Idris Elba shot to fame while playing Stringer Bell in The Wire, the realistic crime drama considered by some to be the best TV series of all time. But to this day the Marvel, DC, and Sonic the Hedgehog star hasn’t watched it — and it sounds like he never will.
But why? You’d think Elba would be proud to watch The Wire, given its critical acclaim (and that impressive American accent that even had the show’s producers fooled for a while). In a recent interview with Amy Poehler’s Good Hang podcast, the British star insisted he was proud of the show, but still couldn’t bring himself to watch it, admitting: “I feel a little bit outside the club.”
“If I’m really honest, I didn’t watch The Wire,” Elba said. “I didn’t watch it. And I feel bad. It’s not that I’m not a fan of it — I was there. I made a show that was, you know, so intense and so real, so important, even though we didn’t realize — I didn’t realize — the importance of the show while making it.”
Elba continued: “I didn’t participate in its celebration as a viewer, as a fan. And so I feel a little bit outside of the club.”
Elba then said he won’t watch The Wire and can’t even celebrate it, over 20 years later. “I felt the presence of it, all my life since The Wire, in terms of its impact,” he explained. “And I also was there making it. So to me, it was almost a bit like I was Stringer Bell. I’m not Stringer Bell, but I also feel like when Stringer Bell died, there was a part of me that died with that character. It’s weird for me to go back and watch it.”
“I don’t like being overly conscious of what my performance is like, because it makes me conscious about doing it,” Elba concluded. “I like being in it rather than watching it.”
While Idris Elba can’t bring himself to watch The Wire, which ran from 2002 to 2008, his career skyrocketed off the back of his performance in it. He went on to play Heimdall in Kenneth Branagh’s film Thor (2011), and reprised the role in subsequent MCU movies. He made the switch to the DC Universe by playing Bloodsport in James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad (2021). And more recently, Elba has played Knuckles in the blockbuster Sonic the Hedgehog films.
Elba has plenty coming up, too, including the role of Duncan, Man-At-Arms in Amazon Prime’s He-Man movie Masters Of The Universe.
Photo by Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images.
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at [email protected].
