„I Was Lucky I Made It Back That Night.” The Wire Actor Regrets the Way He Prepared for the Role. He Suggests That He Could Have Died Because of It
Preparing for a role can be risky. This was learned by an actor from The Wire who wanted to get to know Baltimore better, however, he found himself in a dangerous situation while walking around the city.
The Wire is one of the most popular crime thrillers on television. The TV series is appreciated not only by people in the industry, but also by viewers themselves, who do not spare praise for this production, set in Baltimore. The HBO production focused on the work of law enforcement agencies in the said city.
Actors prepare for their roles in all sorts of ways, very often undertaking even extreme methods to bring them closer to the characters they play. J.D. Williams, who played drug dealer Bodie Broadus in The Wire, also decided to prepare well for his role and get to know Baltimore better, which was foreign to him.
The artist confessed during an interview with AllHipHop that some of the cast were from Baltimore, so playing the city's residents came naturally to them, however, he, Wood Harris, Idris Elba and Hassan Johnson were not from Baltimore, so theoretically for credibility it was a good idea for them to become more familiar with the place to begin with.
And that's exactly what Bodie's reenactor decided to do, taking a walk around Baltimore at night. This one ultimately turned out to be a bad idea.
The first year, I got down there like two days before we shot – it was like 12 or 1:00 in the morning. I just threw on a black hoodie and walked around. I went to one of their hoods and watched that night. I learned not to do that no more, I was lucky I made it back that night.
Williams did not explain what exactly happened that night, however, one can guess that there was an unpleasant incident that could have been tragic for him. Luckily, he managed to return safely from there, and got to know Baltimore itself better thanks to his work on the set of The Wire.
