Omar: The Interviews

With Omar finally dead, the Michael K. Williams interviews are piling in. Williams is a great interview and gives some fascinating insight into the character

• After Elton: I'm very close to the character, so in my heart I would have loved to have seen Omar stay in Puerto Rico with Renaldo and live to be a normal man. I would have loved to have seen that. But, you know, let's not be blinded to the fact that Omar lived by a code of revenge, he lived by the sword, and, as they say, you die by the sword. You know what I mean?

  I think David and the writers knew that Omar had to go, especially if he came back to Baltimore to avenge anybody's death — and especially Butchie's.

• New York Magazine: That’s the life he lived. He didn’t bring anybody close to him. He didn’t live anywhere, didn’t have any neighbors. But off camera, and outside of our characters, I got so much love from my co-workers. Wendell Pierce, who plays Bunk, he called me last night. Out of all the calls and the e-mails and the texts that I’ve gotten, his got through to me in a way that none of them did. It was a very heartfelt call. He said, “Mike, I want you to know that I will never, ever forget this night. Tonight is the night that Omar died.” It pierced my armor.

• Out Magazine: I wasn't really shocked at how it went. If you look at the way David [Simon] and Ed [Burns] write -- they don't give you what you want. Everybody wanted this huge showdown and shoot out -- you know bang, bang, bang! And that's not what they give you. If I had my wish, he'd have stayed in Puerto Rico! I know Uncle Butchie wouldn't have wanted him to come back to get himself killed like that. Uncle Butchie would have been like “Boy, don't worry about me. You coming down to avenge my death ain't gonna bring me back no way, so stay down where you at.” But it did hurt, I'm not going to lie. It did hurt. My heart broke.

• Huffington Post: Omar is based on the life and times of a gentleman by the name of Donnie Anderson, who also writes for The Wire and acts on the show. He's definitely an 'old 'G', as we say in the street, but he's since turned his life around. He's done time in prison and he very blessed to be alive and be with his family. So he also really jumped out of the window too and survived? Yes he did. If you ask him what he was going on in his mind when he did it, he'd say 'I wasn't really thinking, I was just trying to escape from some "hot ones" at the time.'

Keywords: Omar, Omar's, Death, Dead, Dying, Die, The Wire, HBO, Interview, Interviews, Michael K. Williams, David Simon, Ed Burns