How does one learn to “float like a butterfly” and “sting like a bee,” especially when they’ve never boxed before? That was the challenge that lay ahead for newcomer Jaalen Best.
Best, who made his television debut in a role credited simply as “Hot Guy” for “American Horror Stories” in 2022, stars as legendary boxer Muhammad Ali in Prime Video's "The Greatest" (streaming now). Season 1 opens with Ali winning gold at Rome’s Summer Olympics in 1960 and ends with Ali defeating Sonny Liston (Amin Joseph) for the Heavyweight belt on Feb. 25, 1964. In the eight episodes between, it sheds light on the formative bonds with his parents, Cassius Clay Sr. (Omari Hardwick) and Odessa “Bird” Clay (Dana Gourrier), and his younger brother Rudy (Kai Parham).
The show also traces the start of his interest in Islam and his early days of his friendship with Malcolm X (Michael Ealy).
The audition process for the biographical series, which is the first blessed by Ali's family, stretched “pretty much a year,” 28-year-old Best tells USA TODAY.
Without any experience in the ring, "that audition process was my first time training and learning how to develop that foundation," he says.
Series creator Ben Watkins, a "lifelong fan" of the boxer with 56 victories (37 by knockout) and only five losses to his name, says he "didn't want to do the greatest hits" and felt it was important to remind viewers that Ali, born Cassius Clay Jr., "didn't just come out into the world a fully formed legend."
In fact, the odds were heavily against Ali ahead of the Liston battle.
"Before the fight, [Ali] had a panic attack," Watkins explains. But when it was time to fight, "he had somehow summoned an inner resolve where he walked in there and felt impervious, and we get to show that. A lot of people don't even know that he was that nervous, a 22-year-old kid about to fight someone that is indestructible, and there were literally journalists who thought he might die in that fight."
How Jaalen Best prepared to play Muhammad Ali
To get into fighting shape, Best followed a "very restricted" diet, studying Ali’s technique in his fights and analyzing interviews to perfect his voice and mannerisms. He also worked with boxing trainer Rob Salley.
"It was repetition after repetition for a year-and-a-half, [a] long process for me," says Best. "It was just nice when we [were] able to start training together in Toronto, learning choreography. And even there, we would continue to grow and learn."
While filming in Toronto, Best says he and onscreen foe Joseph would watch fight footage. "We had to mimic exactly what we’d seen, in the actual fights, in real life," Best says.
"He was a well-tuned Ferrari," Joseph, 46, recalls of his costar. "I just knew I needed to be in fighter shape. I needed to stay healthy. I needed not to hit the Ferrari and mess up our lead… But he was the one, he always was that racehorse that I was always trying to be as good as."
Lonnie Ali and her 'game-changing' involvement in 'The Greatest'
Yolanda "Lonnie" Ali, who was married to Muhammad Ali from 1986 until his death from septic shock at age 74 in 2016, lends her expertise an executive producer on the series. She believes Best's efforts and portrayal would be pleasing to her late husband.
"He would be so proud of Jaalen as a young actor, a young man, and he would tell him he nailed it," Lonnie Ali says, before joking, "He would still tell him, 'You're not as pretty as me.'"
Lonnie Ali's participation in the series was "game-changing," Watkins says.
Though Lonnie Ali and Muhammad Ali wed in 1986, when she was 29, they knew each other much longer. A picture snapped by Steve Schapiro in 1963 shows Muhammad Ali, then 21, entertaining the local children at his parents’ house in Louisville. In the image, Lonnie Ali, then 6, locks eyes with the neighborhood hero. Their mothers were also friends.
"Lonnie herself was there many times on set," Gourrier, 47, says, "and she would always impart knowledge, always impart stories. She would always talk about each of [the family members] individually and collectively as a family, and she really was a wealth of information. It's like our own personal Clay family encyclopedia right there on set with us.”
Lonnie Ali's reactions also provided Best with a sense of reassurance, which helped calm his nerves as a young actor on set. He recalls seeing her at the monitors after a take, "and she's smiling or she's crying or she's just laughing because she's getting to truly experience young Cassius Clay, that's a very refreshing thing."
And though Lonnie Ali was involved as an executive producer, she's uncertain about how much of her husband's story will unfold in the television series. Future seasons will likely show Muhammad Ali’s Parkinson's diagnosis, which was revealed in 1984, "because that was one of the biggest fights of his life," Lonnie Ali says.
"Somebody of his physicality, but to walk it with dignity and grace the way he did it," she adds.
Ultimately, Lonnie Ali, says, "I think wherever it ends, it won't be enough."
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Jaalen Best never boxed before becoming Muhammad Ali. Inside his 18-month training
