Nearly seven months before Michael K. Williams’ death Monday, the dynamic actor, best known for playing quick-witted stickup man Omar Little in “The Wire,” talked extensively to podcaster Marc Maron about his drug addiction and his ongoing efforts to stay healthy and sober, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“You know, I’m in the club as well,” Williams told Maron for his “WTF” podcast in February, referring to being in recovery. “And you know, anybody that has heard me speak before, I’m not shy about it. You know, relapse to me is part of my story and, you know, but I’m living good today, you know. All’s we got is today.”
The New York Times and multiple other news outlets reported that Williams, 54, was found dead in his Brooklyn apartment Monday afternoon. The Times also reported that his death is under investigation by New York’s medical examiner. The New York Post and TMZ reported that a drug overdose is suspected because drug paraphernalia was found in the apartment.
Williams’ longtime representative, Marianna Shafran, confirmed his death in a statement to the New York Times and said the family was grappling with “deep sorrow” at “this insurmountable loss.”
The Brooklyn native started out as a dancer, but moved into acting. His breakthrough role came in 2002 in “The Wire,” David Simons’ epic HBO series about crime, drugs and institutional dysfunction in Baltimore. Williams’ scar-faced, shotgun-toting Robin Hook-like Omar Little is often cited as one of the most original and memorable characters in all of TV history, with former President Barack Obama saying Omar is one of the reasons he loved “The Wire.”
Whether or not drugs played a role in Williams’ death, the actor didn’t shy away from talking in past interviews and more recently with Maron about recovery being central to his life. That’s because of the way his life spiraled into disarray and drug abuse during production of “The Wire.”
In 2012, he told NJ.com that he wasted his earnings from “The Wire” on drugs and revealed that he was doing drugs “in scary places with scary people.”
“I was playing with fire,” Williams told NJ.com, though he also insisted he limited himself to pot and cocaine and “nothing stronger” — for example, heroin.
“It was just a matter of time before I got caught and my business ended up on the cover of a tabloid or I went to jail or, worse, I ended up dead,” Williams said. “When I look back on it now, I don’t know how I didn’t end up in a body bag.”
Williams said he finally got tired of the drug use, particularly the way it made him lie to his family, friends and colleagues. “I was broke, broken and beat up. Exhausted. Empty,” Williams said. “I finally said, ‘I can’t do this no more.’ I didn’t want to end up dead.”
Following “The Wire,” Williams won acclaim for his roles in HBO’s “Boardwalk Empire,” “The Night Of,” and “Lovecraft Country” and numerous films and other TV series.
For Maron’s “WTF” podcast in February, Williams talked about his current sobriety in the context of his latest film, “Body Brokers,” which was released in February. Williams called the film his “passion project” because it looks at the dark side of a profit-hungry rehab industry. Williams plays a corrupt drug counselor who is supposed to be in recovery himself.
During the interview, Maron brought up his own 23 years of sobriety and observed how Williams’ counselor is luring addicts into rehab programs that only care about building themselves into lucrative enterprises by insurance payments for drug treatment.
For that reason and others, Maron said Williams’ character is “not quite sober.” Instead his character is playing the part of someone who is, with Maron saying the film is about “people rationalizing, you know, compartmentalizing things that makes them kind of evil, right?”
“You hit it right on the head,” Williams said. “You know and I, we both know: Being sober doesn’t take away the craziness.”
Williams then said that people wrongly assume that drugs are the problem. “Drugs are the symptom of a lot of the problem,” Williams said. “You know, once we put the drugs down, that’s when the work begins because we’ve got to clean up this house, all this garbage.”
Using some of the language and ideas of 12-step recovery programs, Williams explained that he wanted to star in “Body Brokers” because it would allow him to show what recovery really looks like.
“It’s not all roses, and once you put the drug down, it’s happily ever after and life is going to be great,” he said. “No, there’s a lot of stinking thinking that we need to get rid of and bad bad habits and bad thought processes.”
Later in the interview, Maron asked Williams if it was hard for him to do a movie in which he and other actors portray characters using drugs. Williams said: “Didn’t trigger me. Because of the decision that I made.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Williams revealed that his famous scar was the result of a “barroom brawl” on his 25th birthday. The interview also opened with Maron asking Williams how he was coping during COVID-19.
Williams said he tested positive for the virus after a family member was hospitalized with COVID. He also said he had to quarantine for 14 days but, fortunately, he didn’t have any serious symptoms. Williams, who said he developed a love for cooking and Caribbean food because his mother is from the Bahamas, laughingly explained how he made of pot curry and was grateful that he was able to taste it because the infection didn’t cause him to lose his sense of taste.
Williams also said he had been staying in shape, doing cardiovascular exercises, calisthenics and stretching, not to make his body look better but because he liked the way the workouts made him feel physically and mentally stronger. He also took Maron’s advice about integrating meditation into his routine.
“I truly believe that because I put (exercise) in my program and my daily routine that it gave me a leg to stand on to fight them off,” he said, apparently referring to the view that exercise strengthens the immune system.
Williams also laughed that he probably had good genes, which were helping to keep him healthy, before he said: “You know, I consider myself blessed today, man.”