All the Pieces Matter

by Jonathan Abrams

  The headspace required to portray characters with defined faults weighed heavily on several of the cast members. Director Peter Medak came across Dominic West in England early in The Wire’s run. “You know, I’m not going to keep doing this,” West said of continuing on the show. “I’m going to quit.” Medak asked West how many years he had signed on to play McNulty. “Don’t worry about that,” he responded. “Nobody can force me to do anything.”

  ANDRE ROYO (REGINALD “BUBBLES” COUSINS): There was moments I was depressed and didn’t know why. The balancing of my life and Bubbles’s life was daunting. There was days when I just felt dark and I wanted to run away. I would sit and talk to Idris or talk to Seth [Gilliam]. He was a real cool dude who’s been around the business a long time. When we weren’t getting the accolades we felt like we should have got, people started to feel a little depressed. What the fuck are we doing wrong?

  DOMINIC WEST (DET. JIMMY MCNULTY): I was constantly whining and grousing about it and telling [Simon] I didn’t want to do it, and he was the most generous-hearted man and a very exceptionally humane, warm guy, as well as a brilliant guy. He put up with all my whining and complaining and was great. Then, one day, he said to me, “You know, Dominic, in about ten years’ time, twenty years’ time, you’re going to be sitting in some bar, in one of our horrible, wet, rainy London bars, and you’re going to be sitting at the bar stool, and it’s going to be late in the day, and you’re going to say to the barman, or anyone who will listen, you’ll say, ‘I was once in a show called The Wire. I dunno if you ever heard of it, but I was the lead actor.’ And that barman is going to look at you and go, ‘I think it’s time you went home now, sir.’ ”

  DAVID SIMON (CREATOR): Yeah, that’s a bit that I stole from Terry McLarney, homicide detective, whom I consider a very good friend. He’s used that on me a couple of times. I’ve used it on Dom. I’ve used it on a lot of people. I used it on Chris Albrecht when I was trying to get him to renew the show. I said, “One day, you’re going to be in a bar and you are going to tell people you were the guy who renewed The Wire when nobody was watching it, season after season, and the guy’s going to say, ‘That’s really great, sir, but it’s two a.m. You’ve got to finish your drink, get out, and go home.’ ” I know it made him laugh, because he told me later. And, really, they had no good reason to renew it.

  David Simon authored Stringer Bell’s death and the collapse of the Barksdale organization as The Wire’s de facto series finale. He, of course, yearned for more seasons to tell his story under HBO’s economic model, which did not rely on advertisers. The network could support the show’s budget, as long as it attracted some additional paying viewers. But the show’s ratings had never impressed, often bleeding viewers from its lead-in. Viewership peaked with 4.3 million viewers at the start of the second season. The Baltimore Sun reported that an average of 1.9 million watched Season 3’s episodes. Simon voiced uncertainty that HBO would continue the series and deliberated writing books to finish a story he intended to complete. “I know [HBO] isn’t particularly pleased with our numbers,” Simon told the New York Daily News. “Why would they be? But, at the same time, I’m not sure what on HBO, besides maybe The Sopranos, could have gone up against the buzz saw that is Desperate Housewives and Sunday Night Football…What could have gone up against Desperate Housewives? Desperate Housewives is pretty. I’m not about pretty.” Indeed, in initially greenlighting a show that no one else would have touched, HBO chairman and CEO Chris Albrecht displayed impressive foresight. But he left the show dangling for months on a fourth-season renewal. Soon, a website, www.savethewire.com popped up, inviting viewers to plea for the show’s continuation, and even provided the mailing address for Albrecht’s office. “I have received a telegram from every viewer of The Wire—all two hundred fifty of them,” he joked at the Television Critics Association winter press tour in 2005.

  Simon did not relent. He requested a spin-off. He wrote intensive memorandums on the show’s intentions and purpose. He pitched Albrecht and Carolyn Strauss on completing the show in its totality—a fourth season with a focus on education and a fifth on media. Finally, the network signed off on continuing the series. “It’s been frustrating,” Simon said to The Baltimore Sun. “HBO has in the past been a unique little cocoon for writer-producers—providing a certain comfort level for shows that were critically and creatively viable. Well, that cocoon kind of got popped open and a little bit of cold air came in, and it got uncomfortable for a while….But now it’s sealed up again and warm and cozy.” The delay exacerbated concerns among the show’s actors over its hierarchy at HBO and a lack of appreciation for their efforts.

  NEAL HUFF (CHIEF OF STAFF MICHAEL STEINTORF): There was some kind of rumor going around at the end of Season Three, that there might be a spin-off show called The Hall. Aidan’s the one who told me about it. I could have very easily hunkered down and stayed in Baltimore and done that for the foreseeable future.

  WILLIAM F. ZORZI (STAFF WRITER): After Season Three, there was some question in HBO’s mind as to whether they wanted to go forward. A bunch of time passed, and during that time, I wrote two episodes—this notion of writing a political show based on this Carcetti character.

  DAVID SIMON (CREATOR): The Hall would have been seventy-five percent politics and twenty-five percent into The Wire world. I thought there was enough material to do two shows side by side and go from one to the other, to just sort of ration it. Nobody wanted to do the politics. Nobody. The only person that wanted to do politics was me, and Zorzi. George hated politics. Ed hated politics. I don’t know what Ed thinks now. I know that George came to realize that doing the politics made The Wire about more than cops and robbers. Again, sometimes a story’s got to eat its vegetables.

  AIDAN GILLEN (MAYOR THOMAS CARCETTI): There was a pilot script written for that after Season Three. It was very good, and of course I would’ve been very happy if it had happened then. It didn’t, but a lot of what was in it ended up on Season Four, which was a great season. Yes, if it came up again, I’d jump to do it.

  DAVID SIMON (CREATOR): I remember going to Chris [Albrecht] and saying, “I want to split the shows, and one part of it bounces into The Wire. It alternates, and I’ll give you a city municipal show about politics.” It was just the most amazing thing. “So, I would have two shows nobody would be watching?” [Albrecht said.] I’m thinking of expanding the universe and they’re really going, How do we get out of this?

  ANDRE ROYO (REGINALD “BUBBLES” COUSINS): We did get canceled Season Three. We were done. After Season Three, we were over. We always felt like they didn’t know how to gauge what audience we had, because at that time, it was about the water cooler talk. That’s how you described good television. It’s water cooler television. The next morning or Monday morning, you’re at work talking about “Did you see that? Did you see what Tony [Soprano] did?” For us, our audience was BET, young black kids talking about our show. That’s our story. All that wasn’t countable.

  DOMENICK LOMBARDOZZI (DET. THOMAS “HERC” HAUK): Every season, we had a wrap party. It was kind of like, “Well, shit. We don’t know if we’re coming back for another season.” Some of the best wrap parties I ever went to were The Wire.

  NINA K. NOBLE (EXECUTIVE PRODUCER): Every season was a struggle. Every season, we weren’t renewed. At the end of the season, we would just say goodbye to everybody and “hope to see you again,” and then it would be anywhere between two and four months they would keep us waiting, and usually David would have to go out to LA and pitch the theme of a new season and try to get an order. It was never automatic.

  BRANDY BURRE (THERESA D’AGOSTINO): We knew that we were the bastard child of HBO in the best sense. It wasn’t The Sopranos. It wasn’t Sex and the City. We were doing something special, and it wasn’t necessarily being recognized at the time.

  BENJAMIN BUSCH (OFF. ANTHONY COLICCHIO): It was always that worry at the end of each s
eason. When is there going to be Season Four? Is there going to be Season Five? It was one of their cheapest shows, when you look across the board. They were shooting Rome at the time. They had The Sopranos. These were high-end, high-cost shows. The Wire was very inexpensive by anyone’s estimation. It lived in dangerous days. We always were amazed by that, that the industry, which now also considers it to be the gold standard, just refused to acknowledge it. I think we’re still trying to figure that out. What was it? Was it the content? Was it the message? Was it the fact that it wasn’t a happy show? The Sopranos was dark, but it was a gangster show. It had a genre. The Wire created its own genre.

  CHRIS ALBRECHT (CHAIRMAN AND CEO, HBO): After Season Three, you went, “This story is over, man. What are you going to do?” Then, when [David Simon] came in—it’s always really impressive and important when a very talented writer-producer comes in, and has a very clear, strong point of view about something that’s pretty interesting. So, David had that. He said it’s two more seasons. That was the other thing. It’s not one more season. It’s two more seasons. “Oh, Jesus Christ. Let’s get rid of this guy.”

  DAVID SIMON (CREATOR): Carolyn called me, and I said, “Oh my God. We have such a great storyline. You can’t do this.” She said, “Well, look, [Chris Albrecht is] pretty convinced. He doesn’t see a reason to go on. He feels like you’re never going to get better reviews than you just got. Stringer’s dead. The Barksdale storyline is over.” I said, “Can I come in and argue?” She said, “Yeah, you’re entitled to that. I’ll make sure he hears it.” So, I went into a meeting with them, and at first I prepared a storyline of characters for Season Four and Season Five and why we should finish this. “Education and media. If I can just get two more seasons of the show, we’ll have a cumulative effect and we’ll make an argument.” And I concluded with the same joke about sitting in a bar.

  I went into the room and just kept talking, and he didn’t tell me right away. He says, “How much do you need?” He says, “Can you do it in less?” I’m like, “No, we can’t. We need this. We need that.” He said, “All right, let us think about it.” He liked the media story, and Carolyn liked the education story, and they were both engaged in that story. That’s kind of a miracle. Normally the dollars and the issues—you don’t have an audience, fuck. They both talked to me about the story for about thirty-five minutes. I got up and shook his hand and said, “You won’t regret it.” He made a joke about, “I’m already regretting it,” which made me feel good, and then I walked out of the room and heard a couple days later that they were going to renew it. Another thing is they asked about the actors. I said, “I’ll get them all back. They’ll come back to finish the show.” I didn’t know if that was true, but I promised him that. I went and got the actors back. Give them credit. No agent came to us and said, “Okay, he’s coming back. He wants double.” Didn’t happen.

  CHRIS ALBRECHT (CHAIRMAN AND CEO, HBO): Again, no one was writing about the show; very few critics had any appreciation or any time for it. The audience was, even for HBO, relatively small. I thought the work was certainly good. I think we all really liked it, really were proud of the show. With the drug story resolving itself, we thought, Hey, a clear victory, and then move on, but David was convinced that he had more story to tell on it, that this was much more of a global look at a city rather than the one particular storyline that he had followed so far.

  CAROLYN STRAUSS (PRESIDENT, HBO ENTERTAINMENT): I have always loved David. I’ve gotten along with David very well. He’s very passionate. He can write and he likes to write, and he will. Opposed to somebody else, he’ll pick up the phone and scream, but he puts it down on paper, and it’s there for everybody to see. He cares about all the different parts of the show. As he did in the show, the way he sold it to us, the way he told his story, it’s just part of it. He just is a master storyteller.

  CHRIS ALBRECHT (CHAIRMAN AND CEO, HBO): He certainly would type these long, single-spaced letters and send them to me and then to Carolyn Strauss, to make his case as to why we should continue. It was David’s letters. It was, almost literally. [And] the fact that I really appreciated the show. Carolyn Strauss really appreciated the show, and we liked David. Look, it was no denying the show was good. Certainly, we knew the show was good before America knew the show was good. The other thing that it had going for it was it wasn’t very expensive. Shooting in Baltimore, great crew, guys that had done Homicide—these guys were very efficient producers. You had a lot of respect and admiration for the production itself. One of the things it had going for it was the show didn’t cost a lot of money. Again, relatively speaking. It became, “All right, let’s just do it. We don’t want to hear from this guy anymore.” He was overbearing, particularly about what he wanted to accomplish in the season.

  DAVID SIMON (CREATOR): One of the reasons we stayed on the show also is we never went over budget. Every dollar we got was put on-screen. It was not a show that had big trailers and lobsters at the craft services table. We didn’t put people up in the nicest hotels. We found the rates and we shot it in Baltimore, where things were cheaper. We tried to put it all on the screen, and we didn’t have a lot. I know a guy who did three episodes on The Sopranos. They were shooting seventeen days an episode. We were shooting eleven.

  NINA K. NOBLE (EXECUTIVE PRODUCER): We were just putting everything up on the screen, being very efficient in the way that we worked by evaluating and questioning every decision every day in terms of the value to the story. David and I, when we agree to do something, that’s what we do.

  DAVID SIMON (CREATOR): The one [storyline] that we missed, David Mills thought of it: immigration. It wasn’t his fault, but it came to me after we were off the air for way too long, between Three and Four, because they were going to cancel the show after Season Three.

  ED BURNS (CO-CREATOR): We could’ve done a story on police corruption, and we could’ve done a story on immigrants. That’s two stories that we were thinking about. We were never going to get a sixth season. We were lucky to get the last two seasons, because we ended the third season, tied it up rather nicely.

  DAVID SIMON (CREATOR): By the time I talked them back in—they’d given [us] Seasons Four and Five—by the time we were ready to go back on the air, we had to get all the actors back in contract and we got all of them back. That’s to the great credit of all of those actors. Nobody held us up for money. They all came back, and we’d lost them all by contract. By the time we got them back, even to do the education story, to set that up and find those locations, we were going to be off the air for almost two years. To then pull up and have me go back to HBO and go, “Listen, I’ve got another one in between.” We would have been off the air for two and a half, three years.

  It would have pulled us out of the rotation completely. It could only go between Three and Four. Once you start the vacant row houses, that’s Four and Five. By the time David [Mills] thought of it, I said, “You’re right.” Because what was happening in Southeast Baltimore, which David discovered by just sort of hanging out—not discovered; we all knew it, but it was hiding in plain sight—Baltimore didn’t have any Latino population for years and years. It was the overlooked city on the East Coast when it came to Central Americans and Mexicans and Puerto Ricans. DC, yes. New York, yes. Philadelphia, yes. But Baltimore, no, for whatever reason. And Southeast Baltimore had become a magnet for Central Americans. It was changing so rapidly. David got into it when he was writing a pilot for CBS called Mayor of Baltimore. It didn’t go. But then he put the immigration stuff in his pilot. He came to me and he said, “Man, my thing didn’t go, but how are you not doing immigration as a theme?” As soon as he said it, I was like, “You’re right, we missed that one.”

  ANDRE ROYO (REGINALD “BUBBLES” COUSINS): I remember going to David Simon and talking to him. I was that kind of guy. I liked people. I would always go to the writers’ room, wondering about how these white boys is telling these stori
es with an all-black cast. David Simon was the dude. I’m like, “David, we never got nominated. Boston Legal got nominated. What we got to do, David?” He’s like, “I’m not doing nothing. They’re not going to catch on until we’re gone. This is the type of show that they’re going to pick up when we’re off the show, like a book, and rewatch it over and over again.” I remember my first response in my head was, What an arrogant white boy. What the fuck is he talking about?

  He was right. He really understood that the audience was starting to change and the audience was starting to appreciate not being treated like they’re stupid. Nothing has to be spelled out. They can stick with a story even though it’s slow. They can stick with a story even though there’s forty characters. They appreciate being treated like they’re intelligent. All of a sudden, The Wire became that show where there was a hierarchy. If you say you like The Wire, that means you like reading books. That means you give a fuck about the human race. It made you feel like you bettered yourself in the crowd when you say, “My favorite show is The Wire.” All of a sudden, people look at you differently. It became a badge of honor to tell somebody, “Did you hear about The Wire? You got to watch The Wire.”

  DAVID SIMON (CREATOR): There were moments where you would watch really strong performances by black actors and they would be utterly ignored. Khandi Alexander on The Corner. Do you know who won the Emmy for lead actress in a miniseries the year of The Corner? Halle Berry. Halle Berry played Dorothy Dandridge. Understand this. Beautiful Halle Berry played the beautiful Dorothy Dandridge and played it beautifully, but she was a beautiful actress playing a beautiful actress and was nominated and won the Emmy. Khandi Alexander, a beautiful actress, tore herself down to play a woman with a drug addiction, and it’s not even noticed. They won for makeup for making Halle Berry [into] Dorothy Dandridge. Nobody was nominated for taking Khandi Alexander and tearing her apart.