Sonja Sohn

The Rhyme That Ended Up on Set

Sonja Sohn wasn't looking for the camera when the camera found her in 1998.

She was focused on street poetry and the rhymes she spat in New York clubs. But director Marc Levin saw something in that hard gaze and had her write the script for Slam while she starred in it. The film won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance that same year.

That early success did not guarantee her a red carpet in Hollywood. She spent a while in small roles on police dramas and independent films that barely reached commercial audiences. But in 2002, she received a call from David Simon for a project that would be shot in the hardest-hit areas of Baltimore.

And the gamble paid off.

The Detective Who Didn't Ask Permission

The role of Shakima Greggs in The Wire defined her career. Sohn played a lesbian detective in a hypermasculine police environment without falling into the usual clichés of early-2000s television. She appeared in all 60 episodes of the series between 2002 and 2008.

And she did it with a composure that was unsettling.

During the shoot in Baltimore, she became so involved with the city's social reality that she founded a nonprofit called ReWired for Change. The goal was to work with at-risk youth using the same locations where they filmed the fiction. Because Sohn always understood that her work didn't end when the director yelled cut.

After the series ended in 2008, she appeared in hit productions such as Brothers and Sisters and Body of Proof. In these projects she often played women in positions of authority (prosecutors, police chiefs, or federal agents) who relied on a dry, direct tone of voice.

Moving Into Directing and Returning to Procedurals

In 2017, she decided acting was no longer enough and directed the documentary Baltimore Rising for HBO. The piece examined the protests following the death of Freddie Gray. It was a raw work that avoided easy judgments to focus on the real rift between police and citizens.

She returned to directing with The Slow Hustle in 2021. This time she investigated the strange death of Detective Sean Suiter, a case that still raises questions in Maryland. Sohn showed she knew the codes of the street better than many local journalists because she had spent decades listening to residents of the city's west side neighborhoods.

But she never fully abandoned mainstream acting.

In 2023, she joined the cast of Will Trent to play Amanda Wagner. She's a character with a dark past and plenty of authority, which lets her work in a restrained register. The series was renewed for a third season in 2024, confirming that her presence still works on American network television.

Production on the second season of Will Trent employed more than 200 local professionals in the state of Georgia during the filming months in 2024. Sohn splits her residence between New York and wherever her annual production contracts take her.