James Ransone’s death has prompted many to look back on a life and career marked by remarkable film work and a rare openness about personal trauma.
When the late actor James Ransone spoke about his childhood sexual abuse
Long before his appearances on ‘The Wire’ or ‘It Chapter Two’ reached a global audience, Ransone had experiences that he would not talk about publicly until much later in his life.
In 2021, Ransone revealed that he was a survivor of childhood sexual abuse. He made the revelation in a lengthy Instagram post addressed directly to his alleged abuser, a former teacher named Timothy Rualo. Ransone said the abuse occurred repeatedly in 1992 at his family’s home in Phoenix, Maryland, when he was 12 years old.
“We did very little math,” Ransone wrote. “The strongest memory of the abuse was washing the blood and feces off my sheets after you left. I remember doing this as a 12-year-old because I was too ashamed to tell anyone.”
In the same post, Ransone linked the trauma to years of addiction and self-destructive behavior. He said the abuse fueled “a lifetime of shame and embarrassment” and contributed to the alcoholism and heroin use that dominated much of his early adulthood. According to reports in The Baltimore Sun, Ransone told Baltimore County police about the allegations in March 2020, but prosecutors later declined to prosecute.
Ransone has previously spoken about addiction and recovery in interviews, most notably in a 2016 profile for Interview Magazine. In this interview, he candidly reflects on how he got sober at age 27 after years of heroin use, and addresses misconceptions about his breakthrough.
“People think I sobered up while working on ‘Generation Kill.’ I don’t,” he said. “I got sober six or seven months before that… I remember going to Africa and I was supposed to be there for almost a year. I was number two on the list and I thought, ‘I think someone made a mistake. It’s too much responsibility for me’.”
James Ransone’s famous projects
These struggles and recoveries occurred concurrently with a career that earned him lasting recognition. Born in Baltimore, Ransone became widely known for his role as Chester “Ziggy” Sobotka in the second season of HBO’s The Wire, a role that captured the volatility and vulnerability of a young man lost in the harbor city’s underworld. The performance remains one of the most talked about characters in the series.
He later reunited with HBO in the Iraq War miniseries ‘Generation Kill’, playing Corporal Josh Ray Person, and appeared in other major television projects including ‘Treme and Bosch’.
In film, Ransone built a reputation as a compelling character actor with roles in ‘Sinister’, ‘Sinister 2’, ‘Tangerine’ and ‘The Black Phone’. He reached mainstream audiences in 2019 as the grown-up Eddie Kaspbrak in “It Chapter Two,” part of an ensemble that faces childhood fears in Stephen King’s horror epic.
Across genres, Ransone was known for bringing intensity and emotional honesty to his characters, often drawing on lived experience to deepen his performances. His willingness to speak publicly about abuse and addiction added another dimension to his legacy and offered insight into the resilience of the work viewers saw on screen.
James Ransone is survived by his wife Jamie McPhee and their son.
