David Simon recalled some assuming that the arrival of a white mayor to The Wire marked the introduction of the hero who would reform an inept system. “Um, just wait,” Simon would say. “Hero’s a big word.” Instead, in Season 3, Tommy Carcetti (Aidan Gillen), along with Maj. Bunny Colvin (Robert Wisdom) and Stringer Bell (Idris Elba), portrayed how little individual reformists are often able to influence archaic institutions. Carcetti started as a boyish, idealistic city councilman, but by the end of his arc, he allows his political ambitions to consume any original altruistic intentions. The Wire’s third season delved into Baltimore politics, depicting the overseers of a political system that allowed the police department to lurch aimlessly onward. The show arrived at the topic with most of its creative minds staunchly opposed. “They never convinced me,” Ed Burns insisted as late as 2016, and he may as well have spat when he said it.
But Simon remained steadfast in expanding The Wire’s horizon and mirroring the actual happenings in his Baltimore. The addition of Bill Zorzi to the writing staff aided that effort. No one knew the ins and outs of the local political scene quite like Zorzi. He was the son of a political journalist who had never accepted as much as a free doughnut at a presser during nearly two decades chronicling politics for The Baltimore Sun. Simon and Zorzi poured months into hammering authentic dialogue that politicians would use, though the most iconic line was created by an actor, when Isiah Whitlock Jr. (who played corrupt state senator Clay Davis) liberally stretched the word shit, which became one of the show’s most memorable catchphrases.
For many locals, the show’s examination of politics severely blurred fact and fiction. In one scene, the incumbent mayor, Clarence Royce, briefly ponders the morality of the de facto legalized drug markets created by Colvin and colloquially known as “Hamsterdam.” A health commissioner cautions him, “Better watch out, Clarence, or they’ll be calling you the most dangerous man in America.” Kurt Schmoke, a former Baltimore mayor, portrays the health commissioner. In reality, Schmoke’s mulling of decriminalizing drugs nearly ended his political career, with Rep. Charles Rangel labeling him America’s most dangerous man. In another scene, Robert L. Ehrlich Jr., Maryland’s governor at the time, plays a security guard who tells a waiting Carcetti that the governor cannot see him that evening. The scene mimics the circumstances in which Martin O’Malley, the former Baltimore mayor, sought an audience with Ehrlich.
O’Malley would become forever linked to Carcetti’s character. He ran for Baltimore’s mayor in 1999, triumphing in a predominantly black city over two black council members once Schmoke decided against reelection. O’Malley’s friendship with Councilman Lawrence Bell III mirrored The Wire’s pairing of Carcetti and Councilman Anthony Gray. Once mayor, O’Malley, like Carcetti, pivoted ambitions toward becoming governor. (O’Malley also made a failed bid for the presidency, in 2016.) Simon and Zorzi have asserted through the years that Carcetti is sourced from several real-life Baltimore politicians, O’Malley included. O’Malley, for his part, denounced the comparison, labeling himself in 2009 on MSNBC as “the antidote to The Wire.” Simon once offered O’Malley a cameo on the show, in the same vein as Ehrlich Jr. The offer was declined.
William F. Zorzi (staff writer): Carcetti is based on [Martin] O’Malley, yeah. He’s based in part on O’Malley. He’s sort of based on a number of different politicians.
Aidan Gillen (Mayor Thomas Carcetti): I think on my first day, [David Simon] said something like, “Okay, this is the deal. You were Bob Colesberry’s last casting call, so whether we really wanted you or not, we had to give you the job.”
I remember Bill Zorzi’s eyes kind of out on stalks when I walked into the writers’ room, off the plane from London to start as Carcetti. I looked more like Ziggy than Carcetti — big mop of hair and scruffy clothes. Someone said, “Get this man’s hair cut and get him down to Brooks Brothers immediately.” I was Bill’s responsibility, and I knew he was going to be writing on the political strand. He took me on a crash-course tour of local politics over the next few days. I had lots of questions, as I wasn’t familiar with the American local government scene. He led me through it with great knowledge and wry wit. He filled me in on lots of local political characters and lore, where you’d eat, what sandwich you might have. He’d been a political writer at The Baltimore Sun, just as David Simon had been a crime writer, and I knew I was in good hands.
If I had any query on what might be going on in a particular scene, he would answer an email at any hour, day or night, and he would do it comprehensively. I really mean that. One night, I’d asked if he could write something for me to say at a street rally that was down for shooting the next day but didn’t have written dialogue, as it stood. Bill said sure, and I went out to the bar with my brother. Come in at two a.m., and there’s five pages of dialogue slid under the door.
Zorzi: My wife says that I don’t hide my feelings very well. It’s always obvious what I think. When he had stepped into the room and sort of looked like he had just come off some punk-rock bender, I was like, Holy shit. This guy can’t be our councilman.
Gillen: My first scene, it was with Frankie Faison, and he was gentle with me. We’d gone out the night before to eat, which he’d suggested, God bless him, ’cause I guess he knew it’d make me feel more at ease, which it did. We were at a crab joint, and he taught me how to smash them proper with the hammer, and we had bibs on. I ate one of the bits I wasn’t supposed to, in my enthusiasm. Have you ever eaten a crab lung? Anyway, luckily it didn’t kill me. The scene was a good one to kick off with, as it was Burrell giving Carcetti the lowdown on what might lie ahead.
Ernest Dickerson (director): It was just great doing scenes with Glynn Turman [Mayor Clarence Royce], who’s an actor that I grew up watching all the way back at Cooley High, and Frankie Faison, who I first met on the set of Do the Right Thing and just always loved his work. To see a black mayor and a black police commissioner doing Shakespearean power moves around each other, as an African-American filmmaker, that’s the kind of stuff you just dream about directing. Plus, when you have two actors who are obviously having such a great time working with each other and playing with each other and doing these scenes with each other, it was cinematic heaven. I don’t want to get corny with it, but I’m sitting there and I’m thinking, Damn, man, this is the best show in the world. It was the best job in the world to see these guys, these two pros, really play these scenes. These are the kinds of scenes you hardly ever see in any dramatic medium: cinematic or television. For me it was a privilege to be able to do stuff like that.
Frankie Faison (Acting Commr. Ervin H. Burrell): Glynn Turman is an actor that I’ve been wanting to work with my whole life. He’s an actor that I have admired, his work and the arc of his career. I love Glynn. When I found out he was coming onto the show and he got the role, it was almost like it was magical. I had never met Glynn before, and I’ve been in the business a long time, and he’s been in the business a long time, even a little longer than me.
When we met, it was such an amazing chemistry. Some actors you work with, it’s like working with family over and over and over again. He and I have that kind of relationship, and every time I see him, it’s more than just acting, bonding to do a show. It becomes something much more than that. Then, whenever we were on set together, he was always funny, entertaining, exciting, but it was also very professional. That whole thing was magical for us, and hopefully it was magical for people around us who were shooting and filming in scenes with us.
Glynn Turman (Mayor Clarence V. Royce): They break in on me and I’m getting head. How much more memorable can a motherfucker [scene] be? Shit, I guess you don’t get exposed to that degree often in the biz, and that was indeed a memorable moment, as attested by my wife. “You did what?” It was a great moment, well done, and it did take me by surprise in the writing. You’re reading it — I said, “Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. What? Let me read this again. How are they gonna do this?”
Zorzi: I have to credit that to David. That was based on a rumor.
Turman: Simon is probably one of the smartest people that I’ve had the pleasure to meet and certainly one of the most creative producers-writers that I’ve had the pleasure of working with. And I knew it early on, when it was first call to the first day on set. I had been doing a movie called Sahara that we were shooting in Morocco with Matthew McConaughey and Penélope Cruz. I wasn’t finished with that when I had to come to Baltimore to do the first scenes and then go back to Morocco to finish the Sahara movie. So, Sahara had the first dibs on me as a result, so to speak.
I had a goatee and a mustache, and David had come up to me and said, “Glynn, can we lose the goatee for Mayor Royce?” And I said, “David, I’d love to, but I’ve gotta go back and finish shooting Sahara, so I can’t take it off.” Right there on the spot, he kind of scratched his chin a little bit and he went, “Okay. I’ll tell you what. Next season, you’re gonna be in a mayoral race against a younger man. We’ll have you lose the mustache and the goatee then, when you try to get reelected.” So, he looked that far down the line. He knew his storyline so well that he could see a year ahead where his characters were going. That’s when I said, “Who the hell is this guy?”
David Simon (creator): I can’t say we had Royce in our head. But we had like a Clarence “Du” Burns in our head. That’s the real guy. And then we had a white insurgent who was really the last sort of white liberal insurgency on the Democratic side in a time of high crime. That was Marty O’Malley. Things were happening in Baltimore that we were tending to.
Kurt Schmoke (health commr./former mayor of Baltimore): It was somewhat ironic to sit there, the former mayor, and playing the health commissioner, while [Turman is] playing the mayor. I was impressed with his ability. He moved from being very jovial on set to, once the cameras were running, to being in character, very serious and committed to conveying a strong message as mayor.
Turman: I was able to personalize who this guy was, and he was loosely based on Schmoke. Schmoke was not as strident as Mayor Royce was. Mayor Royce was a little more arrogant and sort of entitled in his approach to his power. He felt that he was entitled to the power that he had, and I never got that from Schmoke.
I had the opportunity to work with Mayor Schmoke and talk with him about some of the things that happened and how close they were to what he had going. One of the things that has stuck with me in talking with him was talking about Hamsterdam. He said that he wished that he had phrased it all differently. Because it was indeed a brilliant idea, and I think the country is actually employing, under a different name, some of those policies. But he thinks that had he couched it under a health situation, a health resolve, that it would have flown.
Reg E. Cathey (Norman Wilson): Norman is still one of my favorite characters. Before, I had done [Martin] Querns in Oz, which I loved doing. What was great about The Wire is that you had all these different black characters on the same show. When I was living out in L.A., I would audition for the black guy on the show, and that would be the only black guy. He wouldn’t have any black friends. Maybe he’d have a black wife or black girlfriend. He was the black guy, and usually he was upstanding and honorable, because everyone wants to have a good role model. But in The Wire, there were all different types of characters and different types of human variables, and it was fabulous to play. In terms of Norman, to play a smart man, a man with brains, a man who drank and smoked and made mistakes and told truth to power because he just didn’t give a fuck anymore — it was so much fun. And then David would joke with me that he would give me these one-liners and then he’d come up to me before, these perfect little one-liners, and say, “Okay, we’re not going to spend a lot of time on this. I want you to get it right in one time. Don’t be fucking around. But no pressure.”
Isiah Whitlock Jr. (state Sen. R. Clayton “Clay” Davis): First season, I did maybe, like, one episode. I think the second season, I made a couple of small appearances. I was doing Othello, doing a Shakespeare play, and just said I was going to let it go. But everybody kind of corralled me and said, “It’s a great opportunity, and you should do it.” Because they were going to run my storyline. Once I got my head wrapped around that, then I agreed to go ahead and keep working on it. But there was one moment when I said, “I’m going to go off and do my own thing.” Fortunately, I went ahead and did the show.
George Pelecanos (writer/producer): A lot of black guys say “shit” like [Whitlock’s Davis]. David wrote it originally. He just gave it to him, and Isiah ran with it.
Whitlock Jr.: Nine e’s. Yeah. I don’t know where I came up with nine e’s, but I said, “Okay, if I’m going to live with it, I’m gonna have to spell it.” I always tell people, “If you write it to me, use nine e’s. If you do any more than that, you’re not saying it right.”
Marlyne Barrett (Council President Nerese Campbell): In rehearsal, it did take a couple of minutes. Like, “How long are you going to do it for? How long is it going to last? I just need to know rhythmically. Is it going to be a sheeeeeeeee-it? Is it going to stop?”
Whitlock Jr.: My uncle used to say it all the time. But he wasn’t the only one. A lot of people used to always say that. It was a very, very funny way that he would always say it. He would always say it — at least every time I spoke to him. It was just part of his language. So, I remember when I did the film for Spike [Lee], I got the opportunity to use it, and the rest is history. But that’s not something I really came up with. A lot of people used that.
It kind of started for me in Spike Lee’s film 25th Hour. And then I did another movie for Spike. To be quite honest, I’ve done it in every Spike movie that I’ve done. I’ve done about four. But I think it really took off when I used it in The Wire. That’s where a lot of people know it from. But it makes people smile. At first, I didn’t quite get what the big deal was. I said, “I always thought everyone says that.” A friend of mine says, “Everybody does say it, but it’s the way you say it that makes it special.” I’m glad people are happy with it.
To be quite honest, I never thought [Davis] was going to be convicted. There was a moment where I really honestly believed in everything I was doing. I believed the character, everything that he believed, that I was actually doing some good for the people. I know there were a lot of people who are going to dispute that. But in the playing of it, I really believed that what he was doing was right and that I wasn’t going to be convicted. To me, that’s the only way you can approach a character like that. You’ve got to have some belief that what you’re doing is right, and I think that’s what made the character believable, is that I believed so much in what he was doing. Otherwise, if you go the other way, people can dismiss the character, so I had to make sure that I made him likeable, so people wouldn’t dismiss him, that everybody, no matter where he was, everybody had to be aware that he was in the room. I think that translated to the people watching it. When Clay Davis shows up, you know he’s there for some reason or some purpose. You have to take notice.
Adapted from ALL THE PIECES MATTER: THE INSIDE STORY OF THE WIRE® Copyright © 2018 by Jonathan Abrams. Published by Crown, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC.
