GBENGA AKINNAGBE (CHRIS PARTLOW): The first thing was like, “What?” It made sense because this thing is cyclical. To me, I’m surprised when people are like, “No, that can’t be” or whatever. I’m like, “Oh, word? Have you not looked at any inner cities? Do you not see this thing, what our young people are?” These kids are feeding off of these things and learning. So, it totally makes sense. On top of that, with Kenard’s character, if you track his character back, he’s always been a little off and a little more aggressive than the other kids. He’d be the one.
I remember these conversations with Ed. I would have such long, lovely conversations with Ed. I remember just talking about people and life and demography and sociology, all kinds of things. He broke down to me a Baltimore classroom. He said the number of kids in Baltimore city schools, the number of kids who drop out and how many kids were left and how people become Marlo Stanfields and Chris Partlows and so on. The kid who something has happened to him and he’s not socialized right, but they don’t stay in school. School doesn’t help. Then this one kid, something has happened to him, but he sees that he’s got this kind of skill with people and so on. The different things that dictate the paths that these children take. In that story is a Kenard. In every school or classroom, there is somebody who can become Kenard.
The fascinating and great thing about The Wire is that it shows you how people become the people they’re going to become, whether that’s good or bad. We get to humanize these people, despite the horrific or great things they do. Because I’m into that type of storytelling, and it’s most reflective of real life, I totally understood and bought how Kenard could be the person who takes out Omar, and how Kenard is the person that Omar doesn’t see coming.
GEORGE PELECANOS (WRITER/PRODUCER): Marlo was cheated, but it was more a comment of how cheap life was and that [Omar] could be got. He had turned his back on someone in the market. He was buying a pack of smokes. He was depleted at that point, too. We didn’t want to give him a big gun fight or anything like that or even what Stringer got, which is the satisfaction of Omar and Brother Mouzone hunting him down. We just didn’t want to do that with him.
If you recall in that episode, after his death, you cut to the newsroom, and the paper comes across somebody’s desk, and they look at it and they throw it in the basket. Outside of his world, he’s nothing to anybody. In what we think of us as the proper society, and even in the newsroom, he’s nothing. “Throw him in the basket. Put him with all the other guys.” It’s like in DC, in The Washington Post, they change the name of it quite frequently. It’s been called “Around the Region” and “Crime,” but buried in the Metro section are the murders of blacks in the city, and they get a paragraph or maybe two paragraphs, if they’re lucky. But if a white person is killed on the other side of town, it makes the front page. What that does is subconsciously, it puts in the mind of people reading the newspaper, especially young people, is that black lives don’t in fact matter. That was our way of saying Omar wasn’t that big of a deal outside of his hood and the underworld that he ran with.
In true Wire fashion, Omar’s death would not be the final fatality of a significant character, especially with George Pelecanos’s seasonal penultimate episode on deck. In it, the fictional Snoop meets her tender demise at the hands of a protégé. The series finale features the disclosing to superiors that Jimmy McNulty conjured the serial killer. Officials order a cover-up as McNulty and Lester Freamon retire from the police force and law enforcement breaks up Marlo Stanfield’s drug ring. Marlo avoids jail but is wayward without his power—the irony being that he possesses the legitimacy Stringer Bell once desperately coveted, yet has no use for it. The series concludes with a lasting shot of Baltimore’s skyline as cars whip past on the highway.
The show managed to tie up a considerable number of storylines with fewer episodes than previous seasons. “Each main character had stepped off,” Ed Burns explained. “Bubbles had stepped off, and another kid would come in, and Omar stepped off, someone would come in, this type of thing. We had one of the cops replace McNulty at the end, bringing in [Corey Parker Robinson’s Leander] Sydnor. In the street, they call it a dandelion case. You pluck one dandelion up and turn around, and there’s another one, and you pluck it and you pluck it, and they’re endless.”
FELICIA “SNOOP” PEARSON: [Tristan Mack Wilds], that’s like my little brother. Even, me and Tristan, like the days on set, the times we wasn’t working or whatever, he’d come to my neighborhood or we would just hang out, period. Just so he could get the feel of how we lived down here in Baltimore, not just that he’s here to do a job, and that’s what I love about him. I ain’t put him in harm’s way or nothing like that. But just for him not being on set, he wanted to see what Baltimore was all about and see how the kids interact with a lot of people. Just how they interact, period, so he could get his role down pat, and I think that’s why he did an amazing job.
TRISTAN MACK WILDS (MICHAEL LEE): You build relationships with these people, like true, deep relationships. Snoop came to my crib in the projects. They ate food at my mom’s crib. I came to her crib in Baltimore. I ate food there. I’m chilling in the hood in Baltimore. Ed Burns and David Simon had to tell me, “You can’t go to the hood with Snoop. It’s really, really bad out there. We’re playing it, but it’s really, really bad out there. You can’t keep doing that.” Snoop is like my big sister. Still, to this day, that’s legit my big sister. Whenever I need anything, she needs anything, it’s a phone call. I got the script, and it just seemed that everybody was weird that day. I remember everybody being on edge, just talking to me, and I’m going in there just to go to school. I’m going to the production offices. They hand me the new script. I read it. I’m running through the script, see how everything’s going on. I finally get to that scene. Well, I’m getting to before that scene, and I’m like, “Damn. Y’all gonna kill me on the second-to-last episode?” Reading, reading like mad, nervous. Like, “Damn. They gonna kill me. They gonna kill me. They gonna kill me.” Get to the last part. “You look good, girl. Boom.” Like, What the fuck?
I closed the script, and I’m telling you, it was God or some sort of weird, uncanny timing. I walk outside the production office. I’m about to go talk to Nina Noble or something. And Snoop walks in the production office. I’m standing there, like, “Yooo…” She’s like, “Yeah, I know. It’s all good.” I’m like, “Na. Yo, this is crazy.” She comes over, gives me a big hug. She’s like, “Na, it’s all good. I knew it was going to happen. I’m glad it’s with you.” I’m like, “I can’t do this. We’re family. What? This doesn’t make no sense.” She’s like, “It’s good. We’re good.” And she carried that same mentality all the way through the whole thing. There were times when we were in the car and we were talking about it, and I was like, “Yo, Snoop, I don’t think I can do this.” She was like, “You got it. You good. Don’t worry. You about to be a man.” She kept on telling me that. “You about to be the man. Relax, you good.”
FELICIA “SNOOP” PEARSON: Yeah, it was emotional for me, too. I’m from the street. This my first time shooting a movie. That felt like it was too real. That’s why they don’t do none of the blood scene or nothing like that. You just see a flash, because Tristan was young, and I felt a certain kind of way about it. It was just really emotional, and then we really felt emotional because we knew this was the last season. We were like, Dang. I didn’t like that scene at all.
GEORGE PELECANOS (WRITER/PRODUCER): The famous scene where Michael kills Snoop in the car, I wrote, “How my hair look, Mike?” Right before he shoots her. It’s the last thing she says to him. David called me up and he said, “I don’t get it.” So, I tried to articulate it and explain to it to him, but I’m not very articulate. I’m certainly not as articulate as David is. I can often not explain in detail why I’ve written something. I have an instinct for it. What I told him was that this is someone who’s never commented on her looks, bu
t she’s pretty, and I think she cares about it, and I think it’s the last thing that she would think about, knowing that she’s going to die, is the way she looked and the way she’s going to look when she’s found.
David wasn’t really convinced. They had the dialogue in the truck, and then I wrote it so that you’re back in long shot, looking down in the alley at the truck, and all you see is the muzzle flash and you hear a little pop, and I said, “Let’s shoot it the way I wrote it. You’re going to cut back to that anyway, and in the editing room, if it doesn’t work, you just cut out that last line, but at least we’ve got it.” And he did that, and I know he liked it, because he wouldn’t have kept it if he didn’t.
FELICIA “SNOOP” PEARSON: I knew that I was going to get shot in my head because of that line. But when I had got my script and I seen the line or whatever, I told my hair stylist to put a design or something in my hair, because they’re going to show my hair. I put a star in my head, but they didn’t show it. They didn’t show the squib. I thought they were going to show the bloody part, but they didn’t do the squib.
TRISTAN MACK WILDS (MICHAEL LEE): It’s so Snoop. It’s so her. I just think it was a super dope, swag line to go out. She knew she was going to go out one way or another, whether it was here or somewhere else. It’s one of those things that you carry with you if you’re in that line of work, everywhere you go. She went out, in my opinion, as a G. It’s like, “You know what? You got me. Go ahead.” It’s her way of saying, “Go ahead.” But between us, it’s just some last words to show how G she was. It’s crazy.
FELICIA “SNOOP” PEARSON: I thank the writers and producers, the directors, everyone down to the craft people. I thank you all for just accepting me as a person. I know I wasn’t the typical actress that they be around every day, but I thank everybody for just bringing me on as a family member, not just a cast member, as a family member, and I love each and every one of them, and I most definitely love Michael K. Williams for even just ice-grilling me.
TRISTAN MACK WILDS (MICHAEL LEE): To the genius of David Simon and Ed Burns, they purposely made the scene with me, Bug, and Dukie, me and Jermaine’s last scene together. Because that was Episode Nine. We both had scenes in Episode Ten, but not together. And it was one of those things where he lives in Silver Springs and I’m living in Baltimore. I’m not driving and he’s not driving, and I don’t think his mom would drive him out to see me. It was one of those things where if we weren’t working, we weren’t going to see each other.
So, they purposely made those scenes our last scenes together, so that the emotion from it was immensely real. Me and Bug were walking up the house, and I’m patting him down, making sure he’s right. “C’mon man. Men don’t be shedding no tears.” Because he’s tearing up and stuff. Mind you, the kid is actually crying. His name is Keenon [Brice]. Keenon is actually tearing up, because he understands, “Damn. I’m not going to be here no more. I’m not even going to see my big brother no more. It’s a wrap.” And I’m feeling the same way. I think the last line is “Go on, Bug.” I say it, and my voice cracks. I think it’s probably one of those things that I notice only, but my voice cracks, because I was two seconds away from tears. If they wouldn’t have cut away from me, I would have been bawling.
JIM TRUE-FROST (DET. ROLAND “PREZ” PRYZBYLEWSKI): The scenes with Dukie are so poignant and some are really heart-wrenching, but Jermaine, he’s like a ray of sunshine. It’s so funny, because he’s a really sweet-natured and lighthearted guy.
JERMAINE CRAWFORD (DUQUAN “DUKIE” WEEMS): When people talk about acting and they be like, “Oh, this character, it became me,” or they say, “Will Smith, he’s like this when he’s on set and you can’t even address him, sometimes he’s so zoned in,” I thought it was really all bull. I thought it was all bull. But when I wrapped Season Five, this kind of thing stuck with me, just because I was so used to tapping into it, if that makes sense.
TRISTAN MACK WILDS (MICHAEL LEE): We never had a full conversation about [Michael becoming the next Omar], but it’s always been an implied conversation. Understanding what Omar is to this entire show, to this series. He’s Obama’s favorite character. I’m like, “C’mon, man. What? That’s crazy.” It’s crazy. I wish I had better words for it. First off, to play any character that’s close to Omar or that can have the same effect that Omar has had for the series, is huge. And then to eventually, as time goes on, become that character. It’s like playing a character named Bruce Wayne and then finding out you’re going to be Batman.
JAMIE HECTOR (MARLO STANFIELD): Nina K. Noble is one of the producers of the show. She barely speaks, so you could be on set with her for a good two or three years, and you’d probably get like three words. She’s the sweetest person and she barely speaks, and you barely really see her use facial expressions. That was the first direction that she even gave me, was for that [“My name is my name”] scene. She said any corporation that is being spoken about—let’s just say Coca-Cola or whatever the case may be—there’s something negative going on with it, and the workers know and it doesn’t make it to the head, then the head will be very upset about it. As soon as she aligned Marlo Stanfield with a corporation and as soon as she associated the two, that right there triggered it for me. That was it. That did it. It was just like you could turn around and all of this is going on, and you’re walking in a crowd and you don’t even know what’s going on with the business below you until it tumbles. That’s what just took place. Once she said that to me and expressed it to me that way, then I realized how important it was.
KWAME PATTERSON (“MONK” METCALF): It was the first time you see Marlo lose his cool. That scene was powerful. It was a great scene for Jamie. That was the first time you see Marlo lose his cool, and then, for me, it was the first time where I kind of had to be vulnerable in a sense. That was something that Robert [Chew] helped me with.
GBENGA AKINNAGBE (CHRIS PARTLOW): We’re there shooting. We also had a great crew that really took care of us. We’re in these tight confines with doing this, plus we’re getting toward the end. Our characters, we’re being squeezed. As an actor, I had a great time doing that, but as Chris, he’s trying to manage expectations. In many ways, he’s kind of managing this thing. He’s advising. He’s his consigliere. He’s trying to manage his boy. Chris is a sociopath, but he has to make sure Marlo is not the one who goes off and makes mistakes out of anger and emotion. It was a little frustrating because Chris hadn’t told him that Omar was out there calling out his name. That was a strategic move not to do that, because there was a bigger picture. He finds out, and so he’s got to tell him that this is happening, but he’s trying to handle it. It was a little frustrating because he knows Marlo. To Marlo, that’s more important than anything, his name on the streets. He gets a whiff that somebody is even trying to punk his name on the street, then it’s, forget all the planning, forget all the strategy, forget the goals of what we’re trying to do. He’s like, “Go to war. Destroy all.” His name is his name. For Chris, who does practice in the art of strategy and planning, it was frustrating to see that kind of blow up in his face.
JAMIE HECTOR (MARLO STANFIELD): That’s a testament to the great writing that we had on the show, because people always strive for these things in life, right? When you get it, then you’re just like, “Yeah, but I want something else. Yeah, this is cool, but okay. Next.” Marlo was after power. I think what he really, really, really wanted was power. He had the money. He wanted the power. The thing about it with Avon is when you get locked up or you go away or you go on vacation for a while, wherever that vacation is, and you come back, people get older and things change. I think what Marlo really wanted is power, just pure, uncut, unstoppable power.
TRAY CHANEY (MALIK “POOT” CARR): Poot was definitely a follower. He wasn’t one of those boss kind of characters where he was telling people what to do. He did have some moments like when he took over the pit and different t
hings of that nature. But he was more so the kind of guy that kind of listened to everything from the older guys in the Barksdale organization. He was always told what to do, and he didn’t mind being told what to do, but there did come a point where he had to kill his best friend, Wallace, or when he started seeing people die or hearing about people die around him, all the way up to the point where J. D. Williams, who played Bodie, was killed right there in front of him on his corner. That’s when the character to me was like an American hero, by being able to turn the bad into good with ending up working in Foot Locker at the end.
That story couldn’t have been ironed out no more perfect, because that’s what society is about now. It’s about choices. You just sat up there and watched all your friends get killed or locked up. You had a choice, whether you’re just going to stay in the game or whether you were going to get out the game, and he chose to get out the game.
GEORGE PELECANOS (WRITER/PRODUCER): We had to choose somebody. We’re not complete nihilists. We just thought he’s a guy that could walk away. He wasn’t a killer, really. He did the thing with Wallace, but he wasn’t a guy who had bloodlust or anything. He didn’t want to be the king. He was kind of going along with his friends, and when everything kind of fell apart and all his friends were gone, he just got a job. And it’s possible. You don’t have to be in it forever. That whole thing about “it’s either jail or death is the only way it ends,” actually it’s not true. A lot of people get out. They just walk away from it.
All the Pieces Matter Page 32
