She wanted to get out of there. She knew she would.
When she was 5, Sonja Sohn would crawl atop a generator behind her home in Tidewater Virginia. Her father would lie beside her. “I’d ask, ‘What’s the difference between an astronomer and an astrologer?’” she says. “He saw where I was going.”
He told her she could be a lawyer. She liked hearing that. But she also knew it wouldn’t be easy: Drugs permeated the streets of her rough neighborhood, drugs she’d later experiment with.
Sohn’s life would be a balancing act — between wanting to help others and having the resources and background to do so; escaping an abusive situation at home and having the guts to run away; filling life roles as mother, friend, actor and feeling fulfilled.
It’s a similar unwieldy line Sohn’s character on HBO’s Baltimore-set crime saga “The Wire,” Det. Kima Greggs, had to walk — Kima could be tough-as-nails one scene and show heartbreaking vulnerability the next.
After all these years, Sohn’s standing straight on life’s tightrope. “A lifelong purpose has meant a lot of me,” says Sohn. “I’ve been on that search since I was 5 years old.”
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