David Simon (Creator): [Wendell Pierce] came in and just nailed [his audition]. He was really pissed off. He had gotten in an argument with a cab driver. It was one of those sort of trying-to-hail-a-cab-while-black moments in New York, and he came in and he was steaming. He was harried, like a bear who'd hit the hornet's nest. He had to focus on the scene, and he was apologizing for what he thought was a bad read, but it had that air of Baltimore—put-upon workaday Baltimore—homicide detective. As soon as he came in and read, it was like, "That's our Bunk."

Wendell Pierce (Det. William "Bunk" Moreland): It was weeks later, maybe even a year later, while we were shooting, that David said, "You know, when you came in, it was not your reading that got you the part. You just came in and you were bitching and complaining about this taxi driver and that was the thing that got you the gig, because you're so much like Bunk." The fact that I would bring it up in the middle of a major audition shows some gumption on my part.

Simon: I thought John C. Reilly could be a different McNulty, certainly not the same, but I thought he could carry all of the excesses and vices of McNulty in a different way. I've loved his work in a lot of stuff. I was on the phone with him. It was three weeks before Halloween [2001], because I was in a corn maze with my kid, Ethan, who would have been like seven, six. So, I'm trying to keep up with my kid, who's running around like a madman in this maze, and that's when John C. Reilly called me back. I really couldn't take the call. I talked to him for maybe five minutes, and I said, "Hey, listen, can I call you back? I'm in a corn maze with my kid." And he said, "Yeah, yeah. Call me back." In the time between when he called me and when I called him back, he stopped taking calls. He later told Dom [West, who got the role] that his wife was like, "We are not moving to Baltimore."

Later on, Dom was working with him on Chicago and they're looking at each other. They're so different, and Dom's like, "What were they going for?"

That's kind of how casting is sometimes. You go in one direction. You find out you're on the wrong track or circumstance thwarts you, and you end up going in a different direction.

Dominic West (Det. Jimmy McNulty): To read, I was given one scene from the pilot and nothing else, and I put myself on tape. I didn't think much of it, but it got too late in the night, and they wanted it the next day, so I got my girlfriend to read the dialogue. It was a scene between McNulty and Bunk, and she read the Bunk part and I held the camera and I did McNulty. She couldn't stop laughing at my accent, so I sent her out of the room and I had no one else and it was late, so I just left a gap for when Bunk spoke and reacted to whatever he was supposed to be saying and sent it off to them.

David Simon said he found that it was so funny, this fool reacting to complete silence, that he thought we'd better get him over and have a laugh.

Simon: I had never seen an audition tape like it. The camera was on him, and he was reading and then he was leaving the pauses for the other actors, who didn't exist, and he was reacting to the lines. A lot of acting is reacting, and to see somebody doing it to nothingness is a pretty unusual audition tape.