Ben Watkins credits his lifelong affection for Muhammad Ali with a children’s biography he picked out of the Scholastic catalog when he was the first grade — and a minor stalking incident of the boxing great.
The future writer, director and actor, not even ten years old, had moved the Illinois suburbs with his family in the late 1970s when he discovered that Ali didn’t live too far away. So, after some coaxing, he convinced his mother to drive him to a tony enclave of Chicago’s south side and park out front of Ali’s Tudor mansion. For an hour. “Finally a limo pulls out, tinted windows, and my mom is like, ‘Oh, did you see? He waved,’” says Watkins. “I didn’t see him at all, but in my little kid mind, I was like, ‘I just met Muhammad Ali.’ And that was it for the rest of my life.”
Almost 50 years later, Watkins is attempting to finally sate his childhood curiosity with a planned three-season series about Ali. He’s the creator and showrunner of Prime Video’s The Greatest, which launched its complete eight-episode freshman run on Nov. 4. And in his attempt to not let himself down in, he says he made his job as difficult as possible.
“I didn’t want to do a traditional biopic, so I started the writer’s room by saying, ‘If it’s been in a documentary, it can’t be in this show,’ says Watkins. “Everyone looked at me like I was crazy. But I wanted to create a show about Muhammad Ali that people would want to watch even if there were no fights or big historical moments that they’re all aware of. Let it be built on a character study.”
Watkins is not playing the hits. And in doing so, he says he hopes to tap into something new about one of the most discussed and analyzed figures of the 20th century. Speaking with The Hollywood Reporter, he also talked about the delicate balance of working with the the late boxer’s widow and estate, working with Michael B. Jordan and putting star Jaalen Best through one of the most grueling (and awkward sounding) audition processes imaginable.
Ali fan that you are, is this something you’ve pursued your whole career or did it come to you?
It was through my agents. I saw a proposal for a show called The Greatest. They didn’t know how they wanted to tell the story. They just knew they wanted to tell his story. And the really big lure was that the family was behind it. Lonnie Ali and the estate were authorizing this. Me being a lifelong fan, I didn’t want to take my chances. The little seven-year-old in me would’ve been crushed if I didn’t pull it off. So, I didn’t do it. And it just stays in the rotation and a few years later it ends up with Michael B. Jordan and Outlier Society getting attached and so it comes across my desk again. And Michael B. Jordan and I went back a few years. I had cast him in an episode of Burn Notice.
It is so wild to think of Michael B. Jordan just showing up on an episode of Burn Notice.
This was back when I was a writer-producer on that show. It was just a guest spot that he got between The Wire and Friday Night Lights. I’ll never forget, because when I went to cast him, the network pushed back because they were looking at old clips of him. He was in the process of updating his reel, but this wasn’t days when you could just send a link. So his friend who was editing his reel, got a VHS, drove it to Glendale and I ran that into one of our edit bays and had them digitize it so that we could send it to USA for them to approve him. So it’s a little bit of a reunion for us.
This buy-in from the Ali estate is potentially tricky, though. Lonnie Ali is also an executive producer. And whenever you see the words “authorized biography,” you wonder about those authorizing it — what they want told and left untold.
It was definitely something that I worried about. I think it’s even more of a difficulty when someone has ascended to almost deity status. There’s a relatability factor that goes away. So my priority was to tell a story that would reintroduce you to the fact that this is a kid, a person, a human. And, even as he’s growing, he’ll have all the human faults, flaws, fears, vulnerabilities and baggage. It was a two-way street. I had to gain her trust in order for me to tell the story, but she had to gain my trust and give me the opportunity to tell the story with those marks. When I floated the idea of getting into some of the family stuff that I was finding out — and if I get to season two and three, there’s things about him that aren’t the most admirable — she said, “I’m OK with all of it as long as you tell the truth.” That became the organizing principle, just tell the truth. We can show someone who has a panic attack that nobody really talks about. And nobody talks about the stuff that happened in his contradictory and confrontational relationship with his father. I went even into domestic violence that occurred in that relationship. I will say that that was something that made them uncomfortable, but they all agreed it should be part of the story.
That antagonism with his father is the first conflict you depict — especially because there is such an instant buy-in to the relationship between Ali and his mother, who was a victim of that domestic violence.
One of my biggest fears was when I started to find this stuff out. I knew he had such a close relationship with his mom. Then I started finding out there was domestic violence there [with his father]. Then I’m looking at the history of it and I see she stayed with this man. Today, we’re so quick to dismiss people or make really quick sweeping judgments. “Oh, he hit you? Leave him. ” I knew I was going to have to confront the audience with that contradiction: a super strong, loving woman who is also with a volatile man and decides to stay. That is a contradiction. And today, people will tell you audiences aren’t ready for that. But there was no way around it.
It also puts his name change in a new light, because there is a clear emphasis on him sharing the name Cassius Clay with his father in the first episodes while clearly resenting his father’s treatment of his mother. His decision to eventually change his name to Muhammad Ali becomes more than just about his conversion to Islam. It distanced him from this man with whom he ideologically does not align.
Yes, that became a sort of north star for me. I have four sons. The youngest is 21, basically grown. Starting this story, I’m thinking about how proud Cash Clay Sr. must have been — and then thinking he’s not going to be happy with that name change, no matter what, put the faith conversation aside. If I’m a proud man who’s been carrying this name and my own son is saying he’s going to change his name, that would be a real problem for me. What does that name change mean, when the father feels like that son is his only connection to a real legacy — and now he’s not even going to carry his name?
What were the conversations like about the pacing of this? There aren’t a lot of multi-season biopics of famous historical figures. It’s very much a miniseries space.
The only really good cultural touchstone in our business would be The Crown. For any streaming platform right now, conversations, unfortunately, often reduce themselves to bingeability and hooks at the end. This type of story, you can’t be generated by that. Bingeability is great, and I’m already hearing about people who sit down to watch a couple episodes and end up watching a bunch. But this idea that you would’ve to tell a story where you’re going to come up with a hook that’s going to be something that’s going to force people to keep watching, we had to say that it wa not how we can be motivated. That doesn’t mean we don’t have episodes that don’t have this sort of driving question at the end that makes you want to watch the next one, but that cannot drive decision making.
Period pieces always come with financial hurdles — clearing songs, locations. What is your approach to those kinds of obstacles?
I’m a big believer that you have to say what you want and not let anything that is related to practicality seep into the conversation too early. So, if I say the first sequence takes place in the Roman Colosseum, I say I want to shoot in the Roman Colosseum even though they’ve never allowed to shoot in the Roman Colosseum. I have to say it, because then everyone at least knows what I’m going for. Then, people just manage to pull things off.
So that was the actual Colosseum?
Yes, and I was told we are the first and only television show that’s ever filmed there. That was something that I wrote in the scrip to send a message about the scope that I wanted for the show. I didn’t think there’d be any way we could pull that off. I just said, “Let’s go for it.” And the team that we had pulled it off. Then I asked someone from the Coliseum, “Why us?” She said, “Because it’s Muhammad Ali, and because it’s our history too.”
Talk to me a little bit about Jaalen Best. He does not have the longest IMDB profile. Was it immediately clear that you wanted to cast a fresh face?
Immediately. When the [pilot] script goes in, I get a call from the big wigs at Amazon that they’re going to green light the series. Very quickly, I said, “The search for Cassius Clay needs to start today. If we don’t find the right one, we probably can’t do this show.” That’s the fan in me talking, because I know how I would feel if we doidn’t do that part right. Amazon agreed, and we brought in Kim Coleman as casting director and she got started early. I told her four things: “I want a newcomer. I want somebody with an athletic background. Ideally, I wan them to be from the Southeast so that they’d be closer to the dialect.” The last thing, and I knew I would need to be the one vetting this, but I said, “I want somebody with daddy issues, because I want them to be able to tap into that quickly.”
That is a very tall order.
Of course. I don’t know if I’ll get any or all of these, but those were the things I told her. The newcomer part was the most important, so she couldn’t go through the normal channels. She put out feelers to boxing clubs, regional theater, community theater, acting classes. Jaalen had come out to try his luck at Hollywood, didn’t really get much traction, and had basically moved back to North Carolina. Then this audition pops up, he puts himself on tape, and immediately I saw something in him. But his first audition was a direct impersonation of Muhammad Ali, like a full-on impersonation. It was a good impersonation! But I knew that’s the last thing I wanted. So I had Kim ask him to put himself again on tape, but as himself. Then he did that, and this turned into a year and a half process. There were hundreds, probably thousands of folks up for this role, and it narrowed down to four people, and they were all fantastic.
So how did you get down to one?
He seemed to emerge at every phase. And then the final thing we did was a physical evaluation. It was three days in Los Angeles, where we were going to see what they could do. What was their innate physicality? How quickly did they take to some of the boxing stuff? I brought them to a gym in Los Angeles with this trainer, Rob Salley. The first day I had all four guys show up, and I hadn’t told hat they were going to meet each other that day. They all walked in like, “Shit.” Rob was like, “Oh, I get it. The threat of competition.” That is exactly what I wanted. In my mind, Muhammad Ali would walk in there and say “I got this.” I wanted to see who had that quality.
There are many different kinds of actor-producers. What’s a Michael B. Jordan note like?
His sense of story is fantastic. To be getting his notes and still remember working with that kid is pretty crazy. Also, you’re so used to notes from celebrities that don’t carry much weight. You’re used to getting notes from producers, when you’re the one in the trenches and they’re just kind of flying by. It’s not like that. He takes it very seriously and he gives really good notes. The other good piece of it is that you’re dealing with Michael B. Jordan. You could argue he’s the biggest star in movies right now. If he gets behind something that you want, the chances of it happening go way up.
There was a moment where the show was suddenly on the fence, after they had already greenlit it, but things changed at Amazon and they were questioning it. It was dicey, really hanging by a thread. Michael switched his schedule to show up to some key meetings and advocate for this show in person. That helped clinch the deal.
