La Fantascienza

*blows kiss for beloved mutual*

Against betting odds, The Wire had returned for a fourth season, but it would mark its reappearance largely without Dominic West, considered as much a star as any among the ensemble cast. West, who had a young daughter in England, was homesick and expressing increasing frustration at playing a character he felt he had taken to his full depths. He yearned to be a movie star, and his name had been thrown in as a possibility to be cast as the next James Bond. West’s fellow cast members staged what amounted to an intervention. They pleaded that they needed West, needed McNulty, to finish a story that they had all striven and sacrificed for since the beginning. To placate West, Simon and Noble agreed that his role could be greatly diminished in Season 4—McNulty was reduced to a domesticated beat cop—but they needed him back and fully engaged for Season 5. West agreed, and signed a contract that included a stipulation that he could direct a Season 5 episode.