Who is stringer bell based on

Challenge… becoming a legitimate businessman. Stringer endeavors to leave the drug trade behind by developing real estate in downtown Baltimore. Stringer is a smart man, but his lack of understanding of the dynamics of the real estate business — and dirty politicians and contractors — leaves him vulnerable. Personality… confident, refined and ambitious, but also dangerous. In West Baltimore, neighborhoods are tough and filled with gangs and guns.

There, it's play or get played. Stringer Bell and his childhood friend Avon Barksdale have turned a once-modest drug-dealing ring into a drug empire. Nonetheless, witnessing the brutal murder, he said, determined that he would never be a 'victim', setting him on the solitary path of the stick-up man. Andrews career as an outsider on the streets of Baltimore would seemingly culminate with his life sentence in for the murders of Zachary Roach and Rodney 'Touche' Young - which he carried out to support his heroin addiction after meeting drug dealer Warren Boardley.

However, after being introduced to Ed Burns who co-created The Wire with David Simon he agreed to wear a listening device, helping to bring down the drug kingpins who had employed him to carry out the murders along with another man. Despite this, he did lengthy jail time, but overcame heroin addiction.

While behind bars, he was introduced to a fellow addict named Fran Boyd who would inspire another of Simon and Burns' characters in the book The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighborhood and the two later married. Once out of prison, Andrews began to counsel drug addicts, both inside prisons and out, as well as helping police with information to bring down drug gangs.

Upon Williams' death in , David Simon commented: "On paper, he's a murderer. We've constructed a criminal justice system that doesn't allow for the idea of redemption, and Donnie puts a lie to that. The Wire was described as a 'novel' for TV, and many argue that it never had a central character except for Baltimore itself.

Elba was devastated. Why would they do this to a character so beloved? And, selfishly, what would it mean for him? Would he ever work again?

And he let Simon know. At one point, the two would take a long, emotional walk around the Baltimore set, which was fittingly a graveyard on that day. Simon tried to assure his star that he had a big career ahead of him, and that this was going to free him up to take all of the opportunities that would come his way.