Michael K. The scar on Williams’ face is actually the thing that helped launch his acting career and the late actor once explained how he got the scar in the first place
Michael died tragically on Monday (September 6) at the age of 54. He was found dead in his New York City apartment and some reports say the death was caused by a suspected drug overdose.
Back in 2014, Michael participated in the NPR series “My Big Break” and talked about how his scar gave him his big break.
“I was doing a bunch of videos, you know, just dancing background, but then on my birthday – my 25th birthday – I got cut in my face in a barroom brawl,” Michael said.
He continued, “There was a popping party going on in Queens. I went outside to get some air, and I saw that two of my other friends were being surrounded by some dudes who I didn’t know. And it looked like they were about to get jumped. And I said, yo, I’m ready to leave. Let’s go back. I’m going to go back home now.”
“But this one dude kept pacing behind me. He kept walking behind me. He kept like, you know, like sucking his teeth, and I’m looking – I’m like yo – so what’s up dude? Yo bro, what’s your problem? And the dude wiped his hand across his mouth and just – what I thought appeared to be – smacked me, but what he did was he spit a razor,” Michael said. “He was positioning the razor in his mouth to get between his middle finger and his ring finger, and then he just went – swiped me down my face, and this cut my face. It was actually the first hit of the fight. So we managed to escape with our lives, barely, that night.”
Michael then discussed how the scar affected his career.
“Things changed immediately after that. Directors didn’t want me just to dance in the videos any more. They wanted me to act out these thug roles, you know, like – Mike, roll these – roll these dice in this video. Have this fight in this video,” he said. “I was like, all right. Tupac Shakur was filming a movie in New York called Bullet, opposite Mickey Rourke. And the production office that they were working out of in New York happened to have a Polaroid picture of me from me going to audition from some various music videos. So he happened to see a Polaroid picture of me and was like, yo, this dude looks thugged out enough that he could play my little brother. I think he saw my pain and my struggle, my heart. I was just like – I was star struck, you know. I was like, wow, that’s Tupac Shakur.”