You play Dennis "Cutty" Wise on the best show on television today, The Wire. What attracted you to the show and how was the character described to you initially?
I was working on a national tour of a play called Exonerated and I was on the road and I said, "I've got to get a TV show" because I got back together with my wife and I had my daughter and was thinking about the future and trying to provide some security for the family. And they called me in for this audition.

I had the beard and everything and they thought that was a good look, but nobody told me and I shaved my beard for something else. (Laughs.) So I had like three or four days to get some growth going on. They called me about a week later and said, "Hey, they really like you. They want to see you."

So I went in for David Simon and Ed Burns, the executive producers. They had been looking for this character for a long time. And it was just another one of those out of body experiences, man. I understood the pain of the character. I understood his vulnerability. He had to be hard, but vulnerable. I was able to capture the essence of those two qualities and that was it.

Were you familiar with the show before you became a part of it?
Oh yeah, Wood Harris used to be my roommate years ago when he was at NYU, I knew his brother Steve Harris, who used to be on The Practice, so I sublet Steve's apartment when he was about to get The Practice, so Wood was my roommate.

And I had worked with Idris Elba when he was playing Stringer Bell. We had done a reading of a play at the Public Theater. And he told me then, "You could be on The Wire."

And I was like, "Nah man, they would never cast me."

And Wendell Pierce I knew personally. So I worked with a lot of those guys. Andre Royo I knew from auditions.

That had to make it easy for you when you were starting out on the show.
Yeah, when I walked out on the set, there was a bunch of brothers that I knew and it was great.

Having been a part of the show for the past three seasons, what was it like when the final season wrapped and how do you feel now that the filming of the show is complete?
I can't really frame that experience – my experience wasn't that way because this year you're not going to see much of me. The show always does these seismic shifts in subject matter, so they went to focus on the media this year, which shifted the space. This year, I don't have a lot to do. You won't see that much of me.

There's not a lot of space. There's 10 episodes. David Simon came from media and, as the executive producer, he has every right to explore that aspect of it. So, focus is mainly on this whodunit mystery, which I think you can see is already unfolding.

In the fourth season, Cutty was shot at for stepping outside of his boundaries to try to save this kid. The producers, I believe, felt that if we're going to stay honest about that, Cutty's not a vigilante, so he's going to stay in his realm and try to draw the kids to him. And that's pretty much what guys like him in the hood do anyway.

I know the guy - the storyline of the character is based on this guy Calvin Ford and they have to come to him. He doesn't go out there too often. Once he gets them in the gym, he establishes the kind of relationship where he can send word to try to get them back and inevitably most of them come back.

Did you base your portrayal of Cutty on Calvin Ford?
They did, they introduced me to him. They knew him; Ed Burns arrested Calvin Ford. He was a part of one of the biggest drug rings back in the ‘80s down in Baltimore. He was a good guy going in the wrong direction. He pulled his life together and started this boxing gym.

Was he actually shot or was that added in?
They added that in. The earlier part of his life was dangerous, being in the drug game. But once he got out, he never got shot. But I think that was their way of saying, this is what you're dealing with today. Kids with a fierce amount of anger and a quick trigger and you've got to be really careful about how you negotiate that. They're trigger happy now. But, at least he didn't shoot me in the face.

With so many great actors on The Wire now looking for new jobs, do you think you will have a tough time moving forward since the show has never really gotten the recognition it deserves?
Let me tell you man, the numbers are not great. Whenever you're a trailblazer, it takes the commercial world time to catch up to it because you're ahead of the game. Anything that's new and great and innovative, it's not designed for mass appeal. It's not Law and Order, where an episode can be contained in itself and it doesn't matter if you don't have back information.

And the average person is what I call a fast food TV watcher. Now I'm going to sit you down to a beautiful four-course meal, where it's going to take time for the food to come and you get to savor it. And the waiter's going to explain everything in detail. That's how The Wire is. So, it's going to take them some time to catch up to what this is.

So, for those who know, they really, really appreciate it because they're so fed up and tired of being spoon fed. So, a bunch of people do know about it, but the other side of it is, people attach numbers to faces, so they want the guy that's had an audience of at least 13 million people watching.

What's the future like for you? Will you go back to theatre for a while?
Oh, no, no, no. I want to continue to work in all the mediums and I really want to get a substantial feature film career and have that be the anchor. Or a great network show, something like a Special Victims Unit.

There's a new show on Fox called New Amsterdam and I was the boss in charge of the two lead detectives. But, this business – they had a change at the top of Fox and when he came in, instead of shooting 13 episodes, they shot seven. So I ended up only shooting one.

I had a new show for BET that Queen Latifah produced called Wifey, but it hasn't come off. I worked with Brett Ratner on a new show he has Blue Blood, about cops. That's the guy who directed all of the Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker movies and produced Prison Break. So, I'm still in the mix, man. It's just a matter of things falling into place.

It's kind of tough right now, the strike is on and that's making it tough for everyone. You've got to hang in there, it's a tough racket. Especially when you have a family. You start thinking about the future. Time flies. I need to be looking that we've got some things secure so that we can grow old gracefully and my daughter and step son can have secure lives. That's why you see a lot of actors just stay on their own. It's a lot easier to deal with when you don't have those obligations.

What do you do to unwind? What kind of hobbies do you have?
I like to run. I like to read. I like playing tennis. I try to swing a golf club. I like to fool around with the piano and the guitar a little bit.

What would you be doing for a living if you never got into acting?
I think I would probably be in television production or like an anchorman.

Tell us something most people don't know about you.
Most people probably don't know I used to do musical theatre in high school.

I have a good voice, but I never pursued it. They were seriously considering me for The Color Purple, but I was doing The Wire.

Interviewed by Joel Murphy, February 2008. The Wire airs Sunday nights on HBO.