“We managed to escape with our lives, barely, that night,” he says.
After the attack, Williams’ career took a different turn. Directors didn’t want him to just dance in videos — they wanted him to act out thug roles.
Then Tupac Shakur and Mickey Rourke were filming a movie in New York called Bullet. The production office happened to have a Polaroid picture of Williams, and Tupac himself selected Williams for the role of his little brother.
“I think he saw my pain, my struggle, my heart,” Williams says. “I was starstruck. I was like, ‘Wow, this is Tupac Shakur.’ “
After filming Bullet, Williams booked roles on Law and Order and The Sopranos. After those short roles, Williams thought the phone would be ringing, but that never happened. Williams saw his acting career slipping away.
“I was down in the dumps. I got really depressed,” he says. “Like, really depressed.”
Then, months later, Williams received an unexpected fax outlining a character in a new show called The Wire.
It was the part for Omar Little.
“I got to grow with an amazing group of people that I consider my Wire family,” Williams says. “That character changed my life. And that was my big break.”
Michael K Williams: The True Story Behind His Scar was originally published on blackdoctor.org
