Actor Michael Ok. Williams, who because the rogue robber of drug sellers Omar Little on “The Wire” created some of the common characters in tv in latest many years, died Monday.

Williams was discovered useless Monday afternoon by relations in his Brooklyn penthouse condo, New York Metropolis police mentioned. He was 54.

His dying was being investigated as a attainable drug overdose, the NYPD mentioned. The health worker was investigating the reason for dying.

Little, a “stick-up boy” primarily based on actual figures from Baltimore, was most likely probably the most beloved character among the many devoted followers of “The Wire,” the HBO present that ran from 2002 to 2008 and is re-watched always in streaming.

The Brooklyn-born Williams was additionally a ubiquitous character actor in different reveals and movies for greater than twenty years, together with roles on the HBO collection “Boardwalk Empire” and “Lovecraft Nation,” and within the movies “12 Years a Slave” and “Murderer’s Creed.”

As Little, he performed a prison with a strict ethical code, identified for profiting from a repute for brutality that wasn’t at all times actual.

Williams, who had labored in tiny TV roles and as a backup dancer for hip-hop acts earlier than touchdown the function, had mentioned that repute began to stay to him in actual life.

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“The character of Omar thrusted me into the limelight,” he advised Stephen Colbert on “The Late Present” in 2016. “I had very low self-worth rising up, a excessive must be accepted, a corny child from the initiatives. So abruptly, I’m like, Omar, yo, I’m getting respect from individuals who most likely would have took my lunch cash as a child.”

A cigarette in his mouth, the character would whistle “The Farmer within the Dell” to ominously announce his arrival.

And he spoke most of the present’s most memorable strains, together with, “a person gotta have a code” and “all within the sport yo, all within the sport.”

The character additionally broke TV floor as an brazenly homosexual man whose sexuality wasn’t central to his function.

Williams appeared in all 5 seasons of “The Wire” from 2002 to 2008, his character rising in prominence with every season.

Immediately recognizable with a particular scar that ran the size of his face, Williams mentioned most individuals who noticed him on the road referred to as him “Omar,” however he by no means actually resembled the character.

“I may by no means be Omar,” he advised Colbert with amusing. “I didn’t have the balls that dude had.”

His “Wire” co-stars had been fast to pay tribute to him Monday afternoon.

“The depth of my love for this brother, can solely be matched by the depth of my ache studying of his loss,” Wendell Pierce, who performed Detective William “Bunk” Moreland and had many memorable scenes with Williams, mentioned on Twitter. “An immensely gifted man with the power to provide voice to the human situation portraying the lives of these whose humanity is seldom elevated till he sings their reality.”

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Isiah Whitlock Jr., who performed crooked politician Clay Davis on “The Wire,” tweeted that Williams was “One of many nicest brothers on the planet with the most important coronary heart. A tremendous actor and soul.”

Williams had been working with a New Jersey charity to clean the journey for former jail inmates searching for to reenter society, and was engaged on a documentary on the topic.

He spoke in an Related Press story in 2020 of his tough time rising up, and mentioned he had struggled with drug dependancy.

“This Hollywood factor that you simply see me in, I’m passing via,” he mentioned. “As a result of I imagine that is the place my ardour, my goal is meant to be.”

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Related Press Author Tom Hays contributed from New York. Dalton reported from Los Angeles.