MONDO EXTRAS

KD: Where did that experience come from?

CA: I was jumped and put in the hospital when I was eighteen, and the last thing I heard the guy say was, "Shoot him now." I didn't get shot, but I had a concussion and I got beat even more, because I followed the car the guys got out of, to try and get the license plate for my dad to run.... After that, I started training in other forms of karate and stuff, but nothing compares to what you see in the Ultimate Fighting Championship. It's the most realistic martial arts: Muay Thai and Brazilian Jiu-Jitso, and I started training in them.

KD: So you started training as a means of self-defense?

CA: I knew I needed to learn how to take care of myself. I was working on a project in 1998, and I got jumped again -- but the guys that jumped me also jumped my training partner, a champion Muay Thai figurer. We were trying to walk away, and they tried to run us over in a parking lot. They stopped the car and proceeded to keep on pushing it. We tried to walk away, but sometimes you can't walk away, especially where there's a wall behind you back.

KD: I take it you won that fight.

CA: I started to laugh because I couldn't believe it was happening again...I thought of an internship I did with the police in Danville, Virginia. I asked one of the guys, "How do you deal with the public when people have attitudes toward you, but don't realize all the problems that the police have to deal with?" He said, "I'm as nice as I can be, but mean as I have to be." So I told [one of the men trying to fight] that we don't have any problem with them and they don't need to get combative. His exact phase was, "What the fuck are you going to do, pretty-boy?" I said, "It's funny you should ask." I was able to put him in a hold and subdue him without really hurting him. While [forcing him to submit], I was asking him, "Why are you doing this? Why did you feel that you have to come up and injure my friends?" I didn't have to hurt him, but I took control of the situation and that felt good.

KD: On The Wire, as you said, everything is so separate, and there are so many stories and scenes that don't intersect. Was it the same way off the set?