I'm an artist at heart.

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

I'm an artist at heart.

I graduated in '94 from Yale and New York Undercover was my first gig on TV. I was really all over the place with roles, which is what I wanted to do.

That's what David Caruso said to me. We were talking about the whole Emmy thing, and he said that one of the things about awards in this town is that a lot is about the drama - like the drama of the performance. And he said "Your show, The Wire, looks so real, it almost looks like a documentary. And people who aren't artists - a lot of people who vote for this stuff - don't get it."

What's interesting is, most of the people who are fans of the The Wire who black people or cops... most of the people in the industry are the crew: writers, actors and directors. And so they understand what it is that we do, so they think, "Wow, what a incredible group of amazing actors." It's funny, I think there are a couple of reasons why we have never gotten any nomination for anything except for writing.

You don't see a lot of black rock stars. The music industry tends to be segregated stylistically. It's hard for a black artist to cross over to rock music.