Jamie Hector Wants That Black Belt

The actor Jamie Hector grew up in South Brooklyn, watching karate motion pictures on Saturday mornings. He started learning martial arts as a teen. “I wanted to throw a ninja star,” he stated. “I wanted to fight like Bruce Lee.”

Three many years later, at a dojo within the Crown Heights part of Brooklyn, he squatted on the ground, an elbow arced above his head, a wrist bent again at an alarming angle. He was being marched round a golden, plant-filled room by his longtime sensei, Soke Haisan Kaleak.

“How am I manipulating him like a marionette puppet?” Mr. Kaleak stated. Pretty simply.

At 46, Mr. Hector stays child confronted, with massive eyes and a broad brow that narrows to a tidy chin. He broke out 15 years in the past as Marlo Stanfield, a stone-cold, sweatband-repping drug supplier within the third season of “The Wire.” With ruthless effectivity and a dreamlike stillness, Stanfield took over nook after nook. A whole lot of that effectivity got here from Mr. Hector’s years of martial arts coaching, which taught him management, stamina, financial system of movement and that absolute, unruffled presence.

“I consider it a spiritual discipline,” he stated, his voice graveled like a pebbled seaside.

He nonetheless practices at any time when he can. And on this free afternoon a number of days earlier than the premiere of his new present, “We Own This City,” a six-episode HBO drama from the creators of “The Wire,” he had downed a peanut butter protein shake, then bounded up the steps to Urban Asanas, a dojo that doubles as a yoga studio, in order that Mr. Kaleak might almost snap his wrist.

“I took you down,” Mr. Kaleak stated cheerfully. “I could have done more.”

A spring wind chilled the streets beneath, however on this second-floor room, with houseplants tumbling down from hanging baskets and stretching up from clay pots, a number of area heaters hummed. Mr. Hector shortly broke right into a sweat below his black gi, belted in brown.

Mr. Kaleak started the afternoon with a lesson on the 2 types of blocking: interception and evasion. (His technique, which he calls martial science, depends on a fusion of karate and jujitsu.) “You’re going to put something in the way or you’re going to move out of the way,” he stated.

“Oss!” Mr. Hector and his dojo brothers shouted, a jujitsu time period conveying {that a} idea has been heard and understood.

Mr. Kaleak then taught them acronyms for tips on how to reply when confronted by an attacker: SMAC (shock, transfer, assault, management) and THE (throat, fingers, eyes). Mr. Hector listened — head excessive, shoulders again, intestine tensed, toes planted firmly on the ground.

After a couple of minutes of warm-up by which the scholars kicked at blue observe pads and punched the air, Mr. Kaleak introduced a drill that he had named “in-country,” after his time in Vietnam.

“If you were ‘in-country,’ you would be in the thick of it,” he stated. “So don’t be afraid of pressure. Take yourself to a point of pressure, whenever you can.”

In the drill, Mr. Hector would punch the observe pads with every arm, then evade strikes from all sides, punch once more, then use every elbow to dam. He would run it thrice.

“Drills make skills,” Mr. Kaleak stated. “Your job is to make it muscle memory.”

Mr. Hector ran it for the primary time, fists thwacking the pads, making a number of errors.

“Always learn from your mistakes,” Mr. Kaleak endorsed.

Mr. Hector ran it once more with Black Hawk, a fellow scholar, holding the pads. His type was elegant, compressed.

“That’s the drill, that’s the pressure,” Mr. Kaleak stated encouragingly. “Stand your ground.” Mr. Hector did, executing the drill a 3rd time and a fourth till his blocks grew to become extra fluid. Would he really feel it the subsequent day? He would possibly. This is what comes of coaching in your 40s.

“Now every hit matters, every strike matters,” Mr. Hector stated.

From “The Wire” and on, Mr. Hector has made his performing matter, too. After taking part in a legal, he switched sides and portrayed a detective on seven seasons of the Amazon Prime collection “Bosch.”

In “We Own This City,” based mostly on an investigation into Baltimore’s famously crooked Gun Trace Task Force, Mr. Hector performs Sean Suiter, a murder detective and father of 5. In distinction to the corruption that surrounds him, Suiter does his job with unshowy integrity.

“His north star is doing good,” Mr. Hector stated of the character.

It’s a star he tries to observe in his personal life. In 2007, impressed by the fourth season of “The Wire” that tracks a disaster in public schooling, he based Moving Mountains, a nonprofit that gives free dance, voice and drama courses after college and on weekends to Brooklyn youth. (Moving Mountains moved on-line through the pandemic, however Mr. Hector is now trying to find a brand new area.)

“The door is wide open,” he stated. “That’s how we are able to serve so many kids and transition lives.”

Mr. Hector nonetheless considers himself a scholar. After the drill, Mr. Kaleak congratulated him on his persistence and his focus. “Good to see you, man,” he stated, clapping him on the arm. “I want you to get that black belt.”

Mr. Hector didn’t intercept the problem. He didn’t evade. “That’s a must,” he stated. “Oh, yeah. Absolutely. We’re going all the way.”