Isiah Whitlock Jr., the actor best known for playing Maryland state senator Clay Davis in HBO’s crime series “The Wire” and for his frequent roles in Spike Lee’s films, has died. He was 71.
His manager, Brian Liebman, announced the death in a social media statement. “A brilliant actor and even better person,” he wrote of Mr. Whitlock. “… Our hearts are so broken.” He did not cite a cause of death.
Mr. Whitlock came to prominence with his role as R. Clayton “Clay” Davis on “The Wire,” the drama series set in Baltimore, often named one of the best television shows ever made.
He told The Washington Post in 2018 that strangers frequently approached him and swore at him in the street, parroting a catchphrase of his. The four-letter word starting with “sh,” drawn out in Mr. Whitlock’s distinctive cadence, became beloved by fans of “The Wire” and his other films, something Mr. Whitlock embraced.
A satirical YouTube video for “The Whitlock Academy,” released in 2014, shows Mr. Whitlock dressed in the black turtleneck of an overly self-serious actor, teaching students how to say it. And a Kickstarter launched in 2015 to create a bobblehead toy of Mr. Whitlock saying the phrase raised more than $100,000. A prototype was given to President Barack Obama, a fan of “The Wire,” by the show’s creator David Simon, Mr. Whitlock told Yahoo TV.
Mr. Whitlock accrued more than 120 acting credits in film and television across a decades-long career. His well-known roles included George Maddox, a federal secretary and presidential candidate in the political satire “Veep.” He was also known in recent years for his cheery and comic social media presence. “Now I understand why we don’t have full self-driving yet,” he deadpanned in November when sharing a post of Grok, the artificial intelligence bot integrated into the social media platform X, wrongly attributing an animated GIF of another actor to him.
Mr. Whitlock was born Sept. 13, 1954, and raised in Indiana by parents originally from Tennessee; he told The Post that his unique speaking voice came from an accent that mixed the two locations. He attended Southwest Minnesota State University on a football scholarship but was injured, and auditioned for a university production of “The Crucible” on a whim, according to the biography on his website. From then on, he was hooked on acting.
After graduating, he joined the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco before moving to New York, where his early film roles included a small part in Martin Scorsese’s “Goodfellas” (1990).
His first Spike Lee film was “25th Hour” (2002), in which he played a law enforcement agent. He would go on to be cast in Lee’s “She Hate Me” (2004), “Red Hook Summer” (2012), “Chi-raq” (2015), “She’s Gotta Have It,” the Netflix series that premiered in 2017, based on Lee’s earlier film of the same name, “BlacKkKlansman” (2018) and “Da 5 Bloods” (2020).
On social media on Tuesday, Lee shared a photo of the two together and a clip of Mr. Whitlock delivering his catchphrase in “25th Hour,” calling him a “Dear Beloved Brother.”
Actor Colman Domingo and Broadway writer Lin-Manuel Miranda were among those to share their sadness over the death. “Oh this hurts,” Domingo wrote on Liebman’s post, while Miranda posted a broken heart emoji. Andre Royo, who played Reginald “Bubbles” Cousins in “The Wire,” wrote on X, “I can’t… another wire brother and friend. This hurts to no end but your memory will live forever in my heart.”
Mr. Whitlock’s recent roles included police chief Larry Dokes in “The Residence,” the White House murder mystery on Netflix produced by Shonda Rhimes, in which he earned praise from The Post’s reviewer for his comic performance. He also played Charlie Figaro, the fictional mayor of New Orleans, in the Showtime drama series “Your Honor.”
He is set to appear as a voice actor in next year’s Disney Pixar film “Hoppers” and in “The Body Is Water,” an Irish-American drama in postproduction, according to IMDb.
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