All the Pieces Matter: The Inside Story of The Wire

by Jonathan Abrams

SONJA SOHN (DET. SHAKIMA “KIMA” GREGGS): Like most black folks who grew up in underserved areas, I did not have a positive view of the police. For me, that was my main obstacle to playing a cop at the time. I had to get over my own sort of early traumatic interactions with the police and what I had experienced. My early interactions with the police in my childhood were never positive, and that had affected me more deeply than I had imagined going into the show. I realized for me to play this character, I had to have some understanding of the motivations of good cops and what the motivation was for a good cop to become a cop. Kima was the good cop. She’s the moral compass of the police. For me to embody that, truthfully, as an actor, I have to be willing to understand that that kind of cop existed and how that kind of cop came into being.

Doing something that you don’t agree with