PHOTO BY RODIN ECKENROTH/FILMMAGIC
Michael K. Williams, the mesmerizing actor and five-time Emmy nominee best known for his role as Baltimore stick-up man Omar Little on HBO’s The Wire has died, his rep told The Hollywood Reporter. He was 54.
“It is with deep sorrow that the family announces the passing of Emmy-nominated actor Michael Kenneth Williams.
Williams was found in his Brooklyn home on Monday afternoon, a New York Police Department rep told THR. No cause of death was immediately available.
More recently, Williams portrayed Montrose Freeman on HBO’s Lovecraft Country, for which he received a 2021 Emmy nomination for outstanding supporting actor in a drama series — the awards are Sept. 19.
Williams was born in Brooklyn on Nov. 22, 1966. His mother was from the Bahamas and his father was from South Carolina.
He told Time magazine in 2017, “Growing up, I got hit on a lot,”. “I was the corny one. I was not popular with the ladies. He played convict-turned biology professor Marshall Kane on NBC’s Community in 2011-12.
His big-screen resume included Gone Baby Gone (2007), Antoine Fuqua’s Brooklyn’s Finest (2009), The Road (2009), Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave (2013), The Gambler (2014), Assassin’s Creed (2016), SuperFly (2018) and Motherless Brooklyn (2019).
However, in an interview in 2011 with soon-to-be THR awards analyst Scott Feinberg, Williams asked that how he would like to be remembered. To clarify, he said, “Man, I just want people to remember me as one cool-ass dude, you know? Someone who cared,” he replied. “And I would never want anyone to say, ‘Oh, he forgets where he came from.’ That would hurt me the most.”