Among the new faces for season five that should be familiar to fans of Baltimore-based TV was Clark Johnson, who spent seven seasons as Detective Meldrick Lewis on NBC's Homicide: Life on the Street. For this last season of The Wire, Johnson plays (fictional) Sun city editor Augustus "Gus" Haynes, the paper's moral bulwark. Johnson, who has continued to act and direct since Homicide went off the air in 1999, said it was nice to be back in what has practically become his adopted hometown.
"I can't get away from this place," said Johnson, who directed The Wire's premiere episode in 2002. "I just keep coming back. It's a great place to shoot."
Simon, a former Sun reporter, turned down interview requests in deference to the continuing Hollywood writers strike. But, doubtless aware of the many magazine and newspaper stories that have characterized the show's fifth season as a thinly veiled critique of the newspaper that once employed him, he stressed from the stage that "this season is no less fictional than anything else we've ever done."
