ReWired

January 27, 2012 1:15 PM

After the Wire, actress Sonja Sohn couldn’t leave Baltimore’s troubled streets behind.
posted by modernnomad (18 comments total)

Print version in case you hit their sign-in wall. Sohn is pretty darned cool. Thanks for posting.
posted by Burhanistan at 1:25 PM on January 27 [1 favorite]

One of the better female rolls I've seen. Smart, independent, no bullshit, yet still imperfect. It's not surprising that she is probably that same way in real life too.
posted by Brocktoon at 1:28 PM on January 27 [1 favorite]

I remember reading about Sohn talking about The Wire when it was on: how she was a little uncomfortable turning the entire thing into entertainment, since it was also people's lives, and how much it hit close to home to her. It's great to hear that she's also managing to do good.
posted by dinty_moore at 1:35 PM on January 27 [4 favorites]

Funny how much that story seems to fit her onscreen persona. Somehow it just seems right that she'd be the one doing this.

It's probably old hat to everyone on Metafilter, but if you loved the Wire, do watch "The Corner"--the miniseries it grew out of. The miniseries is based on the nonfiction book about the impact of drugs in Baltimore and presents a lightly fictionalized version of that material (at the end of the series you meet the real people the story is based on and get an update on their lives since the end of the story). A lot of the actors went on to roles in The Wire (often as strikingly different characters). It's certainly not as good as "The Wire" (and it doesn't have "The Wire"'s interest in the institutional constraints of the situation--it's purely a street-level view of the phenomenon), but it's very much the same territory and it's often brilliantly acted.
posted by yoink at 1:42 PM on January 27 [2 favorites]

Just when I thought I couldn't love The Wire even more.
posted by surrendering monkey at 1:46 PM on January 27

but it's very much the same territory and it's often brilliantly acted.

I would caution people that it's much darker/grimmer. I really appreciated The Corner but I remember it throwing me into a little mini week-long funk after I finished it.
posted by mannequito at 1:52 PM on January 27 [1 favorite]

Good to hear more about Sohn, and the good she's doing in the world.
posted by jiawen at 2:27 PM on January 27

David Simon, creator of The Wire and Treme, delivers the 2011-2012 Frank Porter Graham Lecture at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Its long but amazing, engaging, and really is necessary to understand the character.
posted by Blasdelb at 2:29 PM on January 27 [3 favorites]

I'd love to read the whole thing but the WaPo makes me register after the second page, or use my Twitter or Facebook logins, and I'm not going to do that.
posted by mephron at 2:31 PM on January 27

She's fantastic. Thanks for the post.
posted by rtha at 2:34 PM on January 27 [1 favorite]

mephron - if you hit the print link, the whole thing's on one page. Clear your cookies and try again?
posted by rtha at 2:35 PM on January 27

> I'd love to read the whole thing but the WaPo makes me register after the second page

See the print version that I linked above.
posted by Burhanistan at 2:35 PM on January 27 [1 favorite]

All in the game yo, all in the game
posted by growabrain at 2:43 PM on January 27

The link is right there mephron in first comment.

Awesome story. I work in an inner city school so I haven't been able to face watching The Wire yet, especially season 4, but I know it's going to kick ass when I do.

The lives, yeah, they're real and it's heartbreaking.

Also, I think I saw this here first and it always springs to mind when I hear about The Wire.
(Watching it in the rain at 6am in the morning before commuting way out to the troubled neighborhood where I work). David Simon on the End of the American Empire at Loyola College


Going to watch Blasdelb's link now.
posted by bquarters at 2:49 PM on January 27 [1 favorite]

For me, this whole article really boils down to this little snippet:

She had grown up in Newport News, Va., in an area much like the Baltimore neighborhoods in which “The Wire” was set. Cops were not the good guys where she came from, so even acting the part was unnerving. The show’s broader message made it palatable, says Simon. “I think that was a great relief to her, because I think she had some latent sense of horror that she was going to be working on a cop show as a cop,”

That's it. That's the root cause. All this pain she's going through to reach these kids is because of the War on Drugs. Cops have become the bad guys, the oppressors, and we are literally at war with ourselves. These kids are refugees just like they would be in Somalia. Their lives and families have been destroyed by a heavily-armed, violent conflict between two sides.

We have war refugees in our own country. Isn't it time we stopped fighting? Isn't it time we stopped the War on Drugs? All we get out of it is a lot of dead and imprisoned minorities, and whole cities full of shattered lives and broken people.
posted by Malor at 2:56 PM on January 27 [19 favorites]

So a while back I started watching Step Up 2: The Streets for no good reason and I spotted Sonja in it and it kinda broke my heart a little (thought not like seeing the trailer from some 50c piece of shit vehicle and spotting Hassan 'Wee-bey' Johnson which ripped my heart in two)... coz you know that's basically it 90% time for black actors
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 2:58 PM on January 27

Although Idris Elba just won a Golden Globe. I still find his real accent startling, compared to his voice in The Wire.

I've seen Sonja Sohn speak a couple of times. She's as compelling and gracious and smart as you would imagine. If you get the chance to hear her speak, go.
posted by gingerbeer at 9:26 PM on January 27 [1 favorite]

Now that's heartwarming. Good work Sonja!
posted by arcticseal at 11:46 PM on January 27