Portrait of an artiste as a tormented man
Michael K Williams's life, before and after he played the most memorable Omar in The Wire
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THE Wire, HBO's five-season epic of Baltimore life, is a perennial contender for the greatest television series ever, and Michael K Williams, in his role as the stickup man Omar Little, its most memorable actor. But on the show's first day of filming, when a prop person handed him his character's signature shotgun, Williams clutched it with a look of sheer bewilderment.
"He didn't know which end was which," said David Simon, the creator and showrunner of The Wire. "Mike is a beautiful man, but a gangster he is not." Williams would not be deterred. Later that week, he left the set in Baltimore and returned home to Brooklyn and enlisted a local drug dealer to help hone his craft. Standing on the roof of the Vanderveer Estates, the man walked him through the particulars of firearms by spraying a hail of pellets into a steel door.
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