Director Spike Lee has remembered The Wire actor Isiah Whitlock Jr as his \u201cdear beloved brother\u201d after his death aged 71.<\/p>\n
The actor appeared in five films with the US director, including the Oscar-winning BlacKkKlansman, as well as 25th Hour, She Hate Me, Red Hook Summer, Chi-Raq and most recently, 2020\u2019s Da 5 Bloods.<\/p>\n
Whitlock played the openly corrupt state senator Clay Davis across all five seasons of The Wire and was known for his profane catchphrase \u201csheee-it\u201d.<\/p>\n
The actor first used the phrase in his first film with Lee, 2002\u2019s The 25th Hour, when his character discovered a haul of drugs hidden in a sofa, and brought it with him to the acclaimed TV series about all aspects of life in Baltimore, including the police force, the drug dealers, the schools and the newspaper.<\/p>\n
The Wire creator David Simon paid tribute to Whitlock, writing on Bluesky: \u201cAs fine an actor as he was, Isiah was an even better spirit and the greatest gentleman.\u201d<\/p>\n
Whitlock also starred in the political satire series Veep, as secretary of defence George Maddox, who ran against Julia Louis-Dreyfus\u2019s character Selina Meyer in the presidential primaries.<\/p>\n
Whitlock Jr\u2019s manager Brian Liebman confirmed the news of his death on Instagram, writing: \u201cIt is with tremendous sadness that I share the passing of my dear friend and client Isiah Whitlock Jr.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you knew him \u2013 you loved him. A brilliant actor and even better person. May his memory forever be a blessing. Our hearts are so broken. He will be very, very missed.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Director Spike Lee has remembered The Wire actor Isiah Whitlock Jr as his \u201cdear beloved brother\u201d after his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":220118,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[321,93,61,60],"class_list":["post-220117","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220117","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=220117"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220117\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/220118"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=220117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=220117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=220117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}