The actors behind Ali’s parents on filling history’s blank pages, and how a cast of Southern kids became a real family
History remembers Muhammad Ali in staggering detail. It barely remembers the two people who raised him. Cassius “Cash” Clay Sr. and Odessa “Bird” Clay are mostly footnotes in Ali biographies, which left Omari Hardwick and Dana Gourrier with few records to work from.
Gourrier built Odessa from Ben Watkins’ scripts and from the way her son talked about her, which was always, she says, “with the highest adoration.” Hardwick brought something rarer: a personal relationship with Ali before his death, plus ties to his daughter Maryum and to “Auntie Lonnie” Ali, a producer on the series. Together, they set out to play the Clays as loving and forgiving.
Their chemistry runs deeper than the scripts. Hardwick (Georgia), Gourrier (Louisiana), Jaalen Best (Virginia and North Carolina) and Chicago’s Kai Parham grew up in the same world of church, home and the village around them, and that became their shorthand on set. In Toronto, Hardwick tells Blex Media, “the boys became our boys.” Gourrier explains how a shared cigarette and a moment in a hallway turned a marriage on screen into something that feels lived-in.