As the hit crime drama’s third season is underway, Michole Briana White dished details about what she’s learned about the Flenory brothers’ approach to family as she continues to portray the role of their mother, Lucille Flenory.

“Through every season, the most important thing about the show is family, and no matter where the boys come or go, they still come back to family,” she told Blavity’s Shadow and Act. “Family is what anchors them, and despite where they go, they carry the family into whatever they do, and I think that’s the No. 1 thing about the show.”

Although the show peels back the layers of Demetrius “Big Meech” and Terry Lee “Southwest T” Flenory in terms of what they started through the BMF business, it also showcases how the work they did impacted everyone in the family, including their parents, Lucille and Charles Flenory (Russell Hornsby), as well as their sister, Nicole Flenory, portrayed in the series by Laila Pruitt.

“From Season 1, she comes a very long way,” Pruitt said of her character. “I think by the time that she makes it to Season 3, she’s a teenager, and she’s spent years watching her brothers and being affected and almost thrown around by the events of what’s been happening with everyone in her family, whether it be her parents’ separation or her brothers; Meech has left to Atlanta, and how every decision has affected her in some way.”

She continued, “In Season 3, you sort of see her put her foot down, and it turns her focus from trying to be an anchor and sort of glue for her family and fixing everyone’s issues and concerns to her focusing on herself and worrying about what she wants; what does Nicole think is right, and what does Nicole see herself as now? Just growing as a teenager, as a person, and as a young woman.”

What’s more, they both hope viewers understand and take note of the strong faith the Flenory family is rooted in.

“Everyone does well with showing the balance and the duality of every single person. All of our characters are extremely human from the villains to the heroes,” Pruitt noted. “I think we can all as Black people also recognize the faith aspects of it and just the fact that Meech and Terry still utilize those values. Whether you see it with their decision to spare Lamar in Season 2, deciding not to kill him, but also not to kill B. Mickey, to keep him with them, and I think that watching them and everyone as humans just trying to figure out life is an important way to watch a Black family like this because at the end of the day, that’s really all that we are.”

“They’re trying to do the best that they can with what they have to take care of family,” White added. “I think that this is a different twist on stories like these and how important it is to see that they come from Black love.”

New episodes of BMF drop each Friday on Starz.