From Elba’s perspective, the scene added insult to the injury of ending his time on the show. Martin recounted how Simon often failed to take into account actors’ feelings about the character or the job. He wouldn’t listen when Seth Gilliam and Domenick Lombardozzi expressed concerns about their characters Carver and Herc getting pushed to the sidelines. Simon even excitedly told Lawrence Gilliard Jr. about how excited the actor would be about the episode he just wrote, the episode in which GIlliard’s character D’Angelo Barksdale is killed. Martin relates the question that Simon usually posed whenever they got defensive about their character: “Whoever said it was your character?”
Yet, Simon and Pelecanos did understand Elba’s frustration and, according to the latter, tried to justify the story beat to him. “He was pissed, man. And I got it, because, in effect, we were firing him,” Pelecanos told Martin. “David and I went to his trailer and tried to talk him down. We said, ‘This is the end of the character. We can’t keep his story going, it’s not logical. And this is exactly the way he would probably go out.’”
In the end, a compromise was made, as anyone who has seen The Wire‘s third season knows. When Omar and Brother Mouzone (Michael Potts) kill Stringer, they wait a beat to acknowledge that their unlikely alliance has come to an end. Then they walk away, and the camera pans up to look through the window at a sign advertising real estate that Stringer tried to sell in a bid towards legitimacy. In a way, it’s a more poetic and damning insult than the urination.
But did the new ending appease Elba, who was still being written off the show? Pelecanos wasn’t sure as he walked home at night after the death scene was shot. “Pelecanos heard pounding footsteps behind him and turned, cringing,” wrote Martin. “It was Elba. ‘I just want to shake your hand,’ he told the writer. ‘It’s just business.’”
It’s business that Elba has certainly done well in, as demonstrated by everything from his solo crime series Luther to his role as the U.S. President in the recent Kathryn Bigelow movie A House of Dynamite. But it’s hard to argue that Elba’s ever had a character as compelling as Stringer Bell. The Wire is, after all, the greatest television series of all time.
