Keeping up with the cast of The Wire.  (3 Stars)

Where are they now?  What projects have they moved on to?  This required some research on www.imdb.com to research the characters that I chose. I wanted to portray the characters not only by their images but also by a brief description of each characters shown.  IMDB must have really strict rules about copying their photos so I had to pull images from Google images once I found the characters that I wanted to include.  IMDB also offered a great deal of information about the new characters that each Wire star have become. Once I had copied images of all of the characters to my computer, I used piZap to merge the photographs into a collage.  Below is the collage of the characters…

The first character that I will talk about is portrayed by Lawrence Gilliard Jr.  He plays the role of D’Angelo Barksdale.  After leaving The Wire, Gilliard landed a role on my favorite show, The Walking Dead.  He plays the part of Bob Stookey.  When I first D’Angelo on The Wire, I immediately said “Hey, There’s Bob!”  I love his character on both shows.  Both characters have faults (drug dealer, alcoholic) but he is a lovable character that sees good in others in both roles.  Lawrence, I hope you stick around longer in The Walking Dead than in The Wire.

The Next character that I researched is my all time favorite on The Wire.  Omar Little.  No one controls Omar.  Gotta love his character. In his own words, Omar is “True to the game”.  Omar’s role is played by Michael Kenneth Williams.  Williams went on to play the role of Robert in the movie “Twelve Years a Slave”.  Williams now plays a part in another HBO series, “Boardwalk Empire”.  He plays the character, Chalky White.  In this series, you can see many similarities to Omar.  Chalky controls the black population of Atlantic City.  He makes sure that everything functions with order.  I see so many similarities to Omar’s behavior.

The next character that I researched was Frank Sabotka.  This role is played by Chris Bauer.  Chris Bauer moved on after The Wire to two very popular shows, one being “True Blood” and the other being “The Divide”.  In “True Blood”, Bauer plays the role of a police officer named Andy Bellefleur.  No one truly takes him seriously as a cop.  In “The Divide”, Bauer is sentenced and put to death for a crime that after his death, he is found innocent of.  In both of these characters, I can see the Frank Sabotka that we know in “The Wire” come out.

In this same mini-series, “The Divide”, there is another fellow Wire star in the series.  Clarke Peters plays the role of Lester Freamon in “The Wire”.  In this series, “The Divide” Peters plays the role of Isaiah Page, the Police Commissioner of Philadelphia.  In this role as the Commissioner, you see Page in the role of a father but you also see the role of the officer that gets to the bottom of the case.  Freamon’s character is true to his job in both roles that he plays.

The next character that I will talk about is Wallace.  In “The Wire”, Wallace is portrayed by Michael B. Jordan.  Jordan’s character, Wallace, is so loved by everyone.  He had goodness in his heart and truly was trying to get out of the game.  After “The Wire”, I am truly excited about the new character that Jordan will portray.  He will be the Human Torch in a remake of the movie,
“The Fantastic Four”.  I think he will be an awesome character in this movie.  There is already a Fantastic Four 2 in the makes also.

The next character that I will talk about is everyone’s favorite bad guy, Stringer Bell.  Stringer Bell is portrayed by Idris Elba.  Elba does such a good job at making everyone hate him.  It truly takes talent to make everyone hate you.  After “The Wire”, Elba went on the film “Pacific Rim”.  This was a really cool movie that had giant robots fighting.  Elba played the role of Stacker Pentecost, the Commander.  He really does an awesome job in “Pacific Rim”.

The last character that I researched was Jimmy McNulty.  McNulty is portrayed by Dominic West.  After “The Wire”, West has joined another series by Showtime that will begin on October 12th called “The Affair”.  In “The Affair”, West plays the role of a happily married school teacher that has an affair with a waitress, who also is married.  No big surprise here.  We can definitely see that Dominic West plays the player card well.

We can see that with each of these characters, their roles in “The Wire” led them all to really successful roles in other series and movies.