Ex-DeKalb resident Y’lan Noel stars as master thief in Netflix’s ‘Nemesis’

TV and film producers for decades have luxuriated over supersmart thieves who steal gobs of money using all sorts of cool tricks and guises to outsmart their targets in movies such as “Ocean’s Eleven,” “The Sting” and “The Thomas Crown Affair” and series like “Leverage” and “White Collar.”

Joining their ranks is Netflix’s new drama series “Nemesis,” which debuted Thursday. The master thief in question, Coltrane Wilder, is played with earnest grit by actor Y’lan Noel, a New York native who grew up in Decatur and Stone Mountain. It’s his first lead role in a TV series.

“This is such an amazing opportunity,” Noel told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution last month at the Forth Hotel in the Old Fourth Ward. “And it’s the most fun I’ve ever had on a set.”

Both Coltrane and his wife Ebony (Australian actor Cleopatra Coleman) come from a family of expert criminals, and while both have the intellectual skills to excel in the noncriminal world, “they are products of their environment,” Noel said.

To complicate matters, Ebony has just suffered a miscarriage. She reluctantly helps Coltrane and his team rob rich guys at a Halloween party in the opening scene, but she wants out of what is inherently a dangerous, potentially deadly enterprise.

Publicly, Coltrane seems like he’s gone legit as a burgeoning real estate mogul in Los Angeles. But he enjoys the criminal game as well as the cash it generates. And he prides himself on robbing without killing. Any desire to go completely legit, though, faces major challenges that drive the series.

Matthew Law plays police officer Isaiah Stiles, who chases after Y'lan Noel's character, master thief Coltrane Wilder, in the new Netflix show "Nemesis." (Courtesy of Saeed Adyani/Netflix)

The show isn’t subtle. It’s called “Nemesis” because Coltrane soon clashes with cocky, rebellious police officer Isaiah Stiles (Matthew Law), who believes multiple seemingly unrelated crimes are tied to a quartet of thieves. (His bosses scoff; he’s right, of course.)

And Isaiah wants revenge, too, because those criminals killed his partner.

“In order to have a nemesis, they have to be on your level, and Matthew’s character is as obsessed with his job as my character is with his,” Noel said.

None of these plotlines should be construed as original, but the secret sauce of the series may be Courtney Kemp, showrunner of the popular Starz “Power” franchise. That series, which debuted in 2014, first flourished with lead and fellow Decaturite Omari Hardwick and survived his departure. Kemp built a loyal audience by melding a street crime drama with soapy plot twists.

This show, while not in the “Power” universe and on a different coast, uses many of those same ingredients. Netflix, with its massive international reach, could potentially propel “Nemesis” into an even higher stratosphere than “Power.”

Noel himself is a product of both New York City and Atlanta. His single mom, who worked in telecommunications, brought him down to Atlanta when he was 10 years old, enticing him with a bigger home and a dog.

After high school, he attended Morehouse College. “Morehouse was incredible,” he said. “I thought I knew everything about Black people, but until I came there, I didn’t realize how nuanced our culture is. People from Baltimore were completely different from people in L.A. and people from Texas or those who weren’t even from the States.”

Entering Morehouse, he had no clear career path, but he caught the acting bug sophomore year, leading him to transfer to NYU Tisch School of the Arts. For a few years, he dabbled in theater in Manhattan. “I was doing sock puppets off Broadway because money could be made,” he said.

But in 2014, he decided to try his hand at TV and film in Los Angeles. He landed his first breakout role on HBO’s “Insecure” in 2016, which led to his first leading feature role in “The First Purge.”