Happy Birthday to Juan Beckham, Set Costumer on #TheWire (and Snot Boogie actor). He’s also worked on The Corner, We Own This City, House of Cards, VEEP, Swagger and more. But his start came from hanging around the set of “Homicide: Life on the Street.” Here’s a few paragraphs from a 2002 Baltimore Sun article: (his professional name, DaJuan Prince, is used) Prince’s road to The Wire began in 1995. Homicide: Life of the Street was filming in the Lexington Terrace neighborhood, right in his back yard. Academy Award winner Kathy Bates was directing an episode entitled “Scene of the Crime” which focused on a murder case in the housing projects. “I just walked onto the set,” Prince explains. “Kathy Bates was directing that episode and let me change words in the script. It was exciting to me.” “Kathy made friends with everyone. She sorta took the kids in,” said David Simon, producer-writer-director on both Homicide and The Wire. “You’re filming in people’s back yard, so you let them see the video, call ‘Cut’ and ‘Role.’ She would say to the older kids, ‘Did that look real to you?’ The kids knew what it was supposed to look like.” Alone among the crowd, Du’Juan, then 15, hung around when the shoot was over. He asked where filming would take place the next day, then showed up to continue what he’d started. “Every time they wrapped, I asked what time they were coming back the next day, and I’d be there,” Prince recalled. “I started calling them and hanging around for so many years that they just got used to me.” Da’Juan’s “hanging around” landed him his first job on a film set, as a production assistant on The Corner, Simon’s miniseries, also filmed in Baltimore. “Before, he had been a kind of a mascot,” Simon said. “We enjoyed having him around. But this was a real job now.” Prince fit in immediately. “He became responsible and creative,” Simon said, “so we put him in wardrobe as assistant for The Wire.” “Da’Juan is actually busier than I am on the set,” says actor Larry Gilliard Jr., who plays D’Angelo Barksdale, a drug dealer who is the prime target of the police investigation on The Wire. “He’s always dealing with the actors, always ready and on the go.” A typical day for Prince begins with the extras, who will remain his main focus throughout filming. He’ll look at what they brought to wear and compare it with what is needed for the scene. “You can’t wear certain colors,” says Prince, who hopes this stint on The Wire will lead to a career in costume design. (It did) Happy Birthday Juan! (@HomeOfTheWire)
