Michael K Williams had one of the most recognizable faces in the industry.
If you were a fan of the HBO drama series, The Wire or an avid watcher of early 2000’s TV you knew exactly who Omar Little was. Omar, the character Williams played on The Wire, a portrayal that shot him to limelight. Omar Little was called “arguably the show’s single greatest achievement” and that was down to the Williams’ acting prowess.
Fans of the show would remember Omar as the scary gangster who whistled, wielded a shotgun on the streets of Baltimore with soul-searing integrity and had a barely faded scar right down the middle of his face. Most of these attributes were features of Omar Little except the scar, the scar itself belonged to Michael K. Williams.
So how did he get it?
According to Williams, he got the scar during a “barroom brawl”. It’s not all bad news however as he believes the scar is what ultimately launched his career in Hollywood. In a 2014 NPR interview, he said it happened on his 25th birthday.
“There was a popping party going on in Queens,” Williams says. “I went outside to get some air, and I saw that two of my other friends were being surrounded by some dudes I didn’t know.” He figured something was about to kick off so he told his friends it was time to go home, that’s when someone else approached him from behind.
“The dude wiped his hand across his mouth and smacked me,” he says. “What he did was he spit a razor. He was positioning the razor in his mouth to get it between his middle finger and ring finger. And then he swiped me down my face. It was actually the first hit of the fight. So we managed to escape with our lives, barely, that night,” he said. “Things changed immediately after that.”
Now with the scar, Williams said he was majorly being considered for thug roles, beginning with his 1996 breakout movie Bullet alongside the late rapper Tupac Shakur. “Tupac Shakur was filming a movie in New York called Bullet, opposite Mickey Rourke,” he added during the interview. “And the production office that they were working out of in New York happened to have a Polaroid picture of me, from me going to audition from some various music videos. So he happened to see a Polaroid picture of me and was like, ‘Yo, this dude looks thugged out enough that he could play my little brother.’ I think he saw my pain and my struggle, my heart. I was just like — I was starstruck, you know. I was like, ‘Wow, that’s Tupac Shakur.’
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From there, he went on to star in minor roles in Martin Scorsese’s Bringing Out The Dead and The Sopranos. His big break finally came when he caught the attention of David Simon, the creator of the aforementioned The Wire. Simon decided to take a risk on the relatively unknown actor which Williams paid back with one of the great television performances of the 20th Century.
According to Williams, “That character changed my life. And that was my big break.”
Since then, he went on to star in various projects like slave drama, 12 Years a Slave, Netflix’s When They See Us and HBO’s Lovecraft Country.
Michael K Williams unfortunately passed on Monday, September 6, 2021.