel of trying to really do well for herself, and she ends up getting thrown off somewhere in a different country and has to crawl back. I hope that, this season, she realizes that she doesn’t have to run that wheel if she doesn’t want to. It could end up keeping her safe, but it could hurt other people in the long run.”

Season 4 of Raising Kanan premieres on Friday, March 7 on STARZ. New episodes were available to stream weekly on Fridays on the Starz app and other Starz platforms. Watch the full interview with Kilgore and Mays where he discusses more about breaking apart from their family business on our YouTube channel and above.