The Loss of Michael K. Williams

You really couldn't turn away from his performance. It was like witnessing a miracle, the visitation of a heavenly force. That's how I felt when I first noticed actor Michael K. Williams. He was playing Omar Little, the Baltimore robber on the highly acclaimed HBO crime series, THE WIRE. During the series, we learn that Omar is queer and has a man he loves. Wow. In my teen and young adult years, you rarely saw Black actors play openly queer characters in main dramatic roles on film or TV. White and Black actors, in the 70s and 80s, were afraid to take on such roles for fear of homophobia rearing its ugly head and causing them to be unjustly labeled and not considered for future employment. But White actors started to get bold and got Oscar nominations for their bravery. Veteran actor Robert Preston of THE MUSIC MAN fame was an Oscar nominee for his gay male mentor/friend in VICTOR/VICTORIA. William Hurt and Tom Hanks won Best Actor Oscars for playing gay male characters. I once asked a friend, also Black, if he thought Denzel Washington would've played the gay man with AIDS opposite Tom Hanks as his lawyer if  the PHILADELPHIA roles offered had been reversed. It took him about 15 seconds before he began his answer. I cannot think of another Black actor who, in my lifetime, played more gay characters in key roles than the gifted Michael K. Williams did.

There was Omar on THE WIRE. There was the tough, pro-Reagan, Vietnam veteran Leonard Pine in HAP AND LEONARD, based on the Joe Lansdale books with stories set in the 1980s. The love and respect Leonard didn't get from some relatives, he got from his White pacifist best friend, Hap, during their adventures. In the 2017 ABC TV docudrama miniseries, WHEN WE RISE, he played a real-life character. Ken Jones was a San Francisco community organizer and AIDS activist in the series that followed several real-life characters from the Stonewall uprising in New York City in 1969 to the AIDS epidemic in the Bay Area of the 1980s. And then there was Montrose Freeman, the queer dad to Atticus on HBO's LOVECRAFT COUNTRY. Michael K. Williams' LOVECRAFT COUNTRY performance made him a current Emmy nominee. If he wins, it will be a posthumous win.

Word came today, Labor Day, that the actor was found dead in his Brooklyn apartment. He was 54.

As a gay/queer man, I loved seeing Michael K. Williams play those complicated, different, dimensional, same-gender loving men. Those performances made me feel significant. Williams always played the human condition with a certain heartache or need revealed, making his characters relatable as people you knew or people you've been. He did not just play queer characters, as you know if you saw him on HBO's BOARDWALK EMPIRE, BESSIE (the biopic about blues singer Bessie Smith), Spike Lee's MIRACLE AT ST. ANNA, Ava DuVernay's WHEN THEY SEE US on Netflix or his comedy turn in the all-female GHOSTBUSTERS (2016).  Here's a clip from one of the HAP AND LEONARD swamp noir adventures.

I do feel that he should have been acknowledged and honored by GLAAD.  The organization prides itself on "accelerating acceptance for LGBTQ people." It honors LGBTQ people and straight celebrities who have either played queer characters, appeared on gay-friendly shows or have large gay followings. Such celebs range from Madonna to Chris Meloni and Lee Tergesen who played prison lovers on HBO's OZ, to the WILL & GRACE sitcom stars to Beyonce. GLAAD should've shown the groundbreaking Mr. Williams some similar love and appreciation.

He was loved and appreciated by many in our Black/Latino community. Michael K. Williams will be deeply, greatly missed.