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Meet Peacock's Fight Night Cast And Their Real-Life Inspirations
Peacock's new limited series Fight Night: The Million Dollar Heist brings celebrities, gangsters, and members of the so-called Black Mafia to life.
One of Atlanta’s most infamous crimes — a heist in which more than one million dollars was stolen — will soon be brought to life by actors such as Kevin Hart, Don Cheadle, Samuel L. Jackson and Taraji P. Henson in Peacock’s Fight Night: The Million Dollar Heist.
On the night of Oct. 26, 1970, dozens of affluent boxing fans were invited to an after-party for the Muhammad Ali and Jerry Quarry match. But when about 100 guests arrived, a team of six to eight men with sawed off shotguns forced them into the basement of the home, ordered them to strip naked and took their valuables, The New York Times reported. The robbers made off with watches, rings, bracelets, necklaces, pins, earrings, and cash that they piled into pillowcases.
“I said at one point that if there’s any such thing as a Black Mafia, the Black Mafia was robbed,” said detective JD Hudson, who will be played by Don Cheadle the series. “When you start naming some of the names of who is who in crime around New York, Philadelphia, Detroit, Los Angeles, Chicago — these people were robbed. Their women were robbed. I understand these were some of the best dressed women you would ever see.”
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Read on to learn more about the real-life inspirations behind the characters.
Kevin Hart as Gordon "Chicken Man" Williams
Kevin Hart will star as Gordon “Chicken Man” Williams, the character at the heart of the series. Williams was rumored to be a hustler and drug dealer who organized the after-party that was targeted by robbers and owned the house where it happened.
Police initially believed that Williams actually planned the robbery to pay off a large debt, according to The New York Times.
“Chicken Man loves the streets because they feed him,” executive producer Will Packer said of the character to Vanity Fair. “He’s a numbers runner, and in order to be good at that, you’ve got to know people — be charismatic, be fast-talking. So, when he gets into a place where his street life [and] his home life are all at odds, he is forced to take an unflinching look at himself and who he is in the mirror. It’s tough.”
Hart described his character as challenging and emotionally unpredictable.
“You’re talking about a hustler, you’re talking about a true entrepreneur — a guy who was chaotic to a certain degree, but driven,” Hart said to Vanity Fair. “He was a visionary. He saw the city of Atlanta becoming so much more than what Atlanta probably intended for itself.”
Taraji P. Henson as Vivian Thomas
Taraji P. Henson will play Vivian Thomas, who is Chicken Man’s right-hand man and mistress.
“The woman pays attention, and what I love is she finally gets her power,” Henson told Vanity Fair of her character. “Any obstacle that she faces, she uses that as a way to learn something and to springboard her into the next place she’s trying to go in life.”
Henson is known for playing Cookie Lyon opposite Terrence Howard's Lucious in the show Empire, which ran from 2015 to 2020. Henson's performance as the tough matriarch of the Lyon family earned her Emmy nods.
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Samuel L. Jackson as Frank Moten
Among the powerful and high-profile guests at the party who became victims were alleged members of the Black Mafia Family, including Frank Moten, known as “The Black Godfather.” He’ll be played by Samuel L. Jackson, who has played similar figures in movies like Argylle, in the series. According to Yahoo, Moten was a powerful crime boss, and rumored to be one of the leaders of the Council of 12, the bosses of the Black underworld.
Jackson turned out to be the perfect person to play the mob boss. He actually lived in Atlanta at the time of the heist, Vanity Fair reported, and even knew of people involved in the robbery.
Chicken Man was so concerned with Moten being a victim in his home, and the repercussions he might face, that he reportedly flew to New York and pled his innocence directly to Moten and the Council of 12, according to Yahoo.
Terrence Howard as Richard "Cadillac Richie" Wheeler
Samuel L. Jackson will work closely with Terrence Howard, who plays Richard “Cadillac Richie” Wheeler, a fellow gangster and member of the Council of 12.
On the Fight Night podcast, Wheeler was described as being “into everything from the numbers racket to drugs, but his crime of choice was armed robbery. He was known simply as the stick up man.”
In real life, Terrence Howard is a family man. The Empire actor is the father of five kids, Aubrey, Hunter, Heaven, Qirin and Hero, according to People.
Don Cheadle as JD Hudson
The first Black detective in Atlanta’s desegregated police force, John Davis “JD” Hudson will be played by the enigmatic Don Cheadle. According to the Fight Night podcast, Hudson was heading security for the Ali fight when the heist happened, and then became lead investigator for the brazen robbery.
“It reads like something out of a storybook. So classical. It’s the kind of thing you see on television or in the movies,” Hudson said of the robbery in an article published in the Atlanta Journal and Constitution magazine in June 1971.
In an interview with the Atlanta History Center between 2005 and 2006, Hudson described how, as a Black officer, he initially wasn’t allowed to arrest white individuals for any crime and could only patrol in Black neighborhoods. His experiences will be portrayed in Fight Night.
“I want people to come out of this feeling like they got an authentic slice of what life was like for Black Americans living in Atlanta in the ‘70s,” Packer said in Vanity Fair.
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Marsha Stephanie Blake as Delores Hudson
Hudson’s wife, Delores, will be played by Marsha Stephanie Blake. Delores was a teacher for Dekalb County Public Schools and later Atlanta Public Schools. She and her husband had two children together, John Tony and Renee, according to her obituary.
Blake has starred in multiple shows over the years, including Orange Is the New Black and NBC's This Is Us. She also appeared in The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey, which was producer by her co-star Samuel L. Jackson and his wife LaTanya Richardson.
Dexter Darden as Muhammad Ali
A key character on the series will be the man himself: Muhammad Ali, played by Dexter Darden. Ali’s return to the ring after a 3-year ban saw him go up against Jack Quarry in Atlanta on Oct. 26, 1970. The matchup received global attention and brought celebrities from all over the world to Atlanta, including Sidney Poitier, Arthur Ashe, and Diana Ross.
Ali has been portrayed many times in film and television over the years, and now Darden, seen as an up-and-comer in Hollywood, will get his chance. Darden has appeared in Peacock’s revival of Saved by the Bell, as well as all three Maze Runner films, according to Deadline.
Lori Harvey as Lola Falana
Superstar singer and entertainer Lola Falana will be portrayed by Steve Harvey's stepdaughter, Lori Harvey. Falana was once the highest-paid woman performing in Las Vegas, according to Latina magazine, and the Afro-Cuban star was known as the “Queen of Las Vegas” in the 1960s and 1970s. She appeared on magazine covers, like July 1967’s EBONY, and even had her own show for a time.
Fight Night marks one of Lori Harvey's first television roles. Prior to acting and modeling, the actress competed in horseback riding, a hobby that allows her to combine fitness with her love of animals.
"My love for the sport just took over. I’m in love with horses. That literally took up all of my time. I would be there from the time the barn opened until they closed," she told Bustle in 2021.
Sinqua Walls as McKinley Rogers
Three men were eventually indicted for the infamous Atlanta heist, including McKinley Rogers, who will be portrayed by Sinqua Walls.
Walls made a name for himself by appearing in multiple shows over the years, including Once Upon a Time, Power, and American Soul.
Watch the Peacock limited series Fight Night: The Million Dollar Heist streaming on Peacock Sept. 5, 2024. New episodes are released every Thursday.
