‘A man’s gotta have a code’ … Williams as Omar; the actor died this week. 
Photograph: Paul Schiraldi 

‘I got the shotgun. You got the briefcase’ – how The Wire’s Omar changed TV

Barack Obama Stands by His Correct Pick of Omar Little As the Best Wire Character

Omar Little is the gay stick-up man who robs drug dealers for a living in The Wire

Michael K Williams / The Wire star remembered as 'a fine man and a rare talent'

Obituaries / Michael K Williams

He was the terrifying stick-up man who loved his gran, shopped in his pyjamas and tenderly kissed his boyfriend. We remember Omar’s great scenes – and pay tribute to Michael K Williams, the actor who brought him to life

Paul Owen

Tuesday 7 September 2021

P

laying stick-up man Omar Little on The Wire, Michael K Williams was tough, frightening and brutal – his face scarred, his smile wide, toting a shotgun and wearing a long trenchcoat. So viewers of David Simon’s intricate TV portrait of Baltimore’s streets, docks, schools and politics felt the rug pulled from under them when they first saw him kiss his boyfriend in episode four of season one.

Obituaries / Michael K Williams

 

Michael K Williams as Omar Little, the gay, dandyish highwayman who gets his kicks, and his cash,
from robbing the mighty, murderous Barksdale clan in The Wire. 

Michael K Williams obituary

American actor best known for playing Omar Little in the TV crime series The Wire

Barack Obama Stands by His Correct Pick of Omar Little As the Best Wire Character

Omar Little is the gay stick-up man who robs drug dealers for a living in The Wire

Michael K Williams / The Wire star remembered as 'a fine man and a rare talent'

Ryan Gilbey
Tuesday 7 September 2021

The binge-watching revolution began in the late 1990s, when the combined advent of quality US television and DVD box sets made that viewing method not merely possible but irresistible. Among the violent, intelligent adult dramas from that period – including The Sopranos and Deadwood – it was the Baltimore-set crime series The Wire, broadcast on HBO between 2002 and 2008, that was the most innovative and highly regarded.

 

Michael K. Williams

Michael K Williams: The Wire star remembered as 'a fine man and a rare talent'

Tributes have been paid to US actor Michael K Williams, best known for starring in HBO drama series The Wire, following his death at the age of 54.

Barack Obama Stands by His Correct Pick of Omar Little As the Best Wire Character

Omar Little is the gay stick-up man who robs drug dealers for a living in The Wire

Obituaries / Michael K Williams

SEPTEMBER 8, 2021

The Wire co-star Clarke Peters told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "He was a generous actor. It wasn't me, me, me. It was us, us, us."

Film-maker Spike Lee described Williams on Instagram as "his brother" and said he "was shook" at the news.

Michael K. Williams / Omar Little

 

Michael K. Williams

Omar Little

Barack Obama Stands by His Correct Pick of Omar Little As the Best Wire Character

Omar Little is the gay stick-up man who robs drug dealers for a living in The Wire

Michael K Williams / The Wire star remembered as 'a fine man and a rare talent'

Obituaries / Michael K Williams

Posters / The Wire

Posters

THE WIRE

Omar Little is the gay stick-up man who robs drug dealers for a living in The Wire

Omar Little is the gay stick-up man who robs drug dealers for a living in The Wire

Barack Obama Stands by His Correct Pick of Omar Little As the Best Wire Character

Michael K Williams / The Wire star remembered as 'a fine man and a rare talent'

Obituaries / Michael K Williams

Sam Delaney
Saturday 19 July 2008

Michael K Williams as Omar Little in The Wire. 

Photograph: PR

Barack Obama recently named Omar Little as his favourite character in his favourite show. "That's not an endorsement," the presidential hopeful added carefully. "He's not my favourite person but he's a fascinating character." Barack was right. Of all the brilliantly drawn, authentically complex and relentlessly captivating characters in this show's sprawling cast, he is surely the most engaging.

Devotees of the Baltimore-set urban drama are as passionate and obsessive as the sort of crazies who turn up to Star Trek conventions dressed as Lieutenant Uhura. And once they start setting up conventions in honour of The Wire you can be sure that most fans will turn up dressed in a big long mac, carrying a double-barrelled shotgun just like their hero. He is loved because he is meaner, funnier, cooler and braver than any other character you've ever seen on TV. He is unpredictable, complicated and brilliantly strange. Amid all the the show's vicious drug dealers, corrupt politicians and compromised cops, Omar is the only figure who adheres to a strict, if perverse, moral code. He also has a way-cool facial scar. Put simply, Omar Little is the most unique character in the most unique television show of all time.

Midway through the third episode of The Wire, we catch our first glimpse of him. He sits by the side of the low-rise housing projects in a van - all scarred and scary. He tugs insolently on a cigarette while he scopes out the young drug hoppers going about their business. The camera dwells on his narrowed eyes as he plots his next move with sinister, methodical calm. You're not quite sure who he is or what he's up to, but you're instantly engrossed.

"They originally said seven episodes and you're out of here," says Michael K Williams, the man who plays him, "but after the first few weeks filming, David Simon and Ed Burns [the shows creators] came up to me on set and said they loved the passion I was bringing to it. They said they wanted to expand the role and told me to go and watch The Wild Bunch. They'd based a lot of the character on those old westerns." His croaking drawl is just like Omar's but the stuff he says isn't. Its strange to hear him self-deprecate, guffaw and use phrases like: "Dance was my first passion." Nevertheless, Williams' performances are heavily informed by his own eventful upbringing. "I grew up in East Flatbush in Brooklyn which was an intense neighbourhood filled with different West Indian cultures, he says. I never dealt drugs or went to jail but I was always getting myself in what I call knuckle-headed trouble. Jumping into situations I could have avoided. The gangsters knew who I was and left me alone.

On the night of his 25th birthday he got involved in a bar brawl in which he was slashed across the face with a razor, leaving him with that distinctive scar. "Me and two friends were jumped," he says. "I didn't have time to worry about myself because my friend was cut even worse. He passed out and was losing blood fast so I had to get him to hospital before he died. But not all of Williams' life played like an episode of The Wire. For much of the 1990s, he worked as a professional dancer with the likes of Crystal Waters, Technotronic and CC Peniston. "I got paid to travel the world doing what I loved for seven years," he says. But in the end age caught up with me. His striking looks attracted the interest of casting directors and the odd acting job arose. He trained at drama college and was soon cast in Bringing Out The Dead, during which Martin Scorsese told him he was a damned fine actor.

Then things slowed down for a few years. He was working at his mothers daycare centre to make ends meet when he received a script from The Wires producers. "I read the character and thought, This looks like fun," he says. "I quickly decided that I didn't want to play this guy like an alpha male. I wanted to play him with sensitivity and integrity. He wouldn't scream or shout or get respect by intimidating people."

Compared to most of the violent street kids caught up in The Wires drug game, Omar cuts an almost Wildean figure. He swaggers through the streets of Baltimore like a gun-toting dandy in his long coat and fancy headscarves. He is poetic, lacing his dialogue with old-fashioned, incongruous phrases like "indeed", "do tell" and "I think not". He is a mine of insight and wisdom on the ugly, broken world he lives in. "Out there it's play or get played," he observes. When he robs an illicit card game, psychotic drug lord Marlo Stanfield fixes him with an evil glare and hisses, "Thats my money." Omar just smirks and explains, "Money ain't got no owners, only spenders." "Everyone knows who Omar is," says Williams. "He makes no excuses for what he is. He is not duplicitous in any way. That's not only rare in the show but in real life, too."

Omar's ethical code is endearing if often eccentric. He robs a shopkeeper of his drug stash - then pays him for a packet of cigarettes, taking care to check he's given the correct change. He rarely loses his temper and never swears. "It was Ed [Burns] who first suggested that Omar should prize his own self-control in a way that so many other characters in The Wire do not," David Simon has said.

Omar's defining scene comes in season two when he appears in court to testify against a gang member accused of murder. He waltzes into the courtroom ostentatiously toying with the tie he has casually looped around his neck for the occasion. "What exactly do you do for a living?" asks the state's attorney once he's taken the stand. "I robs drug dealers," he grins proudly. She asks how someone in his line of work could stay alive for so long. "Day at a time I suppose," he shrugs. Then comes his cross examination at the hands of corrupt gang-lawyer Maurice Levy. "You are amoral are you not? You are feeding off the violence and the despair of the drug trade. You are stealing from those who themselves are stealing the lifeblood from our city. You are a parasite who leeches off the culture of drugs..." Omar interrupts him: "Just like you, man." The lawyer stops in his tracks and splutters, "Excuse me? What?" Omar leans forward. "I got the shotgun, you got the briefcase. Its all in the game though, right?"

It's one of Williams' favourite scenes. "That was the moment I felt I'd finally got the character right," he says. "I'd spent a long time on the streets of Baltimore going deep into that world. I would be out after 2am, seeing fights, hearing shots fired. I needed to learn the details of how they walked, how they spoke. Baltimore is different to Brooklyn."

Williams also got to spend time with Donnie Andrews, a real-life former stick-up man on whom the character was partly based. He appears in season four as one of the henchmen who protect Omar in prison, and again in season five. "I never asked Donnie about his past," says Williams. "But there was a quiet menace to him that I was just able to absorb while he was on set."

Sometimes, aside from all the authentic touches, Omar just does weird shit. Like when he saunters to the cornershop in his silk pyjamas to buy Honey Nut Cheerios. Or the way he whistles that spooky tune everywhere he goes. "It's The Farmer In The Yard," Williams says. "The writers told me to whistle it. It makes me feel like Elmer Fudd. I walk into those scenes thinking to myself Its wabbit season!"

Brilliantly, Omar's sexuality is neither here nor there to most of the plot lines. But it is relevant to the overall picture. David Simon explains: "I thought Omar, as an unaffiliated character, could be boldly and openly homosexual in a way that a gay man within the organised drug trade or within the police department could not be." Williams saw Omar's sexuality as the thing most likely to make it a stand-out role. "The way I decided to play it was, So what?" he says. "Yeah, he's gay, but that's not the thing you're gonna remember him for if you meet him down an alley. It's that shotgun that will have you worried, not his gayness. I didn't want it to define him." Now, he hopes, the character is helping to change attitudes. "In the hood, especially among the black community, homosexuality is taboo," he says. "But I get real gangsters coming up and saying, 'Omar's my man! I love Omar!' I think it might have made some people think differently about things."

In season five, Omar features in some of the show's most dramatic scenes ever. Those left with a sense of withdrawal once its all over can take some comfort from Michael K Williams growing presence on our screens. His Hollywood stock is rising, with recent appearances in The Incredible Hulk and Spike Lee's forthcoming war epic, Miracle At St Anna. But he will always be remembered for playing one of TV's greatest ever characters. Lately, hes even won his mother round. "The Wire was never her cup of tea," he says. "But then she read the Barack Obama quote and that changed her mind. I managed to introduce them and he called her mom. Shes so thrilled she might even watch an episode some day!"

THE GUARDIAN

Barack Obama Stands by His Correct Pick of Omar Little As the Best Wire Character

Barack Obama Stands by His Correct Pick of Omar Little As the Best Wire Character

Omar Little is the gay stick-up man who robs drug dealers for a living in The Wire

Michael K Williams / The Wire star remembered as 'a fine man and a rare talent'

Obituaries / Michael K Williams

By Margaret Lyons
March 1, 2012

Omar Little is the best Wire character of all-time, according to Barack Obama. The Commander-in-Chief’s Omar Little fandom has been on the books since 2008, when he said “he’s not my favorite person, but he’s a fascinating character,” and President Obama recently reaffirmed his position on the matter. On the most recent episode of The B.S. Report, and after some solid sports banter, Bill Simmons asked the president about the Great Wire Question of Character Supremacy. “It’s got to be Omar, right? I mean, that guy is unbelievable,” Obama said. “I mean, what a combination. And that was one of the best shows of all-time.” We can now consider this hotly debated issue completely settled. Team McNulty and Team Stringer Bell, please lick your wounds accordingly.

VULTURE

Maxim interrogates the makers and stars of The Wire

MAXIM INTERROGATES 

THE MAKERS 

AND STARS 

OF THE WIRE

We speak with the men and women 

who made one of the best TV shows of all time.

MARC SPITZ

 

UPDATED:

DEC 21, 2015

ORIGINAL:

JUN 4, 2012

Ten years ago this month, The Wire premiered on HBO and… almost nobody cared. The Baltimore saga of cops and dealers, junkies and politicians, poverty and hope, polarized critics, was ignored by the Emmys, constantly struggled for ratings and faced cancellation more than once. But it also inspired a future President, created a bona fide American folk hero, and helped launch the current “Golden Age” of television. Now for the first time ever, the creators, writers, cast and crew recall the making of an American classic.

In the mid-1980s David Simon, a police reporter for the Baltimore Sun, met Ed Burns, a homicide detective in the midst of a major case involving local drug kingpin and folk hero Melvin Williams. Key evidence in the case was gathered using wiretap surveillance.


David Simon (creator, executive producer, writer): Ed was the lead investigator. It was Melvin’s third and hopefully last arrest, and I was assigned to do a story on who he was and why he kept coming back.

Ms Pearson was raised in the streets beset by poverty and drug violence where The Wire was set

The Wire's 'Snoop' arrested in Baltimore drug raid

An actor from the HBO television series The Wire has been charged with conspiring to sell heroin after being arrested in a drug raid targeting a Baltimore gang.

By Alex Spilius, Washington

4:58PM GMT 11 Mar 2011

Felicia Pearson, who used her real nickname "Snoop" for her role in the highly acclaimed series, was among 37 people detained in Operation Usual Suspects.

Hundreds of officers seized $69,000 (£43,000) in cash, four guns, and quantities of marijuana and heroin in the swoop by the local and federal authorities, who are still searching for a further 26 suspects.

Used subtitles to watch The Wire? The writer says that's just criminal

So you thought the subtitles button was the best way to decipher the acclaimed US crime series? Wrong. You've turned genius into comedy, its writer tells Arifa Akbar

Monday 17 August 2009

Ever since drugs lord Stringer Bell picked up his burner and ordered a re-up for his corner hoppers, bemused Brits addicted to the Baltimore-based police drama The Wire have been reaching for the subtitles button to figure out what on earth is being said.

The series may have garnered critical recognition for its unflinching realism and searing dialogue, but the street argot spoken by its characters – most of whom are black American drug dealers and street-wise detectives – has left many viewers straining to make sense of the dialogue.

Now, one of the central writers of the show has lashed out at those who turn on the subtitles, rendering the show a "comedy" rather than the gritty, intelligent drama he intended it to be.

The seasoned detective fiction writer George Pelecanos, who has worked extensively on The Wire – which was originally an HBO series but is currently being shown on BBC2 – said those who watched with subtitles in order to comprehend every sentence spoken were missing the point entirely.

"We wrote it so audiences would have to work at it!" he said in an interview with The Independent.

"We were not going to compromise in making it immediately accessible for everyone.

"It [subtitling] kind of reminds me of scenes from that [1980 disaster film spoof] comedy, Airplane!, when two black guys speak, and subtitles appear on the screen."

Pelecanos, an American of Greek origin worked most intensively on the second of the five series programme which is based around longshoremen and the Greek mafia. He was brought aboard by the show's creator, David Simon.

When The Wire was first aired on BBC2 earlier this year, a flurry of middle-class commentators criticised the impenetrable dialogue and admitted seeking help.

The columnist India Knight wrote: "I have friends who have been addicted to The Wire for ages but I didn't see the point, despite having watched the pilot twice, because I could never understand what anyone was saying... Then someone lent me a box set and suggested I turn on the subtitles."

Ms Knight went on to effuse about the show, but added a note of caution: "I implore you to watch it... but please take my advice and turn on the subtitles – they make all the difference."

A Daily Mail critic, meanwhile, observed the "mumbled patois of the Baltimore dealers", adding: "Most people I know – and these are people in their mid 30s – prefer to watch The Wire with the subtitles switched on."

Even some of the characters have had difficulties with mastering the script. In the "extras" section of the show's box set, several actors admit to problems understanding the Baltimore drawl in some interviews.

JD Williams, the New York actor who plays a character, Bodie Broadus, who "runs a corner" (facilitates the open air drug market), said he found some of the phraseology confusing.

And the Eton-educated lead actor Dominic West, who plays the detective Jimmy McNulty, said in an interview earlier this year that his late father, who was alive for the first two years that The Wire aired, "couldn't handle the language" in the show, "so he didn't really watch it".

West added: "My mum managed five minutes. My wife has managed 10 minutes of episode one about five times and falls asleep."

The BBC, which began broadcasting the series at the end of March this year, makes subtitles available for viewers, but a spokeswoman said this was the case for every programme broadcast by the Corporation, in order to help deaf viewers.

The last episode of the final, fifth series will be broadcast on BBC2 later this week.

Baltimore talk Lost in translation?

*The hopper from Balmer carrying a burner

A child drug dealer from Baltimore is carrying a disposable mobile telephone used by drug dealers to stop the police monitoring their conversations.

*Crew up with corner boys for a re-up

An instruction to form a team of young men who can sell drugs on a street corner when a re-up, or a re-stock package from drugs wholesalers, arrives.

*The G pack

A wholesaler's package of 100 vials of cocaine

*He's a Yo

Police term for a corner boy.

*The civilian's carrying weight

An ordinary person who is neither a drug dealer nor an addict who has been served a custodial sentence.

*The Game

Life of a drug dealer in which the dealer accepts a distinct set of ethics in which even apparently minor transgressions may be punishable by death.

*There's been a humble

An arrest or search of a corner boy on flimsy or no evidence, intended merely to humiliate.

*Stash house

A heavily guarded property in which drugs are stored and cut.

*Those Red tops/blue tops/yellow tops are worth a lot of cheese

The colour-coded vials of cocaine (use to identify quality) are worth a lot of money.

*He's not a fiend, he's slinging

He's not a drug addict, he's selling drugs.

*Walk-around money

Petty cash used by corrupt politicians for the purposes of persuasion on election day.

THE INDEPENDENT