Michael B. Jordan, who credits his breakthrough role as the destined-for-tragedy character of Wallace on The Wire, is set to star in next year’s reboot of The Fantastic Four. I’m only just now watching The Wire (and don’t give me sh*t, I already explained why here) so even though it was heavily foreshadowed for most of the first season, Wallace’s death was a gut punch that’s still fresh on my mind.
In an interview with HuffPost Live earlier this week, Jordan looked back on the death of his character and how he first found out he was going to be killed off:
“Each script that I got, I’d just be flipping through the pages to see if my name was in the back,” he recalled in a HuffPost Live interview. “It was like okay, now I can read it, because people were dropping like flies. Like nobody was safe on that show.”
Including, of course, Jordan himself. “I got that dreadful knock on my trailer,” he said, “and [‘The Wire’ creator and writer] David Simon was like, ‘Look, I love you. Everybody loves you. But that’s why we gotta kill you.’ And yeah, Wallace was gone.”
He also spoke a bit about how he attributes his lack of acting experience (The Wire was his first major television role) to actually being a benefit at the time:
“I was really young and raw,” he said. “I can’t really take credit for that — that was something that was just me at that time in my life. I was able to kind of like, do that. I didn’t have any training, I didn’t go to class or anything like that.”
“The writing on that show was incredible. I was really lucky,” he said. “[The show] set an extremely high bar. It’s going to be hard to ever reach that level, but I want to get something close.”
Jordan also mentions that interestingly enough, he originally auditioned for Bodie’s character — who of course was the one to murder Wallace. You can watch the three minute clip where he discusses The Wire here, or watch the full interview below.
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