The late Michael K. Williams revealed that he wished that his gay character from the show The Wire, Omar had more sex scenes.
In his recently published memoir, Scenes From My Life, the actor talked about being scared to play a gay character in the series. However, he stated that he was able to make the character his own.
Williams also explained that he pushed for the show’s production to focus more on Omar’s relationships with other men. Instead, he claimed that people were “dancing around their intimacy issue” when it came to Omar and his lover Brandon, played by Michael Kevin Darnall.
“There was lots of touching hair and rubbing lips and things like that. I felt like if we were going to do this, we should go all in. I think the directors were scared, and I said to one of them, ‘You know gay people f**k, right?’” he wrote in his book.
The memoir also revealed that he went to his co-star to try to have the two characters step it up. “I’m thinking in this scene we should kiss,” Williams said to Darnall. Although the kissing scene was not in the script, it would become a groundbreaking moment in the series.
“Twenty years ago, men- especially men of color- were not kissing on television. I don’t mean it was rare; I mean it did not happen,” he said.
He recalled the director, Clark Johnson telling the actors to do it two more times just in case someone was to change their minds.
We reported that Michael K. Williams passed away in September 2021 from a drug overdose of fentanyl-laced heroin. He was 54 years old. The late actor posthumously appears in the new film “Breaking” based on the true story of Brian Brown-Easley a former Marine Corps Veteran, who robbed a bank after falling into financial trouble.