If you missed The Wire the first go-round, HBO Signature will marathon all five seasons starting Dec. 26. Cast members talk to BuzzFeed News about why the show was ahead of its time.
Michael K. Williams as Omar Little on The Wire
HBO
In the summer of 2003, Andre Royo, known to fans of HBO's The Wire as recovering heroin addict and Baltimore police informant Bubbles, was standing in a buffet line fixing himself a plate at a party for the premium cabler in New York, when he saw Mark Wahlberg making his way toward him.
At the time, the middle of the second season of The Wire was airing, and the actor was at the event to toast the launch of another HBO series, Entourage, which Wahlberg produced.
"I was like, oh shit! Mark Wahlberg's coming up to me!" Royo told BuzzFeed News via phone, recalling the glint of familiarity in Wahlberg's eyes. "And he came up to me, and he was like, 'Hey, you've got a good job now. I hope you appreciate your position right now. You better stay clean and take advantage of this moment.'"
Royo was momentarily confused. "I'm like, 'What are you talking about? I'm an actor. I've been doing theater for a little while.' And he was like, 'Oh, I'm sorry. I thought you was a real junkie. I thought they found somebody on the street and they gave him a part. My bad,'" Royo remembered. "He definitely took a step back."
Wahlberg's mistake was genuine — and common. By that time, fans of The Wire knew that creator David Simon often mixed real-life people into each episode, including some addicts — some were extras, others had a couple of lines. And that ultimately made Royo and his Wire colleagues feel accountable. "I felt like, I have to tell this story the right way, because this motherfucker is standing right next to me. And I'm not trying to make fun of this motherfucker. I'm trying to tell his story," Royo said. "So, you know, I think Wahlberg just thought I was one of those guys they found in Baltimore and gave me a job."
Ultimately, Royo took Wahlberg's confusion as a sign that, clearly, he was doing something right: He knew then that he was turning out the authentic performances he strived to bring to the screen.
Leo Fitzpatrick as Johnny Weeks and Andre Royo as Bubbles on The Wire.
HBO
But that also was the problem with the series, which ran on HBO for five seasons, from 2002 to 2008. It was gripping, but it gut-punched viewers in a way that perhaps no other TV show had done at the time. It was too real. It played out like a reality TV show you desperately wanted cancelled. It was ahead of its time. Unlike other cop dramas, The Wire wasn't a procedural, nor was there the promise of a happy ending, tied up in a nice pretty red bow. The Wire was the kind of show that was scarier to watch than the nightly news.
Though it was that type of authenticity that made The Wire one of the greatest shows on TV, it also hindered the series's success. At its peak, The Wire was able to grab 4 million viewers, but by Season 5, it dipped below 1 million.
Now, however, audiences have another chance to see the series that was perhaps born and gone too soon. HBO is bringing back The Wire this week with a marathon of a remastered HD cut that will air on HBO Signature. Starting Friday, Dec. 26, one season will air per day, and the complete series will be available to purchase on Digital HD on Jan. 5 and on Blu-ray sometime next summer.
But Royo understands why people didn't tune in during The Wire's original run. "When I come home, I don't want to see my misery, you know what I mean? When I turn the TV on, I want to escape my problems. I want to be entertained. TV is called the idiot box for a reason. I don't want to see the bleak and the problems that I go through every day," he said. "I think people were too engulfed by seeing such honesty, you know? They want to laugh — they want to have a sitcom. They want to see somebody else's story."
Though The Wire was set in Baltimore, it felt familiar to many viewers nationally: The struggles reflected in the series easily could have happened (and quite frankly, are still happening) in many other major cities in urban decay. To others who couldn't relate, The Wire was a glimpse into a saltier side of life, leaving no angle untouched. In a crime show, audiences are used to seeing that, ultimately, the bad guys get their due. But that rarely happened on The Wire.
"People want good news," actor Jamie Hector, who portrayed The Wire's most menacing drug dealer, Marlo Stanfield, told BuzzFeed News in a phone interview. "People watched and were like, can a dude like Marlo really exist? Yeah. He can. He's a sociopath. And that was scary."
