It’s very safe to say fictional Baltimore’s most notorious stick-up man, “The Wire”s Omar Little (played by Michael Kenneth Williams), was one of the shows most beloved characters.
Little’s ruthless, but ethical gangsta code of the street made him not only a fan favorite, but a complex, unique and textured character worth following each week and caring about. When was the last time you heard of a the idea of a homosexual, drug-dealing-robber character that was the most feared man in the ghetto?
In these post-finale days, revelations about the final, the series and many of the characters are coming to light in interviews and the mythical Omar character is no different. Of course the character was surprisingly killed at the hands of the sociopathic youngin’ Kenard in the final season, but hey, it’s all in the game, right? But the legend lives on. Here’s seven things you likely didn’t know about the caped (or trenchcoat-wearing) crusader.
1. “Omar was supposed to die in a shoot out with Wee-Bay in Season One,” was an urban legend accidentally propagated by Williams.
“[That misconception] came from some early interviews that Michael (K. Williams) did,” series creator David Simon clarified to the New Jersey Star Ledger. “I’ve never corrected him, because he wasn’t saying it [out of bad intentions]. I think he got a little confused in this regard: In the first season we told him he’s only doing seven episodes. That’s as many as we needed. We said, it was seven and we didn’t know if there was work to be had next year, because we didn’t know if we’d be renewed [by HBO]. And I think he took that to believe [his character] was going to be killed after seven.”
2. Despite the character being gay, Omar was NOT to be played effeminately.
“[The creators and writers] were clear about that,” Williams said in an interview with the A/V Club. “We just wanted to play the sexuality the way it should be in real life: matter-of-factly. We didn’t want to harp on that or make that the main focal point of who or what he was.”
3. Omar’s Spiderman moment – that some regarded as a sharkjumping turn in the series – was inspired by real and higher events (two floors higher actually).
“[Donnie Andrews, who inspired the character Omar jumped from the] the Murphy Homes. He also jumped off the rail bridge at Poplar Grove, onto the rail bed. That was probably about three stories (the jump in the show was two). And he hurt his ankle. It’s just true. Those jumps, by an athletic person, can actually be made and are made, routinely. By a non-athletic person? If I made it, I’d be all over the pavement and they’d pick me up with a spoon,” Simon said.
4. Did you notice that Omar never used them cuss words?
“One time a script got past David [Simon] and [head writer] Ed [Burns] and it had profanity in some of Omar’s lines,” Williams recalled. “I was like, ‘I don’t know, let me call this to David: You know Omar say shit, right?’ He’s like, ‘Aw fuck, it got by me! Mike, listen to me. I’m very busy. From now on in, if you see any scripts with a curse in it, you omit it. You take it out. Omar does not curse. That does not change.’ [AV Club]
5. Omar was the character most like Clint Eastwood
“The character that was most in the Western archetype was Omar. The inner city is now the Wild West, the new frontier in terms of American storytelling, it has been for several decades now. We played a lot of our Western film themes and archetypes through Omar’s story. I always had that in my mind,” Simon explained.
6. Omar can break down “The Wire” finale in simple chapter and verse.
“Sometimes the bad guy gets away, sometimes the good guy gets killed, and sometimes the gray guy just stays gray. “The Wire“ always left some things out there. That was part of our solution. This ending has stayed true to the way all the other seasons ended. We didn’t do anything special for this ending,” Williams said.
7. Omar or Williams At Least Is A Big Fan Of R.Kelly
“He’s a classy dude. He’s very talented, and I thought “Trapped In The Closet” was ingenious. He’s a muse. The stuff funnels through him, he shits it out like nothing. When we were doing ‘Closet,’ we’d get there early in the morning, we’d shoot for nothing less than 12 to 15 hours, we’d wrap, and he would go straight to the basketball courts and play basketball for God knows how long. Kels is crazy. Robert ain’t wrapped too tight.” [AV Club]
Watch: Omar the conscious gangster
