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Why Seth Gilliam threatened to stage a cast walkout on HBO's The Wire, and how David Simon eased his concerns
Seth Gilliam almost started a cast mutiny on The Wire until showrunner David Simon talked him out of it
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Being an actor on a fan favorite television drama is great, as long as you’re being used. Seth Gilliam, who played Ellis Carver on HBO’s The Wire, didn’t feel that was the case. The actor was frustrated with his storyline during the early seasons and threatened to quit along with several other actors. Everything worked out in the end, and today Gilliam looks back at his frustration with amusement.
“We were shooting a lot of second unit with Robert Colesberry, who I think was trying to keep us entertained after a while,” Gilliam says during a 2014 PaleyFest panel. “We were taking lots of shots of spiderwebs and slow-walking. Is there even film in that camera? The fuck are we doing here? It’s like George Steinbrenner. I’m going to find these fantastic guys who always beat the Yankees, I’m going to sign them to these contracts and sit them on the fucking bench. So, what is the point of this? We want to perform.”
“We decided we were going to make some phone calls, and we were going to address the issue with David directly. And it was basically like, ‘I’ll quit! Fuck you! I don’t need this show! Y’all are wasting me! Do you know what you have here? We will walk, man!’ We didn’t have nowhere to walk. We didn’t have shoes, but we were set to go. It was so incredibly frustrating. David was like, ‘No, there is going to be a big payoff.’”
According to Gilliam, there was a method to Simon’s madness. The characters were going through the same turmoil the actors were going through, feeling their time was being wasted. And as Simon promised, there was payoff, with Ellis Carver seeing plenty of action throughout the series. Gilliam stuck it out and remained with the show through the 2008 series finale.
Still, it’s interesting to speculate on how different the series would’ve been if the actors had gone through with their mutiny.
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