Introduced via a typically badass cool guy clip from the upcoming Superfly remake (where he plays lead Trevor Jackson’s mentor/martial arts sensei), Michael K. Williams charmed the hell out of fellow South Carolinian Stephen Colbert on Tuesday’s Late Show. Sharing his love of cooking fine Caribbean dishes (plus…
Although he’s now known for playing nuanced tough guy roles like The Wire’s iconic Omar—or Leonard Pine, his hard-hitting amateur detective from SundanceTV’s Hap And Leonard—Michael K. Williams got his acting start in a very different world: serving as a dancer and actor in New York’s music video scene. That,…
Starring Ron O’Neal as ultra-smooth cocaine dealer Youngblood Priest, Gordon Parks Jr.’s 1972 film Super Fly is one of the cornerstones of the blaxploitation boom of the 1970s—and a contender for the title of cinema’s all-time coolest soundtrack, to boot. Whether you think that Future, who composed all-new music for…
In August, shortly after Ron Howard stepped in to take over Solo: A Star Wars Story from fired directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller, a part originally played by Michael K. Williams had to be cut out when he couldn’t make room for Howard’s reshoots in his schedule. Paul Bettany was then brought in to play the same…
Even more so than past years, the new season of Hap And Leonard is deceptively breezy and charming—odd when you consider the first episode ends with the protagonists walking outside to discover an American flag with its pole slammed through their windshield and a racial slur spray-painted on the side of their car.
Although it’s not addressed in Deadline’s report, as far as we’re concerned the real question here is: How did a Superfly remake get this far without Michael Kenneth Williams involved? Regardless, we’re pleased to report that the The Wire, Boardwalk Empire, The Night Of, and Hap And Leonard veteran is bringing his…
The sudden departure of Phil Lord and Chris Miller from Disney’s standalone Han Solo film created a lot of anxiety—a disturbance that the studio has tried to quell by bringing in the sure, steady hand of Ron Howard, who’s also done his part to assure that everything’s fine. “[It’s] coming along great,” Howard told The…
Details are still very sparse, but, according to Michael K. Williams, he’s going to be playing Miles Davis in the very near future. Asked in an interview about his stated desire to play the jazz great, Williams confirmed that a project is indeed “happening.” He added that it will “probably be going into production…
Disney recently released a photo of some of the stars of the Han Solo spinoff hanging out, but their ranks are still expanding. According to Variety, Michael K. Williams is very close to being cast in the film. Naturally, we have no idea who he is playing, because this is Star Wars and everything is shrouded in…
Although he’s been acting since 1996, Michael K. Williams’ career is largely synonymous with a single character: The Wire’s Omar Little. Nearly every role Williams has taken on since he started playing Omar in 2002—from criminal roles on HBO’s Boardwalk Empire and The Night Of, to comedy turns in shows like Community …
Harry Belafonte has been a civil rights activist since the 1950s, and the 89-year-old singer continues to be a powerful voice in the call for racial justice today. His social justice organization Sankofa teamed up with directors Gerard Bush and Christopher Ren to create a short film centered on police brutality.…
Yesterday, we reported the wholly unsurprising news that Black Manta will be the main villain in the Aquaman movie, possibly because most of the other villains are stupid, and now the internet has done its duty by stepping in to nominate the perfect actor for that role. The guy they’ve chosen is Michael K. Williams,…
If you appreciate the finer (read: funnier) things in life, then you likely spent part of last summer watching IFC’s miniseries, The Spoils Before Dying. The six-episode comedy was “adapted” from reclusive “author” Eric Jonrosh’s (Will Ferrell) “acclaimed novel” about a 1950s musician who gets caught up in a dangerous…
Fans and critics alike derided the ending of True Detective season one, which, without giving the game away, was seen as directing all its powers of grim speculation toward a CBS-level resolution that wrapped up halfway through the episode, leaving the other half to play out an endless denouement. I strongly disagree…
On the one hand, “The Bottoms” takes some shortcuts that reduce my expectations for Hap And Leonard. On the other, it contains a surprise alligator attack.
Sundance TV’s new crime story with a hangout vibe is an easy series-record. It stars James Purefoy (Rome’s Mark Antony) and Michael K. Williams (The Wire’s Omar) with Christina Hendricks (Mad Men’s Joan) in third, three enormous talents with three indelible TV characters under their belts. (Some might say there’s a…
It turns out we were too hard on Bloody Disgusting last year when the website stuck to its proton packs and maintained that Slimer would be in the new Ghostbusters movie despite director Paul Feig’s refusal on the matter. (Though we did point out that Feig never actually denied the Slimer rumor, just a potentially…
A new official trailer has been released for Anesthesia, the Tim Blake Nelson-written/directed/produced drama that premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival earlier this year. The movie stars Sam Waterston as Walter Zarrow, a popular philosophy professor at Columbia University who is seemingly randomly mugged on the…
Like a string instrument, The Spoils Before Dying relies on tension to make its music. (Is this a bad time to talk about the strings album? It’s a goldmine, Rock, everyone does one.) The joke lives in the tension between our preconceptions of a streetwise mystery and the absurdity unfolding onscreen. It lives in the…
“It took me one night to write my novel, The Spoils Before Dying,” Eric Jonrosh intones as he introduces the fourth episode. Maybe that’s why so little of the story—or even the timeline—makes sense.