Jaalen Best Leads Prime Video’s Ali Series — SkimNews
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- The Greatest chronicles four years of Cassius Clay’s life, from turning pro and partnering with trainer Angelo Dundee to converting to Islam, befriending Malcolm X and beating Sonny Liston for the world heavyweight title in 1964.
- Jaalen Best plays 18-year-old Cassius Clay in the 1960 Rome Olympics sequence; the review calls his resemblance, voice cadence and rapid rhymes spot-on and says the casting gives a relatively unknown actor a platform to shine.
- Dana Gourrier portrays Odessa Clay as a loving mother, while Omari Hardwick’s Cassius Clay Sr. is given alcoholism, a violent temper, philandering and anger rooted in racial abuse, giving Ali a fully dimensional family background.
- Ben Watkins created the eight-episode series with Muhammad Ali’s estate and executive producers Michael B. Jordan and Shawn “Jay-Z” Carter, centering Cassius’s coming of age in Jim Crow America rather than boxing alone.
- Stuart Campbell and Jeremy Benning’s camera work delivers visceral coverage of the 1962 Floyd Patterson–Sonny Liston fight and Ali’s 1963 bout with Henry Cooper, capturing enough blood-and-guts detail to feel ringside.
- Prime Video premieres all eight episodes of The Greatest on Nov. 4, making the full series available in one day.
Why it matters: Prime Video’s Nov. 4 launch releases all eight episodes at once, giving Jaalen Best the rare platform the review says relatively unknown actors seldom receive. The series’ strongest material is its human detail—family, faith and life outside the ring—so Best’s newcomer performance, not the fight footage, anchors its appeal.
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