Your character's experiences closely mirror those of writer/producer Ed Burns. Has he given you any guidance or advice in accurately portraying the role?
Ed is always there. I love that guy. I've got so much respect for him. He's one of those leaders who leads with his actions and with his eyes. If you put a wrong step, he'll let you find your way back. We have conversations, but we have conversations about books and ideas and political situations and we get a lot of stuff out. In the midst of that, I'll have my own little epiphany. We'll have a moment where both of our eyes will just shine and I'll just walk back on set. I'll come off set after doing a scene and the first person I'll look to is Ed and without saying a word, he just gives a nod that it's on track. That's all we do. Whoever the director is that week, they might want to do it again, but Ed will tell me pretty much if the compass is locked in. Sometimes I've got to try to push things or whatever and he knows that I've got to do that and he doesn't lay his experience on you because he knows all of us are going out to do our research - I went to schools and talked to a lot of teachers, went around Baltimore and talked to administrators so when I came in, I had raw material and then in the course of our conversations and interaction with the kids, it would just get refined over the year. By the time we reached the last episode, it's in this real sublime place, which is what the show does so brilliantly. It takes all of these storylines and just distills them down into one essence, which turns into a major montage.

What is it like working on such a complex show? Is it ever difficult for you to keep track of all of the intersecting storylines and different characters when you are reading the scripts and filming scenes? Is it tough to visualize how all of these different storylines will end up connecting when you are just getting the scripts week to week?
The funny thing about The Wire, we get the scripts on a Thursday and you read it like a novel. It's just like another chapter in this big novel that you are reading. And then you go back and you look at your storyline. And you really kind of have to blank out everything else. You go through and track when other people might mention you or what else is happening if it has some impact on what you're doing, but it's best to just kind of get into your own bloodstream, your own vein, and stay there and maintain the integrity of that.

The less you know about the other worlds, the stronger your world becomes. It's an odd kind of thing, but I think you know what I'm saying. You just have to keep that focus. And then, when they cut it together, you have all of these incredibly powerful storylines that are being acted and they fit together well. If you do it with the mind that I'm going to do this because so-and-so is doing that, it's going to blur the lines. So really, you just keep a dead focus on your storyline. I go see other people's work, like if Andre Royo is doing a big scene or Domenick Lombardozzi or one of those guys, I love watching them work, but you don't get into too much of the story.

You become a fan then and you just sit back and watch it as a fan, but you don't watch it in anyway to try to comprehend a larger whole. I'm going to get it the same way you get it week to week. I read the whole script, I have no idea how this will look until I watch it on TV. Then I see the real brilliance. That last leg, with the lighting design and set design, the camera people, the actors just bringing that stuff alive takes it to a whole dimension I can't even imagine. That's my approach. I don't know if everyone does that.

You mentioned watching the show as a fan. While The Wire is critically acclaimed, it's had trouble connecting with a larger audience. A lot of that probably is the season-long story arcs and the complexity of the show. Do you worry about that kind of thing?
This show would work well up to the mid-20th century, the whole serial thing. It's a very old-fashioned form. We're in this world where we have the masses' attention. It's a show ahead of it's time and way behind it's time. People don't read anymore - they don't read newspapers, they don't read books. They might listen to an audio book in the car, but it's abridged. The show goes against the direction that popular culture is moving in. But, there's this irresistible thing with these pockets of people who still recall what it's like to sit around the fire and tell stories. A good story will grip you.

Those people who find themselves devoted to this show are romantics in a way. They want to be taken into a world and immersed. It's kind of like 1,001 Nights or Aladdin stories, the epics. It's The Odyssey. In a sense, Jimmy McNulty is Homer. But, it's not something that is ever going to be popular in America again. This would never work on network and it barely works on cable. But, I think that those people who show up to it - and I don't count those numbers on Sunday night. I would spread our numbers over the whole week, all the repeats and all the different ways you can watch the show. At the end of the week, we might reach seven, maybe 10 million people. Those 10 million people are invariably pacesetters in their worlds. They are people who have such a sharp sense of opinion and vision. They make changes in their world. It's a real cutting edge group. That's where we're ahead of our time.

But, by and large, who reads the Metro section of the newspaper? The Wire is just the Metro section of your newspaper fleshed out. Most people toss that away. We read the celebrity pages and barely read editorials. It's a sign of our times that we're not plugged in. I've got to at once applaud HBO for putting it on and grudgingly re-upping us year after year. And now we get our five. We get the five that we really wanted, David gets to tell the story out his way and then it's retired. It's going to be taught in schools and it's going to go to whole other formats that no other kind of television has ever gone to because people are going to discover it later on. Thank God we have DVDs because people can go back and catch up with it. That's where this thing is going to live on and on and on. I really see it as like our Illiad and our Odyssey.

Because you're originally from Washington, D.C., what is it like filming The Wire so close to where you grew up? Does it mean more to you working so close to home?
It definitely does. D.C. and Baltimore are like mad cousins. There's sort of a perverted kind of pride that we take in the quality of our gangsterism. Anacostia and Northeast versus various parts of Baltimore. But it's all the same. This show could never be done on the west coast. Not in a thousand years. We've got projects, we've got ghettos that are common with industrial cities that are deteriorating and you have the whole phenomenon of professional classes moving out of the city, leaving it for black and immigrant people. Even though they are starting to return now, by and large, Baltimore and Washington share that kind of fate. Washington was always a tale of two cities and Baltimore is pretty much the same. I can see parallels.

Then we had a guy named George Pelecanos who was a motherfucker of a writer. One of the greats and one of the great human beings. He really brought it down. George had the smell of the language on the page. When George wrote a script, you knew this was George. I don't know how this little Greek guy came to know the streets like that, but he wrote instinct. When you read his scripts, you tapped into the instinct of your character. And that's what people were picking up on The Wire - those looks and little things that clue you in by just a look or a gesture. That's the stuff that George would suggest and I loved him for it. Ed gives you the whole bed to lay in and it's a passionate place. He writes with that kind of passion. Richard Price, he's a cerebral cat, he writes the big speeches. He's the progressive lefty who makes you get on that soapbox. He was the one who wrote the paper bag speech in the Hamsterdam year. Dennis Lehane taps just that crumbling misery at the end, that pain and that irrational violence that folks have to live with. How they all came to know this about Baltimore, I really don't know. But they get it on the page. And then David does his magic on it.

How accurate do you feel the show portrays Baltimore?
Somewhere between 95 and 100 percent. In terms of the streets, I would say it's really like that. Bill Zorzi, who is a political ace, knows that world inside and out. I really don't know that world the same way, but I would think that Zorzi is pretty much going to be someplace in the same range - 85 to 100 percent. Our guys walk with an integrity, it's almost like a journalist's integrity, and they bring that to the scripts. I pick up those scripts and I just feel like there's no bullshit in there.

What has the response been like from Baltimore police officers?
They love it. I got in a little fender bender over in Baltimore. A kid ran into the back of my car and he wouldn't get out. All of the sudden, this plain clothes car pulls up and these two white guys get out - I was just wearing sweat pants and stuff. "What's the problem here?" One guy turns to the other, "Oh, it's the major. Major, everything all right?" This kid is thinking, "Did I hit a police officer?" They are giving me their card and said, "Anything you need, give me a call." I've never been a cop guy, but they really took us to their bosom and they believe in what we're doing and they really admire the journey of Bunny. In fact, the guy who played my lieutenant is an actual police officer in Baltimore. Everyday, I'd say, "Am I on mark?" And he'd say, "You're on mark, man. You're my major." It's really sound. The fuckups are the fuckups the police encounter everyday. They were right with it.

You have a starring role in the film Freedom Writers with Hillary Swank and Patrick Dempsey, which will be released next January. What can you tell us about that film?
That's another inspiring story. A bunch of kids who were counted out in the Long Beach schools and this nice little white preppy woman from the suburbs comes in to try to be a teacher. She winds up, against all odds, making these some of the most outstanding writers in the country. They go on to win a Pulitzer Prize for a book they wrote. These were kids that couldn't read when she met them, so it's a really inspiring story. Hillary is great in it. I play the superintendent of schools, so I'm looking forward to seeing that.

What do you do to unwind? What kind of hobbies do you have?
I'm deep into music. I play a lot of Moroccan music. I play an instrument called the sintir and harmonium and drums. A lot of my friends are musicians and we spend a lot of time hanging and cooking food. I do a lot of traveling, on my own. I just like to get lost in places. I'm lucky enough, thank God, that I can't do it a lot, but I can do it. And then I have a lot of great friends that I really, really dig. And, I've always loved movies. They make it hard for you to love movies these days, but I still love them.

What would you be doing for a living if you never got into acting?
There's a good chance I would still be working in the arts. I'd probably weigh about 300 pounds in Washington, just looking at arts grants and shit and having panel meetings. Either that or sitting in a fleabag hotel with a needle in my arm.

Tell us something most people don't know about you. Actually, that might have been it.
(Laughs.) That might have been it. I've got to say it like this - put my hands together when I say it - my life has been really a blessing. If I wasn't doing this, I'd be doing something that would equally be as stimulating.

We've got one last thing for you here. We are going to do a word association.
What is this? Are we in the actor's studio?

We'll just throw out a name and tell us the first thing that comes to your mind.

Baltimore.
Candied yams.

David Simon.
The Chief.

Bunny Colvin.
My salvation.

The future.
Exciting.

Interview by Joel Murphy, September 2006. The Wire is on Sunday nights on HBO and replays throughout the week.