Top 5 Things We Learned From ‘The Wire’ Reunion At PaleyFest

The Baltimore detective squad and a few legendary CIs from HBO’s The Wire made their way to the Big Apple tonight for a special panel at PaleyFest.

The Wire first aired on HBO back in 2002 and lasted for five seasons before creator David Simon and the cast called it a day. Though it never won an Emmy, the show has been referred to across the critical board as the greatest television series of all time, only recently rivaled by AMC’s Breaking Bad.

The series is known for its realistic representation of the human experience within an impoverished urban setting (in this particular case, the crack-infested streets of Baltimore, Maryland). Each of the five seasons examines how the war on drugs, controversial shipyard trading, political corruption, the education system, and the media are all constantly affected by one another and in turn directly affect the population at large.

Moderated by Alan Sepinwall of Hitfix.com, David Simon was joined by John Doman (Detective William Rawls), Laurence Gilliard Jr. (D’Angelo Barksdale), Seth Gilliam (Sgt. Ellis Carver), Jim True-Frost (Rolan “Prez” Pryzbylewski), Jaime Hector (Marlo Stanfield), Sonja Sohn (Detective Kima Greggs), Wendell Pierce, (Detective William “Bunk” Moreland), executive producer Nina Noble, and of course Michael Kenneth Williams, famous for his legendary character, Omar Little. Dominic West, who played Detective Jimmy McNulty and Idris Elba, known more familiarly as Stringer Bell, each Skyped from overseas, sending their appreciation to the fans watching at Paley and at home.

Missed the livestream this evening? No problem! Here are the Top 5 Things We Learned From ‘The Wire’ Reunion At Paley Fest

1. No one watched The Wire while it was on.

Sepinwall jumped right in and asked whether the cast got recognized while the show was still on the air. All shook their heads. Now? A universal “All the time.” Sepinwall mentions that many fans started visiting the show for the first time after it was off the air when HBO On Demand first came to be.

2. The series plays out like a novel.

On demand platforms made the series a sleeper hit, similar to how the seasons rolled along year after year: Season One is slow, Season Two is slower, and Season Three hits you like a train. “It is a visual novel, just be patient,” Wendell Pierce recalls what Simon explained to the cast.

3. Being a Baltimore native certainly helped out some of the cast. 

When revisiting the breaking down of the script during auditions, Laurence Gilliard Jr. piped up, explaining how personal a journey it was for him. “Having grown up in Baltimore, living ten years in Baltimore, a part of it was about me. I get it and I read it and I literally know the streets, I know the people. I gotta get this. If I don’t get anything else, I gotta get this.”

“I really feel bad we killed you the second season,” Simon confessed.

4. Baltimore suffered after the show was no more. 

Sepinwall then inquired about the effect the show had on the city of Baltimore after the show aired. “The entire industry collapsed,” executive Nina Noble said. The show closed up shop at the start of the recession and the mayor of Baltimore at the time was forced to make budget cuts, which unfortunately, included the struggling film industry.

5. The show is a timeless portrait of poverty in America.

Questions from the crowd sparked more banter between the cast who continuously got lost in how individualized their experiences have been since the cancelation. “We were spoiled,” according to Laurence Gilliard Jr. All nodded their heads. All agreed they’ve never worked on something as profound or fully-realized since. Audiences questions revolved around what the series is really about to which David Simon simply replied, “The failure of the drug trade.”

This was a special night, for sure, but we have to confess that seeing the cast reunited for the first time since 2008 felt like a bit a tease. Maybe this is a part of something bigger that could be in the works, perhaps an official revival? That would be something special indeed.

Reruns of the Paley Fest panel are available to stream via Yahoo Screen and see where you can stream episodes of The Wire.

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Photos: Yahoo Screen