Michael K. Williams Talks About Playing Wu-Tang's O.D.B.

After recent talks of former "The Wire" star Michael K. Williams getting recruited to bring the late Ol' Dirty Bastard's life story to the big screen surfaced this spring, the buzzing actor has finally opened up on the role. Along with meeting the late ODB's family, Williams admits how much attention to detail he has placed on the biopic. "I am doing a lot of research on Russell," Williams said referring to ODB by his government name. "I had the pleasure of meeting his beautiful mother, Ms. Cherry. We sat down for, like, three hours, and she told me the most amazing stuff about her son and a lot of things that the public didn't know. I've been talking to people who know him well ... people who knew him when the cameras weren't rolling. I've got a lot of insight into who he was as a human being and as a man and, dare I say it, scholar. The dude was quite smart. You have to be able to recite mathematics and be 5 percent of god body -- you can't play with that. You have to know what you're talking about. It's a lot of studying, a lot of knowledge." News of Williams landing the movie role hit the Internet in mid-March. EW has learned exclusively that Williams, 45, will star in an upcoming film about the legendary Wu-Tang Clan rapper and all-around troubled soul Russell Jones, a.k.a. Ol' Dirty Bastard, whose impressive mic skills and outrageous showmanship were eclipsed by his erratic offstage behavior, assorted arrests, and an early death. Joaquín Baca-Asay, the cinematographer on We Own the Night, Roger Dodger and Jay-Z's video for 99 Problems, is also joining the project, making his feature directorial debut. The movie is based on the final years of ODB's life -- a true story that is nonetheless stranger than fiction.