Michael K. Williams Brought His Whole Life to His Characters

While Omar Little on “The Wire” is his best-known role, the actor drew upon his family and neighborhood for a slew of larger-than-life parts.

In a memorable scene in HBO’s “Lovecraft Country,” a sullen, swollen-eyed Montrose Freeman stands alone in a crowded underground ballroom as his lover, Sammy, in drag, beckons him to the dance floor. Wearing a red silk shirt, Montrose, played by Michael K. Williams, glistens as his character, a queer Black man, struggles with his sexuality and his race in 1950s Chicago. Montrose slowly begins to move from one dance partner to another, at first reluctantly and then with such revelry that he is soon drenched in his own sweat and swept up in the air by a group of drag queens. Freed, at least temporarily, from the trauma of his past and the restrictions of his present, Montrose goes on to hug, hold and finally kiss Sammy on the lips for the first time. I’ve watched that scene many, many times. In an era in which “Pose,” “Legendary” and “RuPaul’s Drag Race” put Black queer ball culture front and center, Montrose’s story line might not stick out. But when it first aired last September, after the summer of Black Lives Matter, Williams’s intimate portrayal of a man both lost and ahead of his time was so transformative, so transfixing, that I found myself clinging desperately to Montrose’s moment of exhaling and exaltation. It offered respite to viewers still reeling from George Floyd’s final words: “I can’t breathe.”