If you didn't notice, Michael Kenneth Williams was pretty much everywhere this year. In the final season of HBO's Boardwalk Empire, we saw him bring to a close another landmark character for the network as Chalky White, following Omar Little on The Wire six years prior. Then he was in five movies, popping up in everything from The Purge: Anarchy to Inherent Vice. Now to close out 2014, he has one of his most entertaining roles yet, playing loan shark Neville in the remake of The Gambler. Opening on Christmas Day, the film looks at the dark side of the gambling world as Mark Wahlberg's Jim races to try to pay off the sizable debt he has with Neville, who is happy to kill those close to Jim in order to motivate him to get the money. But Neville is not Omar or Chalky reincarnated. He's playful and at times even contrite, proving once more that when Williams plays a villain, it's unlike one you've ever seen before.

We talked on the phone with Williams about his attraction to evil characters, why he'll never be able to let go of Omar, and whether he considers himself a role model.

ESQUIRE.COM: It's been a hell of a year for you.

MICHAEL KENNETH WILLIAMS: Yes it has. I'm grateful for it.

ESQ: It looks like you always do a few projects a year. Is that intentional?

MKW: I like to stay busy, and it's also just how it's been working out. However, after I finish what I'm shooting now for HBO a crime miniseries, I think it's time to sit my butt down somewhere and just be still for a minute and marinate. Just soak in all of my little successes.

ESQ: So you feel it's time to go off the throttle a little?

MKW: Yeah. A bit. I think it's just time to be still. Sit on somebody's beach. [Laughs] I've been building a foundation, getting a body of work that people hopefully respond to positively. It's weird, sometimes I still see myself as just starting out. I tend to forget how much I've been doing, but in the beginning it is about the hustle, being out there and doing the work. Nothing is going to come to you, you have to get out there and do the work, and I've been doing that. But sometimes it's good to take a break and let these things air out. Reflect and take it in.

ESQ: I was reading interviews you did when The Wire was on, and you said you didn't believe in typecasting. Do you still feel that way?

MKW: Yes, I do. I don't believe in typecasting. Just because all my characters may come from the other side of the tracks doesn't mean they are all the same. You don't stereotype people and generalize people, these guys are all different. Omar is different from Chalky, Chalky is different from Neville. Neville is different from Carmelo in The Purge. These are all different human beings in different walks of life. They may all be on the wrong side of the tracks in society's eyes, but they are all different the way they are and I play them that way.

ESQ: What is it about these "wrong side of the tracks" characters that attracts you so much?

MKW: These are human beings first and foremost. And I don't judge. We all have done things that we're not proud of. Everyone has a skeleton or two in their closet and coming from Brooklyn in Flatbush, growing up in the projects, a lot of people that society would call a menace were my closest friends. But no one wakes up one day and decides they want to become a drug dealer or they want to be a stick-up kid. Those decisions are made after a series of events have happened in one's life, and I witnessed that. I know these people, they have families, brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, aunts and uncles, people who love them, people who they love, just like everybody else. But unfortunately they've been put into a situation where they feel this is their only way out. It's a means of survival and I'm not expecting people to agree with one's choices, I'm not condoning anything illegal, but by the same token, I want to bring empathy and human compassion and maybe some understanding as to why people make the decisions in life that may lead them down a darker path. I feel almost privileged and blessed to be a voice for my people in my community that society would like to ignore or discard or to generalize.

ESQ: Does fear creep in at all when you think of attempting to play a character that is not the Omars and Chalkys of the world? Do you wonder if the audience will accept you playing them?

MKW: You know, at first I did worry about that, "How do I top Omar?" I had to divorce myself from that fear and just stay focused on what is in front of me and stay true to the character that I'm playing at that particular time and not worry about what I've done in the past or how people will perceive it.

ESQ: If anything, Trapped in the Closet proved that you can flip it on us.

MKW: [Laughs] Shout out to R. Kelly.

ESQ: Neville in The Gambler is very playful with his gangster persona. Was that evident in the script?

MKW: Yes. It really was. And I really wanted to drive that home. The humor and the relationship of Neville and Jim, its stays away from the danger. We all know these characters exist in a dangerous world and that it can get ugly at the drop of a hat. That was obvious and I didn't need to play to that. What was important to me was to show that these two men from totally different walks of life who would never cross paths in a normal situation are here now in this common ground and there's a level of respect for one another. Man to man. That was so important for me to capture, that there is a relationship there between the two. Neville is intrigued by Jim. It's a cat-and-mouse thing. Jim's like, "I don't have your money, but if you want your money give me more money," and Neville's like "What?!"

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ESQ: And I love the final shot of Neville in the film [spoilers for The Gambler follow]. He's walking away and this beautiful woman is coming toward him and he grabs her and they begin to dance. Is that something you came up with?

MKW: That was definitely off-the-cuff.

ESQ: I liked that.

MKW: Thank you.

ESQ: Did the woman even know you were going to grab her?

MKW: No. I just did it. I wanted her to be off-guard. Jim made him happy. Jim gave him hope again. That is what that walk is about. And in Neville's world, he's not seen happy like that.

ESQ: What kind of reaction did your little move get when that scene ended?

MKW: They loved it! [Laughs]

ESQ: Over the last handful of years playing Chalky, was it hard to drop him to play the other characters you've done between seasons?

MKW: It's hard to brush that off. I still think about Chalky from time to time. It's hard. You don't do a character for five years and just forget about it.

ESQ: Was Omar hard to kick?

MKW: I'll never forget Omar. Never. Never ever. There will always be a little part of him in me. That character is very near and dear to my heart. It was harder for me to move on from Omar because I was so green to the process of how this thing works. With Chalky, I had a little bit more maturity under my belt and I had to say, "Mike, you have to release it and leave it here." But I can't explain to you how much I love Omar. I really can't.

ESQ: Can you pinpoint a moment when you realized Omar was bigger than what you and the creators of The Wire imagined?

MKW: Yeah, when the President of the United States said that was his favorite character, that kind of freaked me out a little bit. I realized, yeah, this character is taking on a life of its own. But for me it started becoming less about Omar and more about David Simon's message of the show as a whole, what The Wire represented. The longer that show went on, the less I cared about Omar in that sense of Omar's importance. I became grateful of being a small part of this story and all the pieces were just as valid and they mattered. As the show moved on it became more about that than Omar's importance.

ESQ: Before the season finale of Boardwalk Empire [spoilers for Boardwalk Empire follow], did you ever get a feeling it was Chalky's time to get killed off?

MKW: There were some scripts that I read for season four where I kind of had one eye closed. Chalky escaped a lot of close calls in that season. But Chalky is a gangster so you knew it was gonna happen sooner or later. You live by the sword, you know how that goes.

ESQ: What was it like being in Paul Thomas Anderson's world for Inherent Vice?

MKW: That was an experience. I came on last minute. PTA decided he wanted to cast me. It was very intimidating. You got Joaquin across the room from you so you're like, "Holy shit," and I was shooting Boardwalk when I did that, so coming from TV, it's about getting the shot and keeping it moving.

ESQ: Time is money.

MKW: Time is money. But I go on the Inherent Vice set and Paul is like, "Okay, have a seat, let's talk about this." And I'm like, "What?!" So it was a different process than I'm used to but one that I was very grateful to be part of. PTA is a perfectionist, it's not about the clock, it's about making sure the actors are making sure what's happening with their characters at that particular moment. He took his time.

ESQ: Will we ever see you play Ol' Dirty Bastard?

MKW: Yes! Oh, yes, it's definitely happening.

ESQ: Tell me more.

MKW: Um, I can't go into too much now, but I can give you my word that it is definitely happening.

ESQ: I can't wait.

MKW: You and me both. I cannot wait.

ESQ: Michael, going back to what you touched on earlier about playing characters that are similar to those you know in the projects, do you feel an obligation at all to go back there and speak to the youth and be in some way a role model?

MKW: You know, I never liked the term "role model" for me. I don't feel I deserve that title. I look to people like Malcolm X and Martin Luther King and the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, but I try to do my part. It's important to me to let the youth know in my community that it's still okay to dream. That's it's still okay to have hope. Right now I'm wearing a T-shirt that says "I Can't Breathe." It's okay to have a voice. We matter. It's okay to speak up. That's the role I play right now in my community. That's why the characters I play are so dear to me because I feel like they are a voice to my community and what is really going on in this particular time in the hood. But I don't want to sit here and tell kids, "Look at me, I became an actor, you can, too." It's not about that. It's that it's okay to dream. It's okay to have dreams and aspirations and hope. You can't give up hope. It's okay to get an education. It's cool. So I try to make myself as tangible as possible and not have the trappings of my job alienate me from my community. I still go around the way. I still walk the streets. One time I heard Jesse Jackson say, "The trick is not leaving, the trick is being welcomed back." For me that's always been important. When I go back to my hood in Brooklyn in Flatbush, people come up to me and give me well wishes and they stop and they talk and it's not about "I saw your movie," it's "Mike, God bless you, keep doing what you do, we're rooting for you." That to me is the big trick.

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