The whistling in particular was unmistakable. If a few bars of the nursery rhyme “The Farmer in the Dell” could be heard in the rocky streets of West Baltimore, one thing was clear: Omar is coming. And before Omar Little did in the TV series The Wire all fear.
The gangster himself, on the other hand, feared nothing and nobody, that made his character stand out: “Omar don’t scare”, he says, who always speaks about himself in the third person. And yet, Omar Little was a very special character on the HBO series, which is about drugs, the rough life on the street, racism and crime – and which many consider to be the best series of all time.
Omar Little was fearless, cruel and yet vulnerable, sensitive, empathetic – a real antihero, openly gay, in the midst of all the legged, spitting, tough gangsters. And Michael K. Williams plays this guy from the street so obscure, layered and sincere that many, even Barack Obama, declare him his favorite character on the show. “The only thing Omar and I had in common”, Williams once explained the GQ, “was his sensitivity and his ability to love strongly. I knew that was what I had in me.”
During a fight, he was injured on the forehead with a razor blade
Williams was born in Flatbush, New York, in 1966 and initially worked as a dancer. He was featured in videos by George Michael, Missy Elliot and Madonna. He was once said to have been the best dancer, but he was certainly the most passionate. He played one of his first roles in “Bullet” in 1996, alongside Tupac Shakur.
There were practical reasons why Williams soon switched to acting entirely. When he was celebrating his 25th birthday in a bar in Queens, his forehead was injured in a brawl with a razor blade. With this scar, which also makes Omar Little unmistakable, nobody wanted to cast him as a background dancer – but many as villains.
Williams starred in the series Boardwalk Empire and The Night Of, in the movie “12 Years a Slave” and in Ava Du Vernay’s miniseries When They See Us. He was nominated for five Emmys, most recently for his role as Montrose Freeman on the HBO series Lovecraft Country. “I wanted to pay tribute to my ancestors, everyone who is alive, every black person who is alive today,” he told him Rolling Stone about his role as alcohol smuggler Chalky White, whom he starred in Boardwalk Empire and who was the leader of Atlantic City’s African American community. Williams campaigned against racism and for judicial reform in America and the Bahamas, his mother’s home.
Michael Kenneth Williams in his most famous role: as Omar Little in “The Wire”.
(Photo: imago images / Mary Evans)
Similar to Omar Little, who robs drug dealers, but never those who cannot defend themselves anyway, Williams always wanted to give the underdogs a face and embody characters that others would have overlooked. This is how Wendell Pierce put it, who in The Wire Detective Bunk Moreland played and now, on Williams’ death, tweets: “The love I feel for this brother can only harmonize with the pain I feel now.” Ava DuVernay writes on Instagram: “You, brother, have touched many.” Through his large and small personal encounters, his social commitment, his struggles, his triumphs, his great work, he touched many. “You touched me.”
Next he should have played in a biopic about the professional boxer George Foreman, his coach Charles “Doc” Broadus. Michael Kenneth Williams was found dead in his New York apartment Monday night. He was 54 years old.