Rare is the actor who can locate the specific in the universal and vice versa.
Michael K. Williams was that actor.
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Michael K. Williams made you believe.
But all of that craft and control was in service to a gift that adjectives could not capture.
Williams was a beloved American artist, a man of the people.
He spoke to viewers deepest longings and fears, moved them, and made them weep and feel seen.
Williams used that word in interviews when describing himself:storyteller.
He used it aspirationally, sincerely.
In his mind, he wasnt just hitting marks and saying lines.
He was creating, incarnating, inhabiting, spell-casting.
instead of his name.
Expanding viewers minds was his superpower.
Williams often cited Robert De Niro and Al Pacino as comparisons for his own work in the crime genre.
Were their characters stereotypes because they were gangsters and the actors were Italian American?
Those things exist in everyones community.
But no ones asking those actors if theyre afraid of being typecast.
Williams grew up in East Flatbush in the Vanderveer Estates, now known as the Flatbush Gardens.
My dad relocated back to the South.
There was a lot of trauma I was left to deal with in his absence.
That was not easy to navigate through alone.
But my mom is so stable, so grounded, such a foundation.
She created such a foundation for me in the middle of the jungle.
But there were certain things that I normalized, the violence, and the murder.
And how much [police] criminalize adolescent behavior.
Williams often talked about the deprivations and dangers of his youth.
The lesson didnt take.
I cant say I came out of the neighborhood unscathed, he toldMens Health.
Youre either using or selling.
I was a user.
Then-President Barack Obama named it his favorite show and Omar his favorite character.
Williams often spoke of how insular his upbringing seemed once he took a harsh look at it.
He grew up worldly about localized matters but naive about the world.
He didnt follow the news unless the stories were world-shaking.
It wasnt that my family sat at the dinner table and talked about it.
Like most Black people do, we act like we are over it, past it.
Never dealing with the trauma.
I was in my 20s, he toldMens Health, and I had become a dancer.
I was in rooms with different walks of life.
Young people, Black and white from New York City.
We would go out for lunch after rehearsal.
And I was like, You have one of those?
They said, What a car?
I said, No, a dad?
And he lives in the house?
And he gives you the car?
Like, I dont understand.
From that point on, Williams tried to redefine perceived liabilities as strengths.
He described his younger selfas … sensitive, vulnerable.
And so I got picked on a lot.
It had nothing to do with me, Williams toldVanity Fair.
Not just in the Black community.
This is not just a Baltimore story.
When he read for Omar, Williams had been struggling with drugs again.
Hed already had many epiphanies in his 20s and 30s, but they didnt quite take.
But the struggle never stopped.
Williams booked the role of Chalky White onBoardwalk Empiremonths after relapsing again.
If I dont change the way Im living, I will probably die down here.
Williams wasnt ashamed of what happened.
He wanted people to know that it happened.
He wanted people to know the struggle was real.
I thought, Why me?
Why did I get spared?
I shouldve been dead, Williams said.
I have the scars.
Ive stuck my head in the lions mouth.
Obviously, God saved me for a purpose.
So, I decided to get clean and then come clean.
Im hoping I can reach that one person.
Like Brando, Williams was remarkably free in choosing to play characters who werent monotonously heterosexual.
We take this sort of thing for granted now, in the supposedly enlightened year 2021.
But when Williams first appeared in character as Omar 20 years ago, it was anything but common.
It was the sorcerer in him, the poet, the storyteller.
He was a man of prodigious gifts.
He had the ability to take a seeming throwaway moment and make it revelatory.
The demeaning gesture neutralizes the warmth that had been expressed moments earlier.
She is not what he needs, but shes the symbol of what hethinkshe needs.
Williams gets all this and puts it across to the audience, not through dialogue but with his face.
Williams was that caliber of actor.
He made a point to see himself in others, and that helped others see themselves in his characters.
He carried that weight.
And he made it.
Thats how the story should be framed: Michael Kenneth Williams made it.
He made it into his 50s despite an overwhelming, sometimes paralyzing addiction.
He made great shows, great movies.
He gave some of the greatest performances in the history of television.
He told his story by telling other peoples stories.
