The Wire Actor Isiah Whitlock Jr Dies At 71 In New York
The actor died in New York after a short illness
· NDTVIsiah Whitlock Jr, an actor who made frequent, memorable appearances on the HBO series The Wire and Veep, and appeared in five films with director Spike Lee, died on Tuesday. He was 71.
Whitlock's manager, Brian Liebman, told the Associated Press that the actor died in New York after a short illness.
Whitlock played the openly corrupt State Senator Clay Davis in 25 episodes across the five seasons of The Wire.
Davis, a fan-favourite character, was known for his profane catchphrase - "sheee-it" - delivered by Whitlock in moments of triumph and blunt honesty. The actor first used the phrase in his first film with Lee, 25th Hour (2002), when his detective character discovers a cache of drugs hidden in a sofa.
"It's a big, big, big loss," Lee said in a phone call with the AP on Tuesday night. "I'm going to miss him for the rest of my life."
Whitlock went on to appear in four other Lee films, including She Hate Me (2004), Red Hook Summer (2012), Chi-Raq (2015), BlacKkKlansman (2018), and Da 5 Bloods (2020).
"We vibed over all those years," Lee said. "We clicked from the jump."
Lee said he had especially fond memories of the extended time he spent with Whitlock while shooting Da 5 Bloods on location in Thailand, and recalled the last time he saw him, when Lee and his daughter, Satchel, sat with Whitlock at a screening of Kiss of the Spider Woman earlier this year.
"He was just a beautiful, beautiful soul," Lee said. "If you were around him, he made everybody feel good in his presence. He would radiate. I would put that over his acting."
Lee also highlighted Whitlock's comic talents, both on screen and off.
"He was hilarious," Lee said. "That was just his nature - he made people laugh. Everybody was in on the joke."
Whitlock is the second significant star of The Wire to die in recent weeks, following the death of actor James Ransone.
A native of South Bend, Indiana, Whitlock attended Southwest Minnesota State University, where he played American football and studied theatre. Injuries pushed him towards acting, and he later moved to San Francisco to work in theatre.
He began appearing in small television guest roles on shows including Cagney & Lacey in the late 1980s, and had very small roles in the 1990 films Goodfellas and Gremlins 2: The New Batch.
After The Wire, Whitlock moved on to another HBO series, the political satire Veep, where he played Secretary of Defence George Maddox for three seasons. The character ran against Julia Louis-Dreyfus's Selina Meyer in the presidential primaries.
The Wire creator David Simon also paid tribute to Whitlock.
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