E-mail a friendMichael K. Williams
airdate September 20, 2004
Michael K. Williams' dancing helped him tap into a serious acting career that led to such film and TV roles in Bringing Out The Dead, Law & Order, Third Watch and The Sopranos. The Brooklyn native, who got his start choreographing for CeCe Peniston, Mya and Ginuwine, launched his acting career playing Tupac Shakur's younger brother in Bullet. In his current role as Omar on HBO's The Wire, Williams displays his diverse talent as a gay drug dealer who tries to lead a reformed life after his boyfriend's murder.
Michael K. Williams
Tavis: Michael K. Williams is a talented actor and former professional dancer who stars on the critically acclaimed HBO series 'The Wire.' The gritty Baltimore-based show kicked off its third season this past weekend. The terrific first season is now out on DVD. Michael, nice to see you.
Michael K. Williams: Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here.
Tavis: Glad to have you here, man. Um, started out as a dancer.
Michael: Yeah, no doubt, yeah.
Tavis: Tell me about that.
Michael: You know, basically I was just a club kid. You know, growing up on the streets of New York City, always had--
Tavis: What part?
Michael: East Flatbush.
Tavis: Flatbush!
Michael: Vanderveer Brooklyn. They be big up! You know, dancing was always in my blood. My father was a professional swing dancer, and he entered a lot of competitions, and there was just always parties and music in house, and I was always that kid that would sneak out of the bedroom and come in and dance with my parents' grown friends and stuff. And at one point I was at a club and I got offered 50 bucks to dance background for a local artist, and that kind of started the ball rolling.
Tavis: Yeah.
Michael: Yeah.
Tavis: Somewhere along the way though, you decided that you could do more than dance. When was that revelation for you? How'd that happen?
Michael: That happened years later. I was very content with dancing. My dream was just to become a Janet Jackson background dancer so I could work with Janet.
Tavis: Yours and every other brother that can't dance. Ha ha ha! Background dancer for Janet. Yeah, exactly, yeah.
Michael: So--and it was after I got into a little tussle in a barroom brawl and on my birthday got, you know, got cut on my face. Like 3 months after that, I was getting stopped by photographers to pose. They found my scar striking. People--like one of the first ones to stop me--David LaChapelle, you know, James Mitchum III, good friends mine now I know 'em.
That kind of spilled over into music videos, you know, and I started--as they stopped asking me just to dance, they'd be like, 'Mike, after you do your dance segment, can you come over here and like shake these dice and play this thug role?' And that kind of, you know, escalated to like people like, you know, Marcus Nispel screaming in his thick German accent, 'Michael, emote pain! I need pain, Michael!' And I was like, 'If I had like some words to go with this I could like parley this into like some kind of acting.' So, you know, still doing the video thing, working with Madonna, stuff like that. In fact, that was a turning point in my career, was a music video I did for Madonna called 'Secret.' And the day the shooting started I was scheduled for a 3-week tour across Germany and the rest of Europe with an artist called Crystal Waters.
Tavis: Mm-hmm. Crystal Waters?
Michael: Yeah, that's my choreography!
Tavis:
I forgot about Crystal Waters, man!
Michael: That's my girl, man.
Tavis: You did that choreography?
Michael: That's all my choreography.
Tavis: Oh, man, OK! I got love for that. Crystal Waters! You took me back on that one.
Michael: You know what I'm saying? She's still doing her thing, too. But, yeah, so I said, 'Crystal, listen. Madonna came to my hood. She's saying she wants to hire the brothers. She needs me in this video. I'll fly myself out, you know, next day.' She goes, 'Mike, the tour's crazy, there's too much going on. Either you come now or we gotta leave you behind.' I'm like, 'Well, girl, you have a safe trip. Call me if, you know, you need any--and I'm gonna hold down the fort here.'
And within that 3 weeks' time that I was home that I shot that video, I get a phone call from Julien Temple, which was he was directing a video called 'Bullet' starring Tupac Shakur and Mickey Rourke. And apparently from all the videos I had done my picture was all over every production company in New York City. Tupac saw a Polaroid of me and said, 'This guy looks, you know, good enough to play my little brother in the role,' and then they called me in and I booked it and that got the ball rolling.
Tavis: That was your first role?
Michael: Yes, sir.
Tavis: And the rest as they say is history.
Michael: Ha ha ha ha! You put a lot out there right fast. Let me back up and break some of this down right quick. Madonna. What's it like for a brother from the streets of Flatbush in Brooklyn to have a chance to work with an artist like Madonna? What was that experience like for you at that age?
Michael: For me, it was like school. I watched her. I watched everything she did. I was a fan of her--of her upcoming, of her whole--the way she thugged the whole industry and did it her way. So that was kind of like, you know...I had a lot of that in me already, you know what I mean? So it was really interesting to watch her level of focus.
You know, we shot on Fifth Avenue and 125, 126 Street, on a Friday afternoon, on a nice day of September. You know, you got all these, like, Caucasian people talking about locking up in front of all these barbershops and beauty salons, and people weren't allowed--the customers weren't exactly allowed to walk in and out of these establishments. And before you knew it, man, you got some very uptight and cranky locals that were like--it actually got to the point where they actually were like calling out her name at one point.
Tavis: 'I don't care if it is Madonna!'
Michael: 'F' that! And then what really got it started, when the roll playback started, people heard the music, and if anybody remembers 'Secret,' it has a hip-hop--that--
Tavis: From one icon to another. Didn't you work with Tupac?
Michael: Yeah.
Tavis: What was that experience like?
Michael: Tupac is an angel. He was a saint. He has a, um...it just...I can't explain his level of raw energy. He was--he was like, uh, uh, uh...I can't even explain it, man. You know, like, I'll tell you a story. I was late to work one day. It was the day we were shooting a scene, my death scene, and him and Julien--
Tavis: That's the scene to be late for. Ha ha! If you're gonna be late for work, be late on the day the paycheck stops coming. Ha ha! Yeah.
Michael: He, um... They were talking about how they're gonna block it, and so Julien's like, 'Where you gonna stand?' 'I don't know. You know, if dude was here, I would know!' And as he was getting a little bit agitated, I walked in, and he's like, 'If mother f-ers would stop being late! Be on time!' And I was like, 'Tupac. Yo, 'Pac, I'm sorry, man.' He's like, 'Yo, man, listen, listen. You all right? You all right?' I'm like, 'Yeah.' He said, 'All right, good. Let's get to work.' He just--he cussed me out, asked me if I was OK, and let's get to work in, like, 3 seconds. I had not one word to say. He hugged me. 'Come on.' And it was like that's the kind of person he was. He was just very to the point, straightforward...just a force.
Tavis: The other thing, and I've done this in reverse order, but before Tupac and before Madonna came this brawl in this bar that you just slid right on past. There's a scar on top of your head. Jonathan, I don't know how close you can get up on this. I don't know if you can see it. There's a scar. Excuse me, can I do this?
Michael: Well, I created this Potion I used to drink. You know, it was 2 parts Baileys--actually, 2 parts Absolut and 3 parts Baileys, and we called it the Potion, and I was kind of heavy on the Potion that night. We had been bar-hopping. I was scheduled for a tour with Izora from the Weather Girls. Going to leave for Europe that next day. And, um, you know, went into a bar. A friend of mine who lived on Biggie Small's block in Brooklyn--called him Jamaican John--he got into some beef, and I was like, 'Yo, we all from Brooklyn.' So we was out in Queens. 'Yo, you know what I'm saying? We all gotta go home together. So you need some help, I got my peeps in the bar. We all--we thug it.' And, um...you know, so, my man's like, 'No... Everything cool...I'll go home still. Everything cool, all right?' I said, 'A'ight.' So I go in the club, you know.
Tavis: Of course, nobody understood that, but go ahead, yeah.
Michael: Yeah, so I went in the bar, I said, 'You know, guys, I'm ready to go home now. It's getting a little thick out here.' He said, 'All right. Let me round everybody up and we'll meet you outside.' 'Cause I wasn't driving at that point, and when I was outside waiting for him to come out, some words got passed and I could've ignored them, and I chose not to. One thing led to another and he, as we say in the street, he spit a razor out. He had a razor in his mouth. And all the time, we're throwing these blows, I'm wondering, 'Why is this dude trying to smack me?' He's just, like...you know? And I'm gettin' sliced up right here. So, I'm grateful to be alive. Also, he gave me another one right here that it stops at my jugular, so, um, you know, like, God is good, you know what I mean?
Tavis: Yeah.
Michael: We call this a buck-fifty in the hood, by the way. Yeah.
Tavis: What did that incident... I mean, you are very fortunate. One, you're fortunate to be alive. But you're also fortunate because these world-class photographers actually found beauty, something erotic, something unusual and different, clearly, about this scar down in the middle of your face. And that scar is in large measure, as you said earlier, what led to people discovering that you had a talent, because of the look. So, I can't imagine-- Under no circumstances, I don't want nobody to slash me down the middle of my face. But if I must get slashed down the middle of my face, to have a career come out of that ain't the worst thing in the world.
Michael: No, for sure.
Tavis: But how did you process what happened to you on that day? As time went on, how did you process what you had gotten yourself into that night, as my friend would say, with that liquid courage that you had that night?
Michael: I didn't plug into it at all. I never touched it. I was told to go seek psychiatric help, or therapists. After I got stitched up, the only the thing I was adamant about was getting a plastic surgeon. I got to the hospital--Jamaica Hospital--like 2:00, 3:00 in the morning, and I sat there till, like, maybe 2:00, 3:00 the next day because they kept trying to stitch me up, and I said, 'No, I must have a plastic surgeon,' 'cause I knew I would keloid. And, um, when the police report came in, that called it a crime. That made me eligible for the Crime Victims Bureau, and I got a plastic surgeon.
But, other than that, I treated it like a pimple. I was, like, 'Oh, I just got a little bump. It'll heal. It'll go away.' I didn't treat it like it was a tragic thing, and I let it go. I didn't seek any type of revenge, which was definitely, um, part of the agenda in the beginning. And at one point... You know, I heard someone say that at one point in your life, you know, Satan will come and talk to you, you know, and you gotta make a choice. And at that point in my life, that was definitely... I had to make a choice about what I wanted to do with my God-given power. I have a decision to either go act in violence or act out of love and just let time handle time and deal with why: what made me put myself in that position to have that happen to me? And I let it go, thank God. I think that's what the real blessings came from, not seeking revenge. That's what I believe.
Tavis: Well, it's all worked out because you are now part of one of the hottest shows on television, 'The Wire.' How much are you loving this? What a cast and crew you guys have over there.
Michael: Yeah, man, it's the family. We have family over there. That show was a blessing for a number of reasons--one, for the people that I get to be around: Wendell Pierce, Frankie Faison, Lance Reddick, Clarke Peters. These are more the older guys that play the cops, my older brothers. I look up to them, I listen to them.
Then you got some of the younger brothers. You got Andre Royo, Sonja Sohn. We call her the first lady. First time I met her, man, I dropped my lunch tray. I kept calling her Lauren Hunt, who was her character from 'Slam.' And my brother Saul Williams. So it's a lot of energy, a lot of talent, a lot of love, and I learn every day I work on the set. Every day I work with somebody--Seth Gilliam, Larry Gilliard. The cast goes on.
Tavis: You're like a sponge. You're just soaking up everything you get a chance to be around.
Michael: I'm still excited. I'm still enjoying it. I still can't believe I'm here talking to you. I'm still just the guy next door from, you know, Vanderveer Flatbush, Brooklyn.
Tavis: I'm gonna pinch you just so you know you're here. You're here, and you better start enjoying it, 'cause you're gonna be here for a while. Nice to see you.
Michael: Thank you, Tavis.
Tavis: Congratulations to you in all your success, and we look forward to seeing you do a lot more in the years to come.
Michael: Thank you.
Tavis: That's our show for tonight. As always, you can catch me on the radio on NPR I'll see you back here next time on PBS. Until then, thanks for watching. Good night from Los Angeles, and keep the faith.
Back to September 20, 2004