‘Fight Night’ Bosses Will Packer, Shaye Ogbonna on Making Iconic TV and What to Take Away From Chicken Man in the End

[This story contains major spoilers from the series finale of Fight Night.]

Kevin Hart’s Chicken Man is on the ground, breathing hard in fear, as Samuel L. Jackson’s badass gangster Frank Moten, known as the Black Godfather, holds a gun.

Subtly channeling Jackson’s legendary Pulp Fiction persona Jules Winnfield, Frank thunders, “You do believe in God, right?” Hart’s Chicken Man reply “with all my soul” produces a soft, but stern “then testify” from Frank. Not long after, a shot is fired, followed by a visual rewinding that flashes back to two weeks earlier, when Fight Night: The Million Dollar Heist launched its story.

To launch the hit Peacock limited series — which Hart produces through his Hartbeat shingle with Will Packer — a black screened disclaimer appeared all capped in yellow type with the words “BASED ON SOME SHIT,” pause, “THAT REALLY HAPPENED.” The series’ eighth and final episode returned to that moment, later revealing that Gordon “Chicken Man” Williams (Hart) does indeed meet his maker; just not in the way Fight Night’s opening suggests.

The “really happened” part of the series is both the Muhammad Ali comeback fight against white boxer Jerry Quarry held Oct. 26, 1970 in Atlanta and a notorious, casino-styled afterparty thrown by Chicken Man, reportedly attended by some of the nation’s notorious gangsters where patrons were robbed of their valuables. It’s the fight and afterparty referenced in the 1974 classic film Uptown Saturday Night. It’s also Ali’s comeback fight after being banned from boxing for refusing to fight in the Vietnam War. Atlanta landing the fight, many believed, was the sign of even greater things to come.

Described as a “love letter to Atlanta” by both Packer, a longtime Atlanta resident, and the Atlanta-rooted showrunner Shaye Ogbonna who created the series, Fight Night is also an origin story of sorts for how Atlanta transformed from country town to a big city of dreams. Grounding the series is the 2020 true-crime Fight Night podcast Packer produced with Jeff Keating, who hosted it, and Atlanta pop culture fixture Kenny Burns, with both serving as producers on the series.

Also along for the ride are Taraji P. Henson as the married Chicken Man’s other woman and business partner Vivian, Terrence Howard as New Jersey crime boss Cadillac Richie, and Don Cheadle as Atlanta police detective J.D. Hudson. Other familiar faces include Chloe Bailey, Lori Harvey, Clifton Powell, David Banner, Rockmond Dunbar, RonReaco Lee, Sinqua Walls (Power), Michael James Shaw (The Walking Dead), Jalyn Hall (All American, Till), Melvin Gregg (Snowfall), Atkins Estimond (Hightown), Myles Bullock (BMF), Dexter Darden (Saved by the Bell), Jason Warner Smith (Outer Banks), Sam Adegoke (Dynasty) and a surprise cameo by Debbie Allen as the mother to Cadillac Richie (Howard).

Packer and Ogbonna spoke with The Hollywood Reporter about the series finale, sharing their mission to create iconic television, how collaborating with stars like Henson and Cheadle made the series better, why Howard is a great villain, and how the Franks of the world paved the way for them to live their dreams.

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What did you set out to create with Fight Night? You have the real story, and then you have this series.

WILL PACKER Well, from my standpoint, I wanted to make iconic television. To be honest with you, iconic television that had Black folks in front of the camera, behind the camera, that told the story of an amazing city that is led by Black people today. I felt like this was an opportunity. You watch the show, and you can tell that it’s an homage to the Blaxploitation era and a lot of the content that was being made in the ’70s. I felt like we hadn’t had that in contemporary shows, something that had all your faves going to work, doing what they do, telling the story of an incredible city like Atlanta, telling an incredible story about a Black icon at a time period when the world wasn’t the same as it is today. There were all kinds of challenges and obstacles that folks had to overcome. And I thought Shaye did a brilliant job weaving all that together. I laid all that at his feet. I said, “These are all the elements; now you gotta go be the chef. Cook it up and make something delicious.” And I think audiences will agree that he did that.

Okay Chef, what were your ingredients?

SHAYE OGBONNA I just had great partners. They got me the best groceries. And it was my job to prep those groceries and cook them, and make an incredible continental meal. You have the ingredients that were laid at my feet, which were this amazing cast, this awesome story, this amazing podcast, which I always try to give love to. The podcast really laid a great blueprint, a great, for lack of a better word, skeleton that had a lot of meat to it, a lot of flesh on the bone. So I was just lucky to have incredible partners like Will and Kevin [Hart], and then Universal, a company to just really give me and our team the resources we needed to make this incredible series. Selfishly, just like Will, I wanted to create iconic television, add to that lexicon of these amazing, Black event pieces, like the Coming to Americas, the Uptown Saturday Nights, the Harlem Nights, the Black Panthers. I always, as a creative, wanted to add to that legacy and this was an opportunity to do that. Also, I wanted an opportunity to tell Atlanta’s origin story, this interesting origin story of this awesome city that we all either love, hate or talk about today. For me, this was a bucket list opportunity.

So let’s talk the meat and bones of it. How do you take the podcast, which is a little different than what we see on the screen, and make this series? What does Chicken Man represent?

OGBONNA The one thing that was important to me, that not only was clear in the podcast, but also just as a person who is a product of the city, was the aspirational aspect. Growing up in Atlanta, people that were my contemporaries, relatives and mentors always had a big dream that they were working on. And for me, Chicken Man was the embodiment of it — this kind of local neighborhood hustler who was a big dreamer. Something we talked about in development, in the writers room, that we wanted to show was that a lot of these people in the show were just born too early, and maybe born with the wrong color of skin, but had the same aspirations and dreams as people who were born with different color skin and more opportunities.

From Chicken Man’s perspective, this guy was a dreamer. Even though he’s a hustler and he’s doing things that may be illegal, or some people may consider to be crossing moral lines, at the end of the day, he’s a dreamer and he’s a community man. And the same thing with J.D. Hudson; he’s a dreamer. He wants to create a better police department for the community, specifically Black citizens. And so is Frank Moten. Everybody has some dream they’re working on. It’s something that’s stopping that, but they’re not going to let those obstacles get in their way.

What was the actual process? Did things in the story change as the big names signed on? Was this the original cast?

PACKER Oh yeah. It’s very rare you put a list together of all your faves, and then you get all your faves. And that’s certainly what happened here, which is very cool. It doesn’t happen if you don’t have good material. Filmmaking is a collaborative process, always. And so, in the beginning, it was myself and the guys who brought it to me, Kenny Burns and Jeff Keating, and then original source material. Then you hand it over to Shaye who starts to shape it. Then you go out and you get in the Kevin Harts and Sam Jacksons and Taraji P. Hensons, and then they all have things they want to bring to their characters. Don Cheadle, he wants the nuance of the Black cop during that time period — what that was like? The challenges of being a cop when the community is looking at you as a pawn of the system and white people look at you like you shouldn’t be able to have that authority anyway. So, little things like that.

Then it’s up to Shaye to figure out how to infuse that into the story. My job is to make sure that everybody has the resources necessary. And what you’re hoping is that the cumulative effect of all these positive contributions and collaborations is such that it makes it more engaging to an audience, not less. Sometimes, when you do have all those hands and fingerprints over a project, it takes on a life of its own that’s not what the original vision is. This time, it took on a life of its own that far exceeded what the original vision was when I got involved.

How did Vivian’s role change?

PACKER One of the things about Taraji is that she does very, very well at playing tortured female characters that are relatable. She portrays them in a way that viewers watch and feel a point of identification with the characters. That’s a skill set that she has. We understand that she’s Chicken Man’s right hand. We understand she’s Chicken Man’s side chick, or whatever you want to call it. She is also somebody that has her own dreams and ambitions. It was important for Taraji to make sure that the character was infused with her own motives, that she wasn’t just in service to the male characters. As our biggest female role in the project, she and Shaye worked together and there were a lot of conversations about the best way to do that, and I’m really proud of what they did. Ultimately, I think when you see the Vivian character, you see her arc, you see where she ends up, you know that she maybe did not have a plan from the beginning, because there were things people didn’t see coming, but, certainly, she had a focus from day one that was big. She was always pushing Chicken to be bigger, pushing herself to be bigger, and then, when she saw an opportunity, she took it.

OGBONNA The thing that was really interesting to play with was that idea of being born too early, right? So not only was she born too early; but she was born a Black woman. I wanted to really explore the idea that a lot of these people could have been, with the right resources, with the right name, under the right circumstances, Fortune 500 execs. I wanted to explore Vivian as really the brains behind the operation. She’s really got the sauce. She said it — “I got the recipe.” I love this idea of this sleeping giant kind of like waiting in the wings. She was just waiting for an opportunity, and she saw it one day. One thing you notice about Vivian throughout the show is, when she’s constantly running up against stuff, she not only figures a way out of it, but also how to capitalize on it. And she says it in the end: “I’ve been in the passenger seat for a while now, but now it’s my turn to drive.” Growing up, I was raised by a lot of strong, independent Black women, and it was important that I explore that.

There are a lot of young actors and actresses in this, plus casting choices like Dexter Darden playing Ali. How did you make those kinds of decisions?

OGBONNA The producing team, obviously me, Will, our amazing casting director, Leah Daniels-Butler, then local casting was done by George Pierre and this group. We talked about those casting choices ad nauseum. We wanted to give people opportunities. I love it when I see somebody break in something that I’m watching. And I felt like we had the opportunity to do this because we just had this immense cast list, and we really took an ensemble approach. Like our robbery crew, we always called them our young gunners. I was so excited to work with Sinqua [who plays Mac], Melvin [who plays Andre), and Jalyn who plays Baby Ray, Sam Adegoke who plays Emerson, Myles Bullock who plays Willie Black. Dexter Darden doesn’t favor Muhammad Ali but, in his audition, he embodied Ali; he embodied him from a human perspective, not just the icon, but the man.

Talk about Terrence Howard as a villain, and the “never saw him coming” element he brought to Cadillac.

PACKER Terrence is nuanced. That’s his skill set. There are things that he does with his eyes, things he does with his vocal inflections. There’s a reason he’s such a great bad guy, and, I’ll say, antagonist. In our world that Shaye created, it’s not really about good and bad. This show doesn’t live in black and white. It’s all about the shades of gray. There are flawed protagonists, certainly, and there are antagonists that you root for. And Terence’s Cadillac is a complex character. He is living under the burden of a father who didn’t reach his full potential, and a lot of that he blames on Frank Moten. He has a mother, played brilliantly in a great cameo by Debbie Allen. Terrence makes you invest in the character. You feel for Cadillac Richie when she looks at him, and says, basically “avenge your father.” She looks out over that New York skyline [and says], “I want that for you and for us and for our family’s legacy.” How, as a dutiful son, do you not hear that from your mother, and not do everything possible in your power to bring it to fruition?

What do you think Sam did differently with Frank Moten that you hadn’t seen from him before?

OGBONNA For me, he really bought into the dreamer aspect of Frank. I love gangster movies where that gangster has a very human trait, which generally is dreaming. I love the idea of this man coming home to this place, this state, this area, this region, that has brought him a lot of pain, but it’s also where he’s from and where his home is. It’s a place where he has his own designs on something that’s very American like planting his flag [and] charting this new frontier on this idea of this Black Mecca, of this place that can be for Black folks.

Finally, talk about how a number of these gangsters like Frank represent were on the opposite side of the law in one area and community builders in another in real life.

PACKER I think what you see in Fight Night are these men and women who embody that hustler can-do-no-matter-what-it-takes-we-gotta-get-there, we-gotta-chase-our-dreams mentality. That laid the foundation in real life for people like myself and Shaye Ogbonna to exist. I say that, not with any hyperbole at all intended. I believe that; I really do. It is that foundation of doing whatever it takes to provide for you and yours that allows folks today to be able to stand on those shoulders and take advantage of economic opportunities that now exist that should have been in existence throughout history.

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Fight Night: The Million Dollar Heist is now streaming all episodes on Peacock.