David Simon (Creator): [Wendell Pierce] came in and just nailed [his audition]. He was really pissed off. He had gotten in an argument with a cab driver. It was one of those sort of trying-to-hail-a-cab-while-black moments in New York, and he came in and he was steaming. He was harried, like a bear who'd hit the hornet's nest. He had to focus on the scene, and he was apologizing for what he thought was a bad read, but it had that air of Baltimore—put-upon workaday Baltimore—homicide detective. As soon as he came in and read, it was like, "That's our Bunk."
Wendell Pierce (Det. William "Bunk" Moreland): It was weeks later, maybe even a year later, while we were shooting, that David said, "You know, when you came in, it was not your reading that got you the part. You just came in and you were bitching and complaining about this taxi driver and that was the thing that got you the gig, because you're so much like Bunk." The fact that I would bring it up in the middle of a major audition shows some gumption on my part.
Simon: I thought John C. Reilly could be a different McNulty, certainly not the same, but I thought he could carry all of the excesses and vices of McNulty in a different way. I've loved his work in a lot of stuff. I was on the phone with him. It was three weeks before Halloween [2001], because I was in a corn maze with my kid, Ethan, who would have been like seven, six. So, I'm trying to keep up with my kid, who's running around like a madman in this maze, and that's when John C. Reilly called me back. I really couldn't take the call. I talked to him for maybe five minutes, and I said, "Hey, listen, can I call you back? I'm in a corn maze with my kid." And he said, "Yeah, yeah. Call me back." In the time between when he called me and when I called him back, he stopped taking calls. He later told Dom [West, who got the role] that his wife was like, "We are not moving to Baltimore."
Later on, Dom was working with him on Chicago and they're looking at each other. They're so different, and Dom's like, "What were they going for?"
That's kind of how casting is sometimes. You go in one direction. You find out you're on the wrong track or circumstance thwarts you, and you end up going in a different direction.
Dominic West (Det. Jimmy McNulty): To read, I was given one scene from the pilot and nothing else, and I put myself on tape. I didn't think much of it, but it got too late in the night, and they wanted it the next day, so I got my girlfriend to read the dialogue. It was a scene between McNulty and Bunk, and she read the Bunk part and I held the camera and I did McNulty. She couldn't stop laughing at my accent, so I sent her out of the room and I had no one else and it was late, so I just left a gap for when Bunk spoke and reacted to whatever he was supposed to be saying and sent it off to them.
David Simon said he found that it was so funny, this fool reacting to complete silence, that he thought we'd better get him over and have a laugh.
Simon: I had never seen an audition tape like it. The camera was on him, and he was reading and then he was leaving the pauses for the other actors, who didn't exist, and he was reacting to the lines. A lot of acting is reacting, and to see somebody doing it to nothingness is a pretty unusual audition tape.
It was his first time trying an American accent, and it seemed to be there were shades of sort of New York De Niro-isms. But it was really good acting. He was a good actor, and the reacting to nothing was a tell.
West: I went to New York and I met Wendell Pierce, who was the first person to be cast, and we hit it off pretty well. So, I think that's what kicked it all into start.
Pierce: Our chemistry—it's been a great friendship from the bat. He has a great curiosity about things. He's very well read, loves to go out and have a good time. I think we share that approach to life.
Chris Albrecht (Chairman and CEO, HBO): Dominic is British. That was before people were casting a lot of Brits as American.
Ed Burns (Co-Creator): David and Dominic spent a lot of time: "Now, say it like po-lice." "Police." "No, po-lice."
West: It never got any easier for me. I do remember meeting Idris [Elba] for the first time, and I didn't realize he was English initially, because he was talking the whole time in American and he was living in New York at the time. I was chatting to him, and eventually he said, "Look, you've got to stop talking in that English accent because you're fucking me up."
Idris Elba (Stringer Bell): We would laugh about it. There was only one scene where we actually worked together, and as soon as he walks in, he was talking in his English accent, and I started talking in my English accent, and I said, "Mate, we're never going to be able to pull this off." It was really hard working with an English actor and you're both playing Americans. It feels a bit fake.
Alexa L. Fogel (Casting Director): Idris was up for a Fox movie that I was casting right before I did The Wire. He didn't get it, which was really frustrating for me. I thought he had tremendous presence. His American accent was perfect. But he was an unknown face, and for a studio, that was tricky. He was very much on the forefront of my mind when I started on The Wire. I told him to just use an American accent. I've never done that before, and I've never done it since. But I was sort of coming off of this frustrating experience where he didn't get a role and I was trying to kind of create an environment in which everything was going his way.
Elba: I couldn't afford to stay anymore. This was literally the last audition that I was up for that could change my life. It was in December when was I auditioning. In January, my lease was up, my daughter was about to be born. It was like, Get this job and you stay. Don't get this job and you won't be able to afford to stay and you'll go back. The day my daughter was born was the day I got the job.
Robert Wisdom (Howard "Bunny" Colvin): Alexa Fogel is one of the great casting directors around. Alexa nailed this one. She's really an unsung hero of the show. She just had her finger on the pulse of a broader array of talent than our industry is given credit for.
Fogel: Michael K. had auditioned for me for Oz. You keep very good records for all your auditions.
Michael K. Williams (Omar Little): They kept writing—I knew that dude was gay—all they kept doing: Omar rubs the boy's lips. Omar rubs the boy's hair. Omar holds the boy's hand. I'm like, "Don't gay people fuck? You know what I mean? Don't they kiss? Don't they grab each other? I was like, Listen, we've got to step it up."
Andre Royo (Reginald "Bubbles" Cousins): My manager called me and was like, "HBO is doing a new show called The Wire and I got you an audition for this junkie character named Bubbles." I was mad. I was like, "I'm not doing that. I'm not playing a junkie." My manager, being the great manager she was, was like, "You're broke, motherfucker. You ain't got no money. They didn't offer you the role. You got to go audition."
I went in. It's New York. You see the same black actors in all the auditions. It's a small circle. I see all my boys, and everybody's auditioning for this guy. His name is Bubbles. Someone's chewing bubble gum. I was like, "That's so fucking juvenile." I spat my gum out.
Michael Potts (Brother Mouzone): Brother Mouzone was somebody they had tried to cast for a while. I didn't come in to read for it until very late in the game and I think I had a very persistent agent, who kept saying, "Alexa, see him, see him. He can do this. Let him read for this." I came in basically when they had pretty much given up on finding the actor for the role, and that first episode that I came in, I had just one line, just one word, just "Officer."
All I was thinking in my head, If I can get three episodes, I can catch up. I can get all my bills paid and I can be even for the year again. They gave me one word in the very first, and in the second episode, they gave me a monologue. Method Man said, "They bringing you in nice."
Michael B. Jordan (Wallace): I remember feeling so bummed the first time I went in there and I didn't get the job. I originally went in there for Bodie, and I was too young for it and I didn't get it, and I was just super sad. They brought me back in for Wallace, and I ended up getting that character.
Being in Baltimore and in that environment, it wasn't something that was strange. It wasn't foreign. The dialect, being around it a little bit more, they might move a little different, talk a little different. You've been in one hood, you've kind of sort of been in them all. Some are different than others, but for the most part, poverty is poverty.
Sonja Sohn (Det. Shakima "Kima" Greggs): Like most black folks who grew up in underserved areas, I did not have a positive view of the police. I realized for me to play this character, I had to have some understanding of the motivations of good cops and what the motivation was for a good cop to become a cop. Kima was the good cop. She's the moral compass of the police.
Lawrence Gilliard Jr. (D'Angelo Barksdale): When I booked the role, I was living in New York, and my agent called me and he told me that there was a script, new HBO show, and it was going to be about Baltimore. He knew I grew up in Baltimore. He sent me the script, and I read it. Instantly, I just had a connection with it. I knew the neighborhood. I knew the streets. I'm reading it and I'm just thinking to myself, I know these corners. I know these streets, and I know these characters. I know these people.
Reprinted from ALL THE PIECES MATTER: THE INSIDE STORY OF THE WIRE® Copyright © 2018 by Jonathan Abrams. Published by Crown Archetype, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC.
