Whatever Happened To The Cast Of HBO's Oz?

Of all the prison-based shows we've seen over the years, few have managed to capture the horrors of state correctional facilities quite like "Oz." After debuting in 1997, the acclaimed HBO series ran for six seasons, taking a deep dive into the lives of the prisoners and guards at Oswald State Correctional Facility. This tough-as-nails crime drama holds nothing back as the prison staff attempt to rehabilitate the often-violent inmates. The idea was "to go to a place that had never been explored in fictional television, and tell as many good stories as I could possibly tell," creator Tom Fontana told CNN when the show wrapped in 2003.

"Oz" was a huge hit for HBO and it paved the way for other premium cable dramas. After 20 years off the air, you may be wondering what the actors who brought the show to life are doing now. Read on to find out what happened to the cast of "Oz."

Before his time on "Oz," Terry Kinney was a theater director who co-founded the famous Steppenwolf Theatre Company in Chicago. He's a familiar face in the theater world, but TV fans probably know him best for playing prison unit manager Tim McManus in "Oz." In the years that followed "Oz," Kinney popped up in various TV films, miniseries, and network shows. He has guest starred in episodes of "CSI: NY," "Law & Order," and "Elementary," and he has recurred on "Being Human," "The Unusuals," "The Mentalist," and Showtime's "Billions," in which he plays the "fixer" known only as Hall.

More recently, Kinney appeared in Netflix's "The Watcher." The show is loosely based on the terrifying true story of the Broaddus family, who started receiving threatening letters from an unknown person after moving into an old house in New Jersey. Kinney plays Jasper Winslow, a neighbor of the family who comes under suspicion. Outside of television, Kinney also plies his trade in feature films. He was in the Peter Berg espionage thriller "Mile 22" with Mark Wahlberg, the Ted Bundy biography "Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile" alongside Zac Efron, and the neo-noir thriller "The Little Things," led by Denzel Washington, Rami Malek, and Jared Leto.

In "Oz," the charismatic Muslim leader Kareem Saïd is played by Eamonn Walker, who has appeared in plenty of film and TV projects in the years since the HBO hit wrapped. On the back of "Oz," the London-born actor landed a role alongside Nicolas Cage in 2005's "Lord of War." He played blues singer Howlin' Wolf in 2008's "Cadillac Records," and then appeared as Danny Mills in 2010's "The Company Men," a recession drama starring Ben Affleck, Kevin Costner, and Tommy Lee Jones.

In 2012, Walker landed what would become a career-defining role for him: Chief Wallace Boden in "Chicago Fire," the series that kickstarted the entire "One Chicago" franchise. Appearing in every "Chicago" series, including the short-lived "Chicago Justice," Walker has played Boden in precisely 250 episodes of television at the time of this writing, and there are plenty more on the horizon. Boden was promoted to Deputy District Chief of District 4 in Season 10, and continues to be a pivotal figure in the "One Chicago" universe.

One of only a handful of performers to have won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar, and a Tony, Rita Moreno has been around in Hollywood since the 1950s. When "Oz" ended in 2003 and her time as Sister Pete was done, she quickly moved on to new roles, notably guest starring as a couple of different characters in the "Law & Order" franchise. It wasn't until 2011 that the multitalented star would find consistent television work again as Dori Newman on the sitcom "Happily Divorced."

From there, Moreno landed roles in "Jane the Virgin," "Grace and Frankie," and "Grey's Anatomy" before finding new life on the sitcom "One Day at a Time," a remake of the 1975 series of the same name. Though she didn't play Lydia Riera for quite as long as she played Sister Pete, her new role on the Pop TV series became a firm favorite among followers of her work.

Moreno has made a couple of feature film appearances over the past few decades, none more impressive than her role as Valentina in Steven Spielberg's remake of "West Side Story." Given that Moreno's most famous role is probably Anita in the original 1961 film, it's no wonder Spielberg brought back the EGOT-winner for a second round. She was happy with how the remake turned out, she told The Hollywood Reporter. "This is one of the few times in my life that I love myself in something," she said.

Known for playing main character Tobias Beecher in "Oz," Lee Tergesen has managed to stay pretty busy ever since the HBO series ended in 2003. Following the series finale, Tergesen appeared in Patty Jenkins' directorial debut "Monster" alongside Charlize Theron, who portrays the real-life serial killer Aileen Wuornos. The "Oz" star was cast as a fictional character who beats and sexually assaults Wuornos (a sex worker who murdered seven men during a violent killing spree) in a harrowing scene. This didn't happen in real life, which led reporters and family members of the victims to question why the killer was being made sympathetic on screen. The film did well regardless, and Jenkins was full of praise for Tergesen. "He has that nice/scary guy thing," she said.

Like many of his "Oz" co-stars, Tergesen found himself guesting on shows like "CSI" and "Law & Order," though he soon landed the role of U.S. Marshal Eddie Drake on "Wanted," a short-lived TNT police drama that put him in a better light. Before long, Tergesen had secured recurring roles on "The Americans," "Longmire," "Defiance," "American Horror Story," "The Strain," and Netflix's "Daredevil" — he played Karen's father Paxton Page in the popular Marvel show. In 2018, Tergesen landed the role of vigilante Joe Owens in USA's "The Purge" series, which is set between the films "The Purge: Anarchy" and "The Purge: Election Year."

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Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje has been all over the place since "Oz" ended, but that's not a bad thing. A guest star in the show's first season, Akinnuoye-Agbaje was quickly promoted to a recurring cast member during his tenure as inmate Simon Adebisi. By the time the third season rolled around, he was part of the main cast. Akinnuoye-Agbaje was only written out of the show because he had his sights set on working in films. "I didn't want to kill that character, but it was a necessity due to the actor's wanting to move on," Tom Fontana told CNN.

His exit from "Oz" allowed him to appear in "The Mummy Returns," "The Bourne Identity," "G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra," "The Thing," "Thor: The Dark World," and "Suicide Squad," where he played the villain Killer Croc. In that time, Akinnuoye-Agbaje found his way back to television, most notably to play Mr. Eko on "Lost" and Malko on "Game of Thrones."

In 2018, he directed his first feature film. "Farming" tells the story of a young Nigerian boy who was "farmed" out to a British family. Based in part on his own story, the film won the Michael Powell Award for Best British Feature Film at the Edinburgh Film Festival in 2019. "I am absolutely thrilled to have received this prestigious award, named after one of my cinematic heroes, for my first film," Akinnuoye-Agbaje said (per Variety).

BD Wong played Father Ray Mukada in "Oz." Since his time on HBO, Wong's popularity has only increased, landing him work in film, television, video games, and on the stage. Though he first played Dr. Henry Wu in "Jurassic Park," long before "Oz," Wong returned to the role in 2014's "Jurassic World." He has since reprised it in subsequent sequels, video games, theme park attractions, and animated spin-offs.

Beyond his work resurrecting dinosaurs, Wong has had recurring and leading roles on various television shows. These include "Gotham," in which he played the villain Hugo Strange, and "Mr. Robot," in which he gave an Emmy-nominated performance as the transgender hacker Whiterose. His most prolific television work has been as Dr. George Huang on "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit," a character he has played over 200 times.

In the feature film world, Wong has been in "The Space Between Us," "Focus," and "Bird Box" in recent years. He's also been getting into directing — he helmed an episode of "Awkwafina Is Nora from Queens" in 2021, and he took charge of the stage production "Yes, I Can Say That!" in 2023.

After playing Chief Attending Physician Dr. Gloria Nathan in "Oz," Luna Lauren Vélez continued her television career with a handful of guest and recurring roles before playing Captain María LaGuerta on the hit Showtime series "Dexter." Vélez played Captain LaGuerta in the first seven seasons of the series, and eventually became an antagonist for the titular character. In 2010, Vélez won the Rita Moreno HOLA Award for Excellence, bestowed upon her by the Hispanic Organization of Latin Actors in connection with her outstanding work on "Dexter" and "Oz."

After being killed off from "Dexter," Vélez secured smaller roles in the likes of "How to Get Away with Murder," the "MacGyver" reboot, and "Blue Bloods." Beyond television, she has made appearances in "The First Purge," "Swallow," and the 2019 "Shaft" sequel. Marvel fans will no doubt know her as the voice of Rio Morales (the mother of Miles Morales) in the hit animated film "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse." She is set to reprise the role in the upcoming sequel "Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse."