From heroin to screen heroes
Introduced by a homicide detective, Donnie Andrews and Fran Boyd found the strength in one another to turn their backs on their old lives -- and inspired the characters in the cult TV series, The Wire. They spoke to Declan Cashin
What is left to say about The Wire, the Baltimore-based crime epic currently airing the third of its five series on BBC2? It has been publicly lauded by President Obama, consistently hailed as the greatest TV drama ever made, and is one of the biggest slow-burn DVD sellers in the world.
It seems that there isn't anything left to surprise us about writer-producer David Simon's multi-layered masterpiece. Think again.
Meet Donnie Andrews and Fran Boyd, a happily married couple whose respective life stories have profoundly informed two of Simon's most indelible creations.
Donnie, who served 18 years in prison for murder, is the inspiration for The Wire's most charismatic character, dealer-turned-informant Omar Little (portrayed in the show by Michael K Williams).
Meanwhile Fran, a former heroin addict, saw her struggle chronicled in Simon's wrenching book The Corner: A Year in the Life of An Inner-City Neighbourhood, and later in an Emmy award-winning mini-series adaptation, starring actress Khandi Alexander as Fran.
Weekend sat down with this remarkable couple at the Shelbourne hotel recently, in the midst of a press tour of Dublin and London to help Simon promote his two books of reportage -- Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets and the aforementioned The Corner.
It's no burden for them: after all, it was Simon who got them together in the first place. Donnie (55) and Fran (52) had their first conversation on January 21, 1993. At that time, he was behind bars in Phoenix, Arizona, for killing one drug dealer to repay another.
"That haunted me, man," Donnie explains. "The funny thing is that I had been trying to find a way out for a long time. Soon after, I met a homicide detective named Ed Burns, and he said to me: 'You look like a man who needs to talk. We can offer you a second chance at life.' He asked me to wear a wire to bring down Warren Boardley, the head of a $50,000-a-week drug ring, which I did. I was then sentenced to life with the promise of parole after 10 years."
Burns later introduced Donnie to his friend, and future writing partner, David Simon, who was then a reporter tracking the city's criminals for the Baltimore Sun. Throughout 1992, Burns and Simon were researching The Corner, when they met Fran, then an emaciated heroin addict weighing just 90 pounds (six-and-a-half stone). Fran's ex-husband and her then 15-year-old son, De'Andre, were also using and dealing, so the family became the focal point of the book.
"It wasn't easy trying to get information out of me," Fran recalls with a soft chuckle. "I thought Ed and David were undercover cops. It took about four months before I finally believed they were here to do a story.
"One day, David said to me: 'Oh, you think you're so hard, but underneath all that I know you're soft.' They told me they had someone that they wanted me to talk to, saying that he could help me. I said, 'Bring it on'. That's when they gave Donnie my phone number."
Donnie's first few calls were not well received, but Fran slowly began to let her guard down. Soon, their phone conversations became a daily ritual. Astonishingly, no matter how high or strung-out Fran was, she made sure she was available to take the call at 4pm every day, even if it was just to sit in silence or, alternatively, to scream at him down the line. "No matter how each of us was feeling when we talked, we always ended the conversation by saying, 'I love you'," Donnie says.
Fran admits that she began to fall for Donnie very early on. "The whole time I was using, I never had anyone who listened and actually heard what I was saying," she says. "I was in so much pain, but Donnie understood it because he'd been through it himself."
Over the next two years, Donnie successfully helped Fran's son De'Andre to extricate himself from Baltimore's drug scene and, in 1995, with Donnie's gentle but persistent encouragement, Fran went into rehab for 28 days to kick her heroin habit for good. "For six of those days, I lay on a cold, hard floor, all alone, just shaking because of the detox," she recalls. "On the sixth day, I got up, took a shower and that was that."
Some two years after their first conversation, they exchanged pictures, and a little while later Fran got on a plane for the first time in her life to visit Donnie.
From that point onwards, Fran took it upon herself to get her man released from prison. Donnie was due to come up for parole in 1997, as per his initial agreement with the courts, but that fell through due to inside politics. The couple, along with Burns and Simon, and even the FBI agents and the prosecutor who got Donnie convicted, spent the next eight years campaigning for his release, citing his exceptional transformation.
Donnie finally walked free in April 2005, and the couple were married in August 2007. David Simon was his best man, and stars of The Wire, including Dominic West, who studied at Trinity College, were among the congregation. "I just cried the whole day," Fran laughs. "I never thought it would ever happen."
Today, Fran operates an HIV-testing clinic in a local hospital, while Donnie works as head of security at a major Baltimore Methodist church, as well as running anti-gang outreach programmes. They are currently writing a book based on their joint experiences, and Brad Pitt's production company has snapped up the movie rights for their story.
One of Donnie's first jobs after he was released was acting in the fifth season of The Wire, playing opposite his screen incarnation, Omar.
Donnie admits with a laugh that there's at least one very important difference between him and Omar (the latter is gay on the show), but that the character, essentially, is an accurate distillation of his own, real-life experiences.
"Omar has morals and principles, and he knows how to play both sides," Donnie says. "That's how I was brought up. He learned how to hide his emotions then how to control them. For instance, when I got mad, I'd do stupid things. So I used to sing, right in the middle of a fight, to help me cool down. It threw people off. In the show, Omar whistles in order to achieve the same thing."
As the interview ends, and the couple start talking about plans for dinner that night, I ask what they think are the greatest lessons they've both learned from their incredible lives. Fran thinks it over for a moment and replies: "It would have to be 'never say never'. In the process of using then getting clean, all my 'nevers' came true. That's why I strongly believe there's hope for anybody."
Donnie adds: "I think we're proof that any person, even at their lowest point, can get back up again if they make up their mind and are determined to change. You just have to want it."
The Wire is on BBC2 every Monday, Wednesday and Thursday at 11.20pm, with a repeat of all three on Friday nights
Homicide: A year on the killing streets by David Simon and The Corner by David Simon and Ed Burns are published by Canongate
- Declan Cashin
