‘Fight Night: The Million Dollar Heist’ Cast On Being Transported Back In Time To Tell True-Crime Story

Fight Night: The Million Dollar Heist is a big conversation on social media right now. And why wouldn’t it be? It has the best ingredients: a star studded cast and a meaty story.

Based on the true-crime podcast, the series centers on an armed robbery on the night of Muhammad Ali’s historic 1970 comeback fight and how it changed one man’s life and transformed Atlanta at the same time, making it the “Black Mecca” we know now.

When a hustler named Gordon “Chicken Man” Williams (Kevin Hart) hosts an afterparty to celebrate the fight with a guest list of the country’s wealthiest, the night ends with the most brazen criminal underworld heist in Atlanta’s history. Suspected of masterminding the crime, Chicken Man is hellbent on clearing his name. But he must convince his old adversary J.D. Hudson (Don Cheadle), one of the first Black detectives in the city’s desegregated police force, who is tasked with bringing those responsible to justice.

Will Packer on a star-studded cast

Executive producer Will Packer said casting was key, and luckily, everyone on his team’s vision board agreed to participate. “It’s always tough [when casting]. You gotta have the right appeal. You gotta have the right pitch to them and you gotta have the right material,” he told Blavity’s Shadow and Act in an interview we did with the cast. “We went after each and every one of these stars individually, and they all said yes — which, as somebody that’s done some very cool ensemble casts before, that almost never happens.”

Showrunner Shaye Ogbonna made it his mission to ensure that just as Atlanta is the focal point of the series, the city was reflected properly in the marketing rollout as well. “It needed to happen because Atlanta was such a pivotal part of the show, just as a character. But we also, from day one, we were both strident in shooting in Atlanta, in the neighborhood, in the areas where this took place, in the part of town where I’m from, that I call home,” he said.

Injecting Atlanta into Fight Night

“We absolutely were intentional about injecting as much of Atlanta into the show as possible because it was part of the story,” he continued. “So of course, when it comes to the marketing, you wanna play that forward because that is part of the story of the show.”

Hart plays the central character, Chicken Man. While there are always elements of comedy in anything the Philadelphia native does, this role is more on the dramatic side. Hart said he has enjoyed that, noting that comedy can actually be harder to execute at times.

“The joy in drama is that it’s easier. … It’s harder to tell stories through the comedy lens because you’re leaning on the laugh, and that laugh sometimes exists or doesn’t exist on the set. … As a comic, for myself, personally, it’s easier to pull off the serious side of a performance because the reactions are based off of you and your counter,” he said. “I think it’s exciting for my fan base to see me and continue to gain respect for me in a place that you haven’t seen me operate in consistently.”

Ogbonna and Packer said the only person in the film who was aware of the original story was Samuel L. Jackson.

“I remember when it happened. … We talked about it and I thought it would be great to tell the tale and fill in some of the blanks about the mythology of it because it was a big deal, and to enhance the story in another way — because there are things that are factual that we know happened,” Jackson told us. “We know there was a fight, we know there was a robbery, we know people got stripped of their clothes, and we know people died because of it. And then you fill in the blanks around that and hopefully do entertaining and informative blank filling so that people can be entertained.”

A Kevin Hart-Taraji P. Henson reunion

Fight Night provided Hart and Taraji P. Henson, who stars as Vivian Thomas, Chicken Man’s mistress, the opportunity to work together again. They’ve shared the screen several times, and are close friends off camera. She said there’s a magical element to their relationship that transfers effortlessly on camera.

“I’ve been knowing Kevin for some time now, but I just finally learned Kevin, and Kevin is very much like my deceased grandmother,” Henson told us. “He loves, he has big heart, he really does, he has a big heart, this man loves hard. And when he loves you, he loves you, but he ain’t gonna show it. He has a weird way of showing you how he loves you. And as soon as you try to go in with the warmth, that’s when his defense mechanism comes. That’s when the comedy comes out — because he don’t wanna show you his vulnerability. But I see you, Kevin.”

Dexter Darden plays Muhammad Ali

Dexter Darden stars as the iconic Muhammad Ali, who has been portrayed dozens of times in film and television. Darden said having his chance to give his rendition of the world’s greatest fighter was a dream come true. “It was an honor,” Darden explained to us. “It was a Herculean task that I was happy I got the chance to do. And all I wanted to do the entire time was just do the champ and his legacy justice.”

Don Cheadle is known for playing riveting characters, and his work in this series is no different. Having to play the complex character Detective J.D. Hudson, the first Black man on the force after it was desegregated, didn’t come without difficulties. “It’s good to have a character that’s got these complications and a lot to chew,” Cheadle said to us. “He’s somebody who … is kind of vilified by the community, but at the same time needed by the community. I think that is sort of the line that he was straddling is, ‘How do I do my job effectively, but at the same time represent law and order, but not be the pariah?’”

Being transported back into the ’70s isn’t new for Sinqua Walls. In Fight Night, he stars as McKinley ‘Mac’ Rogers. Walls famously played Don Cornelius in American Soul, which chronicled the pioneer’s life and career as well as how he made Soul Train the place for Black life and culture throughout the ’70s. Walls said he is always excited to step back into that time.

“It was cool to do it again in a different capacity, playing a different character and a different set of circumstances,” Walls said. “With McKinley, obviously he’s going through an uphill battle of trying to survive and provide for his family. And so there was something really attracting to me about that, and his complexity and just like the two parallels [between the two different characters] … And there’s a lot of McKinleys out there.”

Atlanta’s own Chloe Bailey on her role

Atlanta plays a central character in the film. Being a born-and-bred ATLien, Chloe Bailey’s experience filming was more personal. “It was nice being able to go back to my roots and live there for a couple of weeks and also tell the story and bring to life the history of my hometown, a story that I had never heard of before this role came to me,” the “Treat Me” singer said to us.

She stars as Lena Mosley in the series. “Then, from that, completely immersing myself in it, and now being able to share it on such a bigger platform with huge names so that people can see what happened in the place that I was born? That’s really, really cool.”

Fight Night is streaming now on Peacock.