The Role of Her Life

Until that night, their paths had never crossed.

Reopened Wounds

By the window, Sylvia Williams sits, a sad-faced woman on an overstuffed sofa in an overstuffed rowhouse. Her son, Ronald, 57, rummages around in the kitchen, piping up from time to time.

It's been nearly 12 years since Kia was killed, but the wound is still fresh. Hearing about Snoop on "The Wire" ripped off the scab. One of Williams's daughters saw the show and called Williams, crying.

"She said, 'That girl that killed Kia is on "The Wire." She's still acting violent.' "

Williams can't bear to watch the show. How did this girl get to be on TV? Why are they letting her grandbaby's killer play a killer? As Williams sees it, Pearson didn't do enough time -- "she came out of prison, bragging" -- and now she's on TV?

" I could be on 'The Wire,' Mama!" her son tells her, shouting from the kitchen. "It's called acting!"

Not just anybody can be on the show, Ronald concedes. "Not everyone can act. She might be good at acting."

Pause.

"A lot of people get breaks and it changes them," Ronald says. "But I don't know if [playing an assassin] just makes her worse. She's still living the hell that she was back in the day when she killed Kia."

A Healing Experience

After Snoop was identified out of a lineup, a grand jury indicted her as an adult for first-degree murder and a handgun violation. Snoop pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to two eight-year terms, to be served consecutively at the Maryland Correctional Institution for Women in Jessup. (She was released after five years, according to prison officials, because of "good time" and "work time" accumulated.)

Prison changed her life, she says. That, and her worries about the pain that her incarceration caused her grandmother. Snoop can't stand disappointing her.

"Before I went to prison," she says in her gravelly voice, pacing around her godmother's kitchen, "I didn't give a [expletive]. Mother, father didn't care about me, where the [expletive] are they? So I didn't care.

"Back then, I didn't have a conscience. Now I do. Prison was a whole different ballgame. Prison will make you smart."

If, she says, you let it.

As she sees it, some people chafe at the prison's restrictions, of being told when to shower, when to eat, when to sleep, when to turn off the TV. Snoop decided that she was going to like it. All of her old running buddies were in prison, like her. Or dead.

So she kept to herself -- save for a fight or three -- knuckled down and got her GED.

"I'm not glad that she was there," says Robbins. "But it was kind of a blessing. . . . She actually calmed down a lot in prison."

Robbins says she saw this firsthand. As a corrections officer, she got to see her goddaughter every day.

Snoop was 16 when she went in.

There, in a weird bit of serendipity, was Carlene Smith, Kia's mother, serving 90 days on a parole violation. Corrections officials quickly herded Snoop into protective custody to keep them apart, Smith says.

"They thought I was homicidal," Smith says, starting to cry as she recounts that time. "They thought I was a threat to her."

And was she?

"I know I was a threat to her."

But Smith, who struggles with drug addiction and bipolar disorder, says that Snoop approached her one day during a church service at the prison, softly touching her on the hand as she said, "I'm sorry."

Don't be sorry, Smith told her, be careful. Live by the sword . . .

In that moment, Smith says, she felt some peace. Like God was trying to tell her, "This isn't your battle." Telling her it was time to forgive.

It proved to be a temporary peace. Now Snoop's television role is bringing the memories back. Here she is, recently married, wrestling with sobriety, trying to make a go of life, but she feels like she's been catapulted back to 1995.

"I was devastated," Smith says. "It's like they're glorifying it."

Would she feel differently if Snoop weren't playing an assassin?

"If she were playing a different role," Smith says, "I know I'd feel differently."

The Next Step

Yesterday, "The Wire" began filming its fifth and final season, a coda to a series that critics have deemed the best that television has to offer. So Snoop, who now enjoys a luxury few actors do -- a steady gig -- will be cut loose into a world of auditions and casting calls. In due time, she will find out if there is a place for her beyond "The Wire" and a role tailor-made for her.

"I can play other characters," Snoop says. "That's why I'm going to school. It ain't like I've been studying this all my life. People just got to give me a chance."

Her biggest obstacle: Overcoming typecasting. She's only 5-2 but she projects thug. Boy thug. At a restaurant, she heads for the women's room, only to be told by a panicked waiter, "The men's room is over there!" She just laughs. She's been getting that almost all her life. Last time she dressed like a girl?

"Fifth grade."

But underneath the baseball cap and the gangsta demeanor is a woman with the face of a silent screen star, all sleepy eyes, delicate features and cupid's-bow lips. She can do girlie-girl, she insists. Last fall she auditioned for the part of a 16-year-old in a movie, and spent hours walking in high heels. She'll do whatever it takes.

She knows that she's been given a one-in-a-million chance. It's not a chance that she plans to blow. She tried to go straight after she got out of prison. But, she says, once employers learned of her criminal past, she was always shown the door.

Since that night she met "Omar" in the club, she's reordered her life. Moved out of her old block and into a nice apartment in a nice side of town, playing house with her girlfriend. She's got a real estate agent, and big plans to buy a house and move her grandmother out of the 'hood.

With her new career comes a whole lot of attention, attention that she clearly enjoys. She pops into Mo's, a local seafood spot, and there, everybody seems to know her name. The bartender, a middle-aged Italian American woman with a weathered face, beams at the sight of Snoop, and without being asked, whips up her favorite non-alcoholic drink. The restaurant owner pops out to tease her about putting her picture on the wall, next to the other autographed pictures of stars. Diners slap her on the back, give her a pound -- and then ask her for her autograph.

Not so long ago, the producers of the show helped her find what was left of her biological family. She knocked on the door, she says, heart pounding. Her mother's mother opened the door and demanded to know "Who you?" It didn't end up being a happily-ever-after. They haven't been in touch since.

"I'm not angry," she says. "I'm just glad I got to see what my [biological] grandmother looks like."

So for now, she's focusing on the things that she can change. Like herself. She listens daily to speech tapes, practicing vowels and consonants in an effort to eradicate that distinctive B-more drawl from her speech, to say "everybody" instead of "urrrrybuhhy." There are acting classes at the Baltimore School of the Arts, and one-on-one sessions with an acting coach.

"She knows the odds," "The Wire" producer Burns says. "I just wish there was a fallback position for her. . . . She's doing everything possible you can do; the hope is that someone can see it. She's got great presence and she's extremely easy to work with.

"But how many roles are out there for a young black woman?"

"I never thought she'd be an actor," says Robbins, her godmother. "But I am sooooo glad. Even when she had the smallest roles [on 'The Wire'], I was like, 'Keep going back. Keep going back.' Anything to keep her off the streets."

Will it stick?

Robbins pauses.

"I hope so.

"Without this, where do we go? . . . I need her to do as much as she can do while the lights are still bright around her."