Oz (HBO)
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47 free Oz (HBO) trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
Before The Sopranos, before The Wire, HBO's first one-hour drama was a prison show set in a glass-walled experimental unit called Emerald City. Tom Fontana wrote almost all of it, had the show's logo tattooed on his arm on camera for the opening credits, and filled Oswald State Correctional Facility with actors who would go on to anchor Law & Order, Lost, Whiplash, 30 Rock and the Allstate 'Mayhem' ads. These 47 questions cover the series from its 1997 premiere to the 2003 finale: the factions of Em City, the narrator in the wheelchair, the unit manager, the warden, the nun-psychologist played by an EGOT winner, the bartender and the diner waiter Fontana wrote parts for, the actor written out to go film The Mummy Returns, the two episodes directed by a cast member, and the show's awards record. Questions focus on the people, the production and the places rather than the violence. Easy questions stick to the network, the setting and the biggest names; the hard tier asks about CableACE awards, guest stars and which nine regulars survived all six seasons. Every answer is cited to a page we checked, with a short explanation so you learn something even when you miss.
30 of 47 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Oz was created and principally written by whom?
Tom Fontana
Tom Fontana got his start in television writing for St. Elsewhere, after producer Bruce Paltrow hired him.
Q 02Oz holds what distinction in HBO's history?
Its first one-hour drama series
HBO made Oz its first one-hour drama series, following inmates in an experimental prison unit built around rehabilitation.
Q 03Which Shakespeare play turns deadly when Oz's inmates stage it?
Macbeth
Macbeth turned deadly when Keller swapped a prop knife for a real one, so Beecher, playing Macduff, really stabbed Schillinger in the title role.
Q 04'Oz' is the nickname of which fictional prison?
Oswald State Correctional Facility
Oswald State Correctional Facility, formerly Oswald State Penitentiary, is the fictional level 4 maximum-security prison the show nicknames Oz.
Q 05Which Oscar-winning film director was an executive producer of HBO's Oz?
Barry Levinson
Barry Levinson won his Best Director Oscar for Rain Man, and he runs a television production company with Oz's creator.
Q 06Which unit manager runs Em City with an emphasis on rehabilitation?
Tim McManus
Tim McManus runs Emerald City as an experiment, carefully balancing each racial and social group to ease tensions.
Q 07Who is the warden of Oz?
Leo Glynn
Leo Glynn's actor co-starred with his own son, who played the inmate Hamid Khan.
Q 08Which inmate narrates HBO's prison drama Oz?
Augustus Hill
Augustus Hill narrates from a wheelchair, explaining the show and adding context, thematic analysis and a sense of humour.
Q 09Who played the narrator of HBO's Oz?
Harold Perrineau
Harold Perrineau later led the MGM+ horror series From as Sheriff Boyd Stevens, a role that won him critical acclaim.
Q 10How did the narrator of HBO's Oz end up in a wheelchair?
Police threw him off a roof
Police threw him off a roof after he killed one of their officers during his arrest, leaving him paralysed from the waist down.
Q 11Which Oz gang is led by Schillinger?
The Aryan Brotherhood
The Aryan Brotherhood is one of Emerald City's factions, led by Schillinger, the show's sadistic neo-Nazi inmate.
Q 12Who played Vern Schillinger?
J. K. Simmons
J. K. Simmons also played police psychiatrist Emil Skoda across three Law & Order series and J. Jonah Jameson in Spider-Man.
Q 13Which Shakespeare role did an Oz regular play in Baz Luhrmann's 1996 Romeo + Juliet?
Mercutio
Mercutio, Romeo's best friend, is killed by John Leguizamo's Tybalt in the film, released in November 1996.
Q 21The actor behind O'Reily later became famous as which insurance-ad character?
Mayhem
Mayhem joined Allstate's television and radio ads in 2010, the same year Tina Fey brought the actor back to 30 Rock.
Q 22Who played the Nigerian inmate Simon Adebisi?
Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje
Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje was fostered as a baby by a white working-class family in Tilbury, the childhood behind his film Farming.
Q 23Which ABC drama later made two Oz regulars part of its plane-crash survivors?
Lost
Lost cast them as Mr. Eko, a fake Catholic priest, and Michael Dawson, a construction worker and aspiring artist.
Q 14Who played the Harvard-educated lawyer Tobias Beecher?
Lee Tergesen
Lee Tergesen also played Wayne and Garth's hug-happy cameraman, who keeps telling them 'I love you, man', in Wayne's World.
Q 15Beecher was sent to Oz for what crime?
Drunk-driving manslaughter
Drunk-driving manslaughter, for killing a child, sends the lawyer Beecher among hardened killers as the show's usually law-abiding everyman.
Q 16Which Showtime series later cast two Oz regulars as Miami police colleagues?
Dexter
Dexter, about a serial-killing blood-spatter analyst, cast them as Lieutenant María LaGuerta and Detective Angel Batista.
Q 17Who played the sociopathic Keller in HBO's Oz?
Christopher Meloni
Christopher Meloni played the bisexual criminal Chris Keller from 1998 until Oz ended in 2003.
Q 18Which Law & Order spin-off did Chris Keller's actor star in while still appearing on Oz?
Special Victims Unit
Special Victims Unit signed him as Detective Elliot Stabler in 1999, a role he later took back for Law & Order: Organized Crime.
Q 19Who played the Irish schemer Ryan O'Reily?
Dean Winters
Dean Winters survived cardiac arrest after a bacterial infection in 2009, though he lost two toes and half a thumb.
Q 20What was O'Reily's actor doing when Oz's creator met him and later wrote the part for him?
Working as a bartender
Working as a bartender when the creator met him, he was later written into Oz as Ryan O'Reily and appeared in all 56 episodes.
Q 24Adebisi led which Em City faction?
The Homeboys
The Homeboys, the African-American gang Adebisi leads, are one of the factions Emerald City is built to keep in balance.
Q 25Which British actor played Muslim leader Kareem Saïd?
Eamonn Walker
Eamonn Walker later spent twelve seasons as Battalion Chief Wallace Boden on NBC's Chicago Fire.
Q 26Who played the warden of HBO's Oz?
Ernie Hudson
Ernie Hudson auditioned to voice his own movie role in a spin-off cartoon, but the part went to Arsenio Hall.
Q 27Which EGOT-winning actress played the nun-psychologist Sister Peter Marie?
Rita Moreno
Rita Moreno won ALMA Awards for Oz, decades after becoming the first Hispanic woman to win an Oscar, for West Side Story.
Q 28Who played Em City's idealistic unit manager?
Terry Kinney
Terry Kinney also directed two Oz episodes, 'Cruel and Unusual Punishments' in 1999 and 'Wheel of Fortune' in 2002.
Q 29The actor who played Em City's unit manager was married to which Oz co-star?
Kathryn Erbe
Kathryn Erbe played death-row inmate Shirley Bellinger, then starred as Detective Alexandra Eames on Law & Order: Criminal Intent.
Q 30Who played the Latino inmate Miguel Alvarez?
Kirk Acevedo
Kirk Acevedo joined Oz's regular cast in season two and later played Charlie Francis on Fringe, who was killed off in its second-season premiere.