In his first lead role, Michael K. Williams will not be returning to the 36 chambers entirely when he plays the late Ol’ Dirty Bastard in the biopic, Dirty White Boy.

“There was a lot of things that us, in the public eye, us as his fan base, we didn’t know what he was going through right there in front of our face,” Williams recently told New York City’s Power 105 radio dial. “It wasn’t just drugs; he struggled deeply with mental illness.”

In March, it was confirmed that Williams would play ODB, a few months after both Eddie Griffin and Tracy Morgan expressed interest in the part. What’s more, many presumed that Dirty White Boy would resemble The Notorious B.I.G.’s, Notorious, and chronicle the deceased rapper’s entire life, but that is not the case.

“It’s only going to focus on the last two years of his life, when he was released from prison up until the day he died,” Williams clarified about the ODB biopic. “People don’t know why they were his worst years. There was some mental health issues. When he died, he was actually on the come up. He had a lot of hope for his life, man. He was getting his stuff together. You know what I mean?

“It was just unfortunate he had a little bit of that white girl in him, and he had a pain in his leg and asked for a painkiller,” he said. “When he should’ve have just took an Aleve, somebody gave him some horse tranquilizer, and it short-circuited his heart. But, it wasn’t like he was on a binge. You know dude was really excited about his future.”

Still, other portions of his life are to be highlighted in the film as well, and Williams has already envisioned a desired impact.

“His home life, what we don’t know, is what I want to bring,” Williams voiced. “Nobody knows that story. Everybody pretty much knows how he got to Wu-Tang. There’s going to be elements to that in there, but the relationship between him and his manager Jared [Weisfield], how that came to be – You know? There’s a lot of that story that we just don’t know.”

As of right now, no other members of the Wu-Tang Clan are confirmed to contribute to the film, yet there are things in the works to make it happen and RZA’s support seems likely, which Williams finds essential to the making of the biopic.

“It’s very important to the quality of film, to the realness of the film,” Williams said in regards to the RZA’s involvement. “We’re going to capture the last time that all of them were on stage together as a family, and to do that, we need all hands on deck. We don’t want no actors portraying any of the Wu-Tang; we want the real brothers.”—Christopher Minaya

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