AsThe Wires breakout character, Michael K. Williams felt invincible leaving him vulnerable to real-life demons.
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The world will never stopmissing Michael K. Williams.
He loves absolutely, fearlessly, with his entire being.
But his pain, his raw nerves, I didnt have to look anywhere for that.
I was built out of that stuff.
Hes gay, doesnt hide it, and operates as something of the Robin Hood of his community.
My habit for auditions at the time was to go dressed as the character.
(I wore that exact same outfit when we shot the scene.)
He knows theyre tailing him and brings them there to have a parlay on his own terms.
I was channeling Robin there, her bravado, the ease with which she did not give a fuck.
The goal is to keep the intensity there, and let stillness be your best friend.
Your face doesnt need to do too much because the camera will pick that up.
I had given up and didnt care anymore.
Thats the most ironic thing.
That exhaustion, that fuck-the-world attitude, helped get me the part that would change my life.
To play Omar, I tapped into the confidence and fearlessness of people Id known growing up.
Concerned about my tiny wrists I asked K to show me the proper way to hold one.
So, do I use two hands or one?
Nothing to do with your wrist size, he said.
Then we used some bigger ones.
I practiced at it, over and over.
Omarhad tolook like a guy who knew how to use a gun.
Without that detail looking real, nothing else would have flown.
it’s possible for you to have the whole neighborhood yelling, Omar coming!
I knew from the jump he was going to be a big deal.
This character is going to change my career, I said.
But the thing is … Well, baby, she said, thats the life you chose and I support it.
I took it for what it was worth.
I made Omar my own.
He wasnt written as a punch in, and I wouldnt play him as one.
He strikes fear into the heart of anyone in his path.
But everyone knew I wasnt that guy.
People were going to be scared of Faggot Mike?
They were going to run from Blackie?
You have nothing to pull on.
Theres nothing remotely you have in common with this guy.
You dont know how to make him believable.
I dug into how he was like me, tapping into what we had in common.
Omar is sensitive and vulnerable and he loves with his heart on his sleeve.
He loves absolutely, fearlessly, with his whole entire being.
After clicking with that, I understood him completely.
I came up with the narrative that his vulnerability is what makes him most volatile.
When Omar goes after Stringer Bell and everyone else responsible, he is driven by love and loyalty.
Thats what I tapped into about him.
But hes also an openly free human being who doesnt give a rats ass what anyone thinks of him.
And that gives him power.
So I got serious.
I knew where they would lead me because it was always to the exact same place.
When I first got down there, I did my homework to learn the specific Baltimore accent.
Baltimore has this character, like a stew, that comes from being part North and part South.
It all converged in Baltimore, meshed together, and became its own unique thing.
It drove home what we were doing.
I knew East Flatbush, but you cant just transfer one hood to the other.
But David Simon and Ed Burns were definitely going for something specific.
What are you saying?
What do you say in Brooklyn when you call each other?
I said as it clicked.
Youre saying Aye yo?
So I worked that into Omars vocabulary.
Accessing Omar required my getting into a certain head-space.
Omar became an outlet for Mike.
Its why it was so hard to let go of him.
Omar traversed his territory like it all belonged to him.
(The sound wasnt me but a woman they dubbed in.)
I also loved how Omar is the opposite of the stereotypical hood types.
He isnt about the cars, clothes, and women.
In so many ways, he stands alone.
Thats a particular kind of hurt.
A director calling Cut doesnt erase what youre feeling.
Your mind feels the fictional the same way it feels the real.
There are spaces in your brain and your body where there is no distinction between the two.
If you activate trauma and pain, you dont have control once it comes out.
And it comes home with you.
Drugs had long been a smokescreen, a cocoon, a means for me to hide from the real.
In character, sometimes things get too real for me.
More real than real, if that makes sense.
I dont disappear into a character; I go through him and come back out.
But when I come back out, Im not the same.
There was lots of touching hair and rubbing lips and things like that.
I felt like if we were going to do this, we should go all in.
Yo, Michael, I said.
Its time to step it up with Omar and Brandon.
What do you mean?
Im thinking in this scene we should kiss.
But thats not in the script, though.
But it feels right, I said.
Maybe lets run it by the director and see what he has to say?
Naw, I said.
I dont think we should ask anyone.
I think we should just do it.
Okay, but dont tell me when youre going to do it.
Make it spontaneous so it looks natural.
Just go for it.
Twenty years ago, men especially men of color were not kissing on television.
I dont mean it was rare; I mean itdid not happen.
He wasnt really watching the first time but just heard the lips smack and maybe sensed the crews reaction.
We ran through the scene and kissed again.
Youre some brave motherfuckers, he said.
All right, lets get it.
The crew all stopped what they were doing and rolled action.
I think he was anxious to get it before one of us changed our minds.
David, I asked him, I wanna talk to you.
Can I come by the office?
Sure, Michael, come on by.
To his credit, he heard me out.
You know, Michael, he said.
I understand, but it’s crucial that you trust me.
But Id be lying to say I got that right away.
That didnt come until I started watching season three.
At the time, I didnt get it at all.
What I got was high.
I also know that circumstance more money and more time played a role.
Season one felt like:Make the most of it, make your mark.Dont fuck this up.
Logistically, I was required to move and live in the location of the production.
By then, I had fallen in love with Baltimore.
That city just touched me.
Ive never loved a place more than Brooklyn until I moved there.
My blood was there, and I had some connection that I cant explain.
But I was financially illiterate, so I thought I was rich.
Never mind agent fees, manager fees, taxes, and so on.
I filled it with all the furniture from my Brooklyn apartment.
It was the best quality of life Id ever lived, and I had given it to myself.
That place felt representative of the commitment Id made in my heart.
I had hopes of moving there, making it my second home.
So I had more moneyandmore time on my hands: It was the devils workshop.
When season two wrapped, I felt the thud of coming back down to Earth.
I could no longer afford the rent on that beautiful Baltimore apartment.
Omar became a superhero costume I wore to hide from myself.
I put it on, made it my own, and then let it overtake my life.
The lines got blurry and it all went to my head.
Everyone thought that I was him, and pretty soon, I was making the same mistake.
Everywhere I went people wanted to buy me drinks, smoke me up, or just shake my hand.
I wasnt ready to get a look at what was underneath.
Omar seemed like the antidote, the answer to everything I had been hiding from.
And what made all of it so much easier to feel like that was the drugs.
Cocaine was there when I was feeling good about the person I was pretending to be.
When are they going to find out youre a phony?
When are all your secrets going to be revealed?
When are they going to turn on you?
Will they love you when they know who you actually are?
Being an addict means forward and back constantly.
It means saying no again and again.
Thats why someone who is clean for 30 years can still call himself an addict.
Theyre always one choice away.
Standing there, I looked over and saw someone who stopped me in my tracks.
I thought,This is either a young pretty boy or a masculine-looking woman.I couldnt take my eyes away.
She was androgynous and stunning and her energy was the loudest thing in there.
Im a female, she said, sensing what my question was.
Okay, I got you, I said.
Whats up, yo?
she said, recognizing me.
I heard you were repping my city.
Her name was Felicia.
As she and I became friends, I learned more of her story.
Born premature to a crack-addicted mother, she was raised in East Baltimore by her foster mother and father.
So she went back to making money in the streets, which is what she knew.
Then we found each other.
Iknowour lives were meant to intersect.
David Simon knew what he was doing.
The show, which added to its world each season, was creating a portrait of America.
It ate at me, and I avoided Idris Elba, who played Stringer, all day.
I was troubled by it, the message.
Why is this the way two Black men settle their differences?
And I had to kill him.
I talked to the writers about it, about why that had to happen.
Dramatically, for story purposes, I understood.
But as a Black man who felt he was representing his community, it bothered me.
There was a larger problem than maybe I could articulate at the time.
But it stayed with me.
Thats how it really is.
Guys like Stringer Bell get killed.
Guys like Omar Little get killed.
The realism of that world demanded that Omar too meet his fate.
So when the time came for him to go, Id had enough preparation.
But it was not easy.
Omar is killed unexpectedly, buying a pack of cigarettes, by a young kid in the streets.
Its not played for dramatic effect theres no slo-mo, no music.
Its even early in the episode; its just something that happens, just as it would really happen.
The actor who played the shooter, Thuliso, was 10 or 11 at the time.
He drops the gun and is freaked out; thats not acting.
We all stepped right into the real there.
After they yelled cut, he started crying, bugging out.
Is he all right?
Is he all right?
I had to console him.
We had to wait awhile to confirm he was okay to finish the scene.
Other setups were needed, and I had to lie there in that pool of blood.
Id died onscreen before and I would again but lying there, as Omar, was different.
It felt like the end of something.
That kind of information would get leaked; people would pay good money to know that.
I was going into a dark place and she could see it all over my face.
Unh-uh, no, she said, were not doing this today, Michael.
We arenotdoing this today.
Snap out of it.
I met her eyes and came back, but I couldnt avoid it forever.
It was strange energy on the set that day.
People were trying to avoid having any feeling about the show coming to an end.
It was very businesslike:We got a job no ones got any time for that shit.
Jobs begin and jobs end.That was a practical choice; we needed to get through it.
But underneath all that, something heavy was lingering.
That was a crippling realization.
I remember thinking that if I wasnt Omar anymore, then who was I?
I had defined my worth through this fictional character, and now I was just Mike again.
I felt stripped, lost, emptied-out.
It was like this darkness crept in on me during the end of that show.
Theyd ask me questions and Id ignore them.
I was too far inside myself to say a word.
I didnt even want to hear my own voice.
I mightve looked like I was being difficult, but I was just afraid.
I felt like one of those people.
Like,What do I do now?It wasnt even about the next job.
It wasWhere do I get this feeling again?
I didnt know who I was because I had stopped doing work on myself.
I was getting high and putting everything off.
Excerpted from the bookSCENES FROM MY LIFEby Michael K. Williams with Jon Sternfeld.
Copyright 2022 by Freedome Productions, Inc.
Published by Crown, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC.
