DOMINIC WEST (DET. JIMMY MCNULTY): We were drunk for one scene. It was the last scene. My fake funeral. There was whiskey going around the bar. I remember I was lying on the pool table, and Wendell said, “Fuck it,” because it was our last day. He said, “Come on, let’s drink whiskey because we were supposed to be drinking whiskey.” All I had to do was lie there and pretend to be a corpse, so I got hammered, and so did he.
Then, Clark Johnson, the director, said, “Okay, Dom, now we’re going to do your close-up.” I was like, “What do you mean by close-up? I’m a corpse.” He goes, “No, no, no. No, we’ve got the camera starting really close in your face. Your eyes spring open, and we realize you’re still alive, and then the camera is going to zoom away from your face.” And I was like, “Oh, fuck it,” because I opened my eyes and you could see it in the show. I opened my eyes and they were completely bloodshot, and I’m absolutely hammered, but I think that was the only time we got properly drunk doing a scene, but maybe my memory doesn’t serve me quite as well.
DAVID INSLEY (DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY): Every now and then, David would come in with rewrites and bring in new pages, and we’d be in the middle of a scene and he’d throw new pages at our actors. They’d have to do them right there. We’d have to redo the scene, because he wrote new pages. The last day, he brought in new pages, and it was [Wendell Pierce] and Dominic and they were in the police station, and it was like hour eighteen or something. It was really late. He said, “We have to do these pages. Just do them. Just read them and shoot it.” It was Bunk and Dominic talking about Simon being a jerk and the director being a jerk, and they’re being jerks and saying, “Why are we doing this stuff?” It was just such a big joke. It was really a great ending to the season. Simon could be really funny.
LANCE REDDICK (LT. CEDRIC DANIELS): The show wasn’t trying to show a silver lining. I felt like the show was trying to show how the system works and what people have to sacrifice to be part of it and what they have to sacrifice to live up to who they really are. In some ways, what’s cool for me about Daniels is he’s one of the few people at the end of the show who’s a truly heroic character.
BENJAMIN BUSCH (OFF. ANTHONY COLICCHIO): Its point is that this doesn’t have closure. This is endless. Whatever perspective you have as a character, any of the characters there, your lot doesn’t end with the final season.
MICHELLE PARESS (ALMA GUTIERREZ): Sometimes I say Season Five is the stepchild of The Wire. I don’t know that we got as much love as all the other seasons, but it was a great storyline.
The 2015 death of Freddie Gray while in police custody brought Baltimore’s simmering unrest to the forefront of America’s consciousness. Gray was a twenty-five-year-old black man arrested in West Baltimore. With pedestrians recording the disturbance on their cell phones, the police officers immobilized Gray by pinning his feet and dragging him into the back of a police van. Gray died from a severed spine sustained while riding in the van. In Baltimore, police have for years been accused of deliberately giving “rough rides,” where the vehicle is often stopped abruptly in order to jolt the detainee seated in the rear. Famed attorney Billy Murphy, who had appeared in The Wire, represented Gray’s family in court.
In the wake of Gray’s death, rioting and looting ensued on the same streets that had filmed The Wire. To some, the show predicted a death like Gray’s in presenting the need for police reform. “If you watched The Wire, they did the same thing,” said Anwan Glover, who portrayed Slim Charles. “Kids was put in the back of the wagon and they throw them around and they’d let them out. Everything was true to a science.” To David Simon, the need for police reform is more a function of class than racism. He will not stretch the show’s foresight as far as Glover. “Given that it was fifteen years ago, twenty years ago, and the drug war wasn’t even being critiqued in any serious way back then,” Simon said. “It is now. Was I wrong to suggest that there would not be activity? Did it anticipate that there would be a revolution in [cell phones]? That this would become the weapon of social change, in regard to [Black Lives Matter]? No. The power of these things, the smartphone and the camera, was yet to come.”
Baltimore’s uproar reflected The Wire’s enduring impression on the city. Actors from the show again rallied around it. Some had never left. Simon had since moved on to several projects that did not feature Baltimore, but blogged a plea for the end of the looting. “There was real power and potential in the peaceful protests that spoke in Mr. Gray’s name initially, and there was real unity at his homegoing today,” he wrote. “But this, now, in the streets, is an affront to that man’s memory and a diminution of the absolute moral lesson that underlies his unnecessary death.” The next month, Simon met with Barack Obama inside the White House, at the president’s request. Obama had repeatedly cited The Wire as his favorite television show, and Omar as his favorite character. The pair discussed the toll of the war on drugs on communities, mass incarceration, and the challenges encountered by law enforcement. “There is an increasing realization on the left, but also on the right politically, that what we’re doing is counterproductive,” Obama told Simon during the discussion. “Either from a libertarian perspective, the way we treat nonviolent drug crimes is problematic, and from a fiscal perspective, is breaking the bank. They end up spending so much more on prison than you would with these kids being in school or even going to college that it’s counterproductive, and it means that everybody’s taxes are going up, or at least services that everybody uses are being squeezed, or we can’t hire cops to deal with violent crime, as you talked about. And as I said, the encouraging thing is, I think, awareness is increasing, in part because violent crime has gone down in a lot of big cities. People are more open to having a discussion about this.” Obama ended the taped portion of the conversation by saying he was encouraged that the policing of communities was being discussed in smarter ways. “From your mouth to God’s ear,” Simon replied, delivering the same line that Idris Elba offered him discovering the impending death of Stringer Bell.
The Wire is now celebrated as one of the greatest television shows ever made. The majority of the show’s writers, crew, and actors couldn’t care less about the accolades and especially the arguments concerning whether Omar or Stringer is the cooler character. David Simon never said he had answers to the world he searingly presented. But a solution will never be found if the problem is not at least presented honestly and discussed openly.
MICHAEL K. WILLIAMS (OMAR LITTLE): [Obama saying Omar is his favorite character] made me cry. It also made me care about what he was doing. It made me believe that any president of the United States that can watch The Wire and say Omar was their favorite character, in my brain, is a man for the people, not just one, but for all. At least I matter to him and my community. I remember going to rooms early on, going to auditions, and one woman said, “That show is really good for people who want to let those types of stories into their life, into their home.” It was a very strange remark. I’ll never forget she had made it. But President Obama, we were good enough to be in his home. I was like, “Okay. Let me see what he’s about, because he cares. He really cares. He gets it.”
ANDRE ROYO (REGINALD “BUBBLES” COUSINS): It was amazing because, first of all, we were still stuck on stupid that there was a black man running for president. We still were like, Can this really be happening? We’re going to have a black president in our lifetime. Then, I think it was 60 Minutes or Charlie Rose, when they asked Hillary Clinton what she watched on her downtime, and she said American Idol. Then they asked Obama, and he goes, The Wire. “I watch The Wire.” That was validation, and it blew our heads back. We all felt great. We also recognized that that’s the type of show we were.
We were the type of show that when you said you watched The Wire, it made you a different person. It made you a highly intellectual motherfucker who cares, not just about the art, not to recognize the good storytelling, but cares about what’s happeni
ng. You must read a lot of books. You must have compassion about community. When he said that, it just gave him a little extra swag. He’s not just a black man, but he’s a black man that’s well rounded. He can play their games, but he knows our games, too. It was special.
When I did Red Tails, I’m out there in Prague, me and Anthony Hemingway. He was our script supervisor. Now he’s a big-time director. He was shooting Red Tails. Me and a couple of the cast from Red Tails, we go to this area where Obama’s doing his visit. He’s doing a speech. I got my daughter on my shoulders. We’re standing there looking at Obama speaking about the blah, blah, blah. He looks over, he sees me. He goes, “Is that my man Bubs? Does anybody know Bubs?” “Yes, Mr. Obama. How are you?” He’s like, “What are you doing out here?” “Shooting Red Tails.” “You keep up the good work.” I was like, fucked up. My daughter was flipping out. “The president knows you? The president knows you.” Everybody was laughing. It’s wonderful to know that we impacted people who fell in love with the show. That’s an amazing, amazing feeling.
CLARKE PETERS (DET. LESTER FREAMON): The Wire promoted a conversation that is still ongoing. It has become a reference point in universities, not only here, but in England as well. It’s a topic to be studied. It was well studied, well researched in being put together. I think we accomplished the mission in that conversation. We opened the conversation, and it’s still ongoing. It’s not just in Baltimore. Not all the police are like all the policemen on our show, and that’s eye-opening as well. There’s a conversation that began with it and is still ongoing.
ANDRE ROYO (REGINALD “BUBBLES” COUSINS): Once you watch The Wire, once you finish and you get to that last episode, Season Five, you can’t say “I don’t know” anymore. You see what’s happening. You know what’s happening. Now this should be a collective conversation on “How do we fix it?” Instead of saying, “I didn’t know that was happening. I didn’t know that was going on.” That’s one of the blessings that will always stick with all of us. All of us that were involved in The Wire, we’ll always talk about how we were a part of educating and entertaining and inspiring people at the same time, which back then was rare for television to do all three, a scripted television show to do all three and not be over the top about it, but be as real as possible.
The Wire was the hidden understanding of how a city is destroyed. David Simon, he’ll sit there and he’ll talk about all the problems. He never came across like he had the answers on how to fix things. His whole thing was, “The first thing you got to know is you got to know the problem exists.” A lot of people got their heads buried in the fucking sand.
ROBERT WISDOM (HOWARD “BUNNY” COLVIN): There are two kinds of people in the world. People who have seen The Wire and people who haven’t seen The Wire. The people who haven’t seen it, there’s a large percentage of them who say they haven’t seen it, because they go through that stuff in real life. They don’t have to watch it on TV. They want to escape it. That’s what our news industry, our newspapers, in particular, have become. It’s the same thing with the local six p.m. news. What has that become? Nothing but car chases and fucking pie contests. But in terms of significant reporting, nobody bothers with that stuff. Why? Because they feel there’s nothing they can do about it.
It happened. They feel sorry, but unless you’re in an intimate relationship with somebody whose name is in that news, whether it’s the obits or whatever, why do I care? But then, when it gets blown up into this show and articulated in the way that these people who were writers for the Metro section and the Crime pages, then we see, “Holy shit. This is us. This is who we are.” The seeds and the vines of who we are right there in these pages daily. If we wanted to, we could change our cities if more people got involved, but that’s a big stretch. The Wire was sitting right in our lives this whole time, and we prefer to have the more glamorous and the more literary analogy of [Charles] Dickens. That resonates with a different range of people. But, in fact, it’s much more mundane than that. It’s the Metro section.
ANDRE ROYO (REGINALD “BUBBLES” COUSINS): All of a sudden, that kind of character that you move away from in the subway platform, you walk on the other side of the street, or make a judgment about—now, all of a sudden that person is in your living room on your TV, and you’re not looking away. You’re actually looking at him and watching him go through what he goes through, and you’re finding out about his life in such a well-written way that you start to care. You start to go, I hope Bubbles makes it. Oh my God. Don’t hurt him. I just felt like that was happening for every character, these people that you have a preconceived judgment on. David Simon and Ed Burns, all of these writers were writing so well, and giving you the lay of the lands about who these characters are, that we really had to erase people’s opinions, preconceived notions of who these characters are: A drug dealer is a drug dealer. He’s stupid for doing that.
All of a sudden, you found out a drug dealer—he’s not that stupid. If they make a mistake, they get shot. They better be a little smarter. You see cops. Back then, my idea of a cop—all you saw was the badge. All you saw was the gun. You didn’t really see the person. You saw a cop and Fuck a cop or I’m scared of a cop. Now you’re looking at cops, and some of them are good. They’re trying very hard, but the system will make you not give a fuck anymore. You keep on arresting somebody, and they keep coming out. You just go, Well, fuck them then. You just start seeing things from a different perspective.
CHRIS BAUER (FRANK SOBOTKA): The show asked a lot of anyone who watched it. It was not easy viewing. It’s hard to make a casserole and watch The Wire in the background à la Law & Order.
ANDRE ROYO (REGINALD “BUBBLES” COUSINS): Later on, all of a sudden, I’m going to get some doughnuts. I see in the paper, in 2009 or 2010, we’re known as one of the greatest shows ever. I’m like, Holy shit. When did that happen?
ED BURNS (CO-CREATOR): I don’t know what kind of life it’s taken on. The day it was over, it was over for me. I’m an introvert. I feel uncomfortable when people say it’s a great show and stuff like that, because that’s their decision. That’s their call. I never looked at all these Wire blogs and stuff like that. One of the main reasons I left Baltimore was because of The Wire. It didn’t change anything.
NORMAN KNOERLEIN (RESEARCHER): Burns is the person who doesn’t like a lot of big things. He doesn’t live in Hollywood. He likes West Virginia. He likes his life.
PABLO SCHREIBER (NICK SOBOTKA): It was strange. There was a time there—I call it peak The Wire—where it felt like, it was maybe like two years after it was off the air, where it suddenly felt like everybody was watching it, and that was definitely the biggest time of getting stopped on the street for that particular show. Yeah, it was. It was like two years after it went off the air, which is odd. It was actually, I think, a big precursor to what’s happening now, with all the streaming shows where people are watching content on their own time.
CHRIS ALBRECHT (CHAIRMAN AND CEO, HBO): It’s a little bit ironic. I still have people literally telling me almost every few weeks, “Oh my God, we just saw The Wire. It’s the greatest show ever.” Then you go, Okay. So, did the show change? Did people change? The show was available on DVD at the end of every season. All of a sudden, what’s changed?
I don’t really know what’s changed. If you are me, and you were someone who came up in programming, and you had people who worked for you that cared a lot about this, and you look at these shows and you look at The Sopranos and you look at Deadwood and you look at The Wire, and you go, Wow, all three of these shows are really good. Hey, all three of these shows are really different and all three of these shows deserves to be on television. I’m in a unique position to make that happen. These things don’t grow on trees, although now it looks like they do. Let’s back the quality of it all. We had the Davids there. There’s David Milch, David Simon, David Chase. Even though each of the Davids had different experi
ences, I joke about how David [Simon] was a pain in the neck, but ultimately the decision was based on the same thing, which is, “This is good. Let’s keep it going.” Yes, The Sopranos was huge. Deadwood wasn’t huge, and it ended in a weird way that there was a miscommunication with David Milch about what we had hoped to accomplish for a potential Season Four.
Certainly, on The Wire, all we had to do is look at this stuff, and we would look at the episodes of Season One, and we said, “I haven’t seen this before.” When you get to say that, and it’s really good, then you want to know what happens in the next episode after you finish the one that’s in your hands, it’s a pretty good recommendation for continuing.
JAMES “P.J.” RANSONE (CHESTER “ZIGGY” SOBOTKA): It was a bummer for a lot of reasons, because when that happens, the culture catches up to it, but the business has moved on. It’s not a hot-button thing, where the industry is looking at me. So, I didn’t really have any bounce. It was like a springboard that I could have bounced off of. The one person who I will say who was on top of it way before was Spike Lee, and I got my first big studio movie gig because Spike Lee was such a big fan of The Wire, and that was Inside Man. Because there was such a delay in the time from when it came out to when it became popular, it didn’t give me a lot of business opportunities. And then I was also playing sort of like a really dislikable character for ninety percent of the time that you’re watching them.
REG E. CATHEY (NORMAN WILSON): It’s so funny now that it’s known as the best thing ever on television. While we were shooting it, it was the best thing nobody watched. I remember going in for auditions; we would laugh about it. You’d go in for audition, and they say, “What are you doing now?” “I’m doing The Wire. “That’s that thing in Baltimore, yeah?”
DOMENICK LOMBARDOZZI (DET. THOMAS “HERC” HAUK): I’m happy for everyone that was affiliated with that show. I’m happy when I see Andre on Empire, Jamie on Bosch, Lance on Bosch, Michael K. Anytime I see any of those guys doing something, it lightens my face up. I know what we went through. I know. We were the redheaded stepchild for a very long time. Nobody knew we were around. I remember auditioning the first couple of seasons, going into hiatus, and people would be like, “The Wire? What’s The Wire?”
All the Pieces Matter Page 33
