Actor Michael K. Williams died of acute drug intoxication in what New York City’s health care examiner explained Friday was an accidental demise.
Williams, known for actively playing Omar Minimal on The Wire and an Emmy Award nominee this 12 months, experienced fentanyl, parafluorofentanyl, heroin and cocaine in his program when he died Sept. 6 in Brooklyn.
Williams, 54, was located useless by loved ones members in his penthouse condominium. Law enforcement said at the time that they suspected a drug overdose.
The city’s Business of Chief Clinical Examiner mentioned it would not comment additional. A message searching for comment was left with Williams’s agent.
Williams had spoken frankly in interviews in modern a long time about his struggle with drug habit, which he mentioned persisted immediately after he obtained fame on The Wire in the early 2000s.
“I was playing with hearth,” he advised the Newark Star-Ledger in 2012.
“It was just a issue of time in advance of I obtained caught and my business finished up on the deal with of a tabloid or I went to jail or, worse, I finished up useless. When I appear back on it now, I you should not know how I did not finish up in a system bag.”
New York Law enforcement Commissioner Dermot Shea mentioned in an job interview shortly soon after Williams’s loss of life that he experienced spoken with the actor previously this 12 months about collaborating with the section on community outreach.
Williams experienced been working with a New Jersey charity to clean the journey for former prison inmates trying to find to re-enter society and was performing on a documentary on the issue. Another undertaking associated achieving out specifically to at-chance youth.
“This Hollywood thing that you see me in, I am passing through,” Williams told The Associated Press last yr. “Since I consider this is where my enthusiasm, my objective is supposed to be.”
Omar, a rogue robber of drug dealers dependent on true figures from Baltimore, was massively popular among the enthusiasts of The Wire, which ran on HBO from 2002 to 2008.
![](https://thumbnails.cbc.ca/maven_legacy/thumbnails/419/51/PartOne_frame_8666.jpg?crop=1.777xh:h;*,*&downsize=510px:* 510w")
Actor Michael K. Williams talks about going from performing in his mother’s daycare to the roles he played on “The Wire” and “Boardwalk Empire” in aspect 1 of his 2011 interview on CBC’s George Stroumboulopoulos Tonight. 10:46
Williams also starred as Chalky White in HBO’s Boardwalk Empire from 2010-14 and experienced roles in the films 12 A long time a Slave and Assassin’s Creed.
Williams was nominated this 12 months for an Emmy for supporting actor in a drama collection for HBO’s Lovecraft Place, but misplaced Sunday to a star of The Crown.
Williams was remembered in the ceremony’s “In Memoriam” phase.