'The Wire' really drew on a lot of real-life situations and real-life organizations - it created fiction to make a social statement about reality.

I started to realize, a lot of times if you go into your memory, your sense memory, you know more than you think you do, from having watched and listened.

I was coming from a theater background. I had an obsession with classic film and cool, interesting, intelligent television. I didn't really understand the way the mainstream television industry worked. I just thought "The wire is so good that it's going to be a huge hit, and we'll get awards up the yin-yang forever." That's what I thought!

In drama school, my greatest strength was my range. So my early career was like that: I played all kinds of different characters.

From the time I became an actor my whole approach was to try to do as many different things as possible. It never occurred to me that I might be typecast.

Sometimes you have to say, "No. This is my space." If you're going to come at me, come at me respectfully, and I will respond respectfully.

You either get better, or you don't progress.