10 years on from The Wire – Clarke Peters on the show’s enduring legacy David Simon’s seminal crime drama The Wire aired its final episode a little less than a decade ago, on 9 […]

David Simon’s seminal crime drama The Wire aired its final episode a little less than a decade ago, on 9 March, 2008.

Over the course of its five-year run, the show looked at the city of Baltimore through the eyes of its law enforcement officers, drug dealers and drug users, with later seasons also exploring local government, the school system and the media.

i sat down with actor Clarke Peters – who played iconic detective Lester Freamon – to discuss The Wire’s lasting legacy.

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Intellect and bravery

“I think it’s brilliant,” says Peters. “I view it as not only [co-creators] David Simon, Ed Burns and Bob Colesberry’s love letter to Baltimore, I see it as an exposé of Western society – Baltimore is just an example of everything that’s going on, on both sides of this ocean.”

Peters puts the show’s critical success and fervent cult following down to “its intellect, and the bravery with which the broadcasters decided to tell the story that would take five years to tell”.

“Its success is due to the fact that humans realised that they like their intellects stimulated.

“They want to debate, they don’t want to sit there for 55 minutes and go, ‘he did it, I know he did it, oh, commercial break, see, I told you he did it’. So everyone’s been dumbed down to that common denominator.”

Why the doll furniture mattered

Peters’ level-headed character had the defining characteristic of building and tinkering with doll house furniture while he was figuring things out.

“I met the man he was based on – he did follow the money and was demoted”

Interestingly, he claims that quirk played a key role in his performance during the early episodes.

“I found it to be just the thing I needed to stay in focus. I never expected to be there as long as I did and I didn’t even expect to get through the first season. So my looking at that furniture was trying to make sure that I heard my cue when it came up, without having to look or mouth the words that led into it. I was really scared!

“But having done that, I can do that now without having to have some furniture to occupy me. I can bring myself to a point of stillness and just be focused and block out the world and just be so totally in a scene that you feel ‘where’s Clarke?’ ‘oh, he’s in the scene, baby, you know, we’re working here’. All the pieces mean something. All the pieces matter.”

The real Lester Freamon?

The Wire is known for having characters who were very much inspired by real people. Unlike some of his fellow cast-mates, however, Peters never met any real-life Lesters during his preparation.

“When I asked about who was my character based on, because I’d like to meet them, Ed Burns looked at me and pretended to start crying and he said, ‘I thought he was based on me!’

“But it wasn’t until the penultimate episode of the whole run that I met who he was really based on. The man who gave the term ‘follow the money’, the man who did follow the money and was demoted – he’s now working in the sheriff’s office, he’s no longer a police officer.

“More than anything else, this guy looks like me and he was bow-legged like nobody’s business! I said, ‘oh my God, I wish I had met him before!'”

“If your character is saying something that pushes society forward, that’s what I look for”

‘I’ve been spoiled by it’

Peters admits that working on The Wire had a lasting effect on him personally, not least in the way he chooses roles.

“If your character has something that needs to be said to further that plot, that’s one thing. If your character is saying something that pushes society forward, that’s what I look for, and it’s because of David Simon.

“I’ve worked with him on four projects and they’ve always been intelligent and they’ve forced me to reassess myself in relationship to whatever that world is that we’re creating.”

However, Peters acknowledges that such intelligence in script-writing is by no means the norm in Hollywood.

“I went to Hollywood. My agent said ‘go there, The Wire is good, you’re big time’ and so on. I went there and I got a script after script after script after script of shite.

“I’m afraid I’ve been spoiled by David’s words, his creations.”

Staying the course

Peters says that when he looks at the world now, he looks at it through the eyes “he grew into, working on The Wire”.

“There’s a critical, analytical and political point of view that I try to take because of that. I see how important our words are, I see how important our media is.

“And if I had to take sides, I’m not going to be on the side to dumb people down. I won’t take the job.”

As to whether or not he has a favourite season of The Wire, Peters laughs.

“My last season because I didn’t expect to be there that long!

“Honestly, at any moment, I expected to open up a script and see somebody else’s mouth go, ‘oh, did you hear what happened to Freamon last week…?'”