Even when Michael K. Williams was hailed for his breakout role as Omar Little in "The Wire," the actor was still "high on crack and cocaine." - To the point that it cost him his home.
"Scenes from My Life", the star's posthumous memoir — he was killed on September 6, 2021 for a fentanyl, cocaine, and heroin overdose. Died — delves into the addiction that ultimately killed at age 54.
During the second season of "The Wire," which aired on HBO from 2002 to 2008, Williams abused drugs on days he wasn't filming the show in Baltimore.
for years until I was completely broken,” he wrote. I couldn't pay the rent on that beautiful Baltimore apartment anymore, so with all my belongings in the warehouse, I flew back to New York and moved to an empty [Flatbush Gardens, Brooklyn] apartment. I moved into an apartment that had nothing but a mattress on the floor and a milk crate to eat in. When the rent payment came again, I had nothing left. I was evicted, I had no place to live and my mother wanted me to go to rehab, but I didn't have one."
In the book, published August 23, Williams also recalls a dysfunctional childhood, including an absent father and sexual abuse.
"By the time I entered high school, I already felt like a wreck," he wrote. "Burned by my father's absence, hurt by my mother's fierce love, and too meek to defend myself, I was an easy target. Two men in positions of authority (one from school, the other (from the church) abused me, I fell into an empty and dark state, a pit I could not dig myself into.”
From there, he reached the final I turned to drugs that numb the pain.
Williams wrote:
"At first, it felt like a relief, filling a hole in myself that I thought could never be filled. It was pasted — but I bought the lie because I needed it,” Williams writes. But it will be your life.
His five-time Emmy Award winner Williams—he spoke during the 2008 campaign about being too lofty to talk tothen-presidential candidate Barack Obama wrote — a drug user who also confessed that he was never for entertainment.
"I am an addict. The addict is always lurching on the edge and one step away from picking it up….Every addict, every alcoholic has self-loathing. We immerse ourselves in it, and that is how addiction keeps us at risk and connected with darkness.”
