Isiah Whitlock Jr., the veteran character actor best known for his roles in “The Wire,” “Veep” and several Spike Lee films, . He was 71.
, his manager, Brian Liebman, told Deadline.
“If you knew him — you loved him,” Liebman wrote in an Instagram post. “A brilliant actor and even better person. May his memory forever be a blessing. Our hearts are so broken. He .”
With — including two upcoming films — Whitlock was a versatile actor capable of adapting to many different roles. His most frequent collaborator was Spike Lee, who Whitlock worked with on “25th Hour,” “She Hate Me,” “Chi-Raq,” “BlacKkKlansman” and “Da 5 Bloods.”
On the small screen, he was most famous as on HBO’s “The Wire.” Whitlock appeared sporadically in the first four seasons before joining the main cast for the final season.
The show introduced many to Whitlock’s trademark, the drawn out expletive “sheeeeeit,” uttered by his characters in apparent disbelief. Whitlock said , then brought it to his first two films with Lee.
By the time he made it to “The Wire,” producers and writers wrote it into the script for him, leading to a and dozens of on-the-street fan interactions.
“T ,” Whitlock told Slate in 2008. “T kind of butcher it.”
Whitlock returned to HBO in 2014 on “Veep” as , who unsuccessfully competes for a presidential nomination against Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ character.
His final role came as Metropolitan Police Chief Larry Dokes in the Netflix miniseries “The Residence,” following a recurring role as the mayor of New Orleans in Showtime’s His voice will be heard in the Disney Pixar animated sci-fi film due out in March.
