Jaalen Best Wanted to Be a Pro Athlete. Now He’s Playing ‘The Greatest’ Boxer Onscreen

This story might sound familiar: a rising student discovering who he is as he juggles his love for both the court and the stage. However, this isn’t High School Musical. It’s the beginning of Jaalen Best’s trek to Hollywood, which started his junior year at East Carolina University in 2019 and led him to his breakout role, portraying legendary boxer Muhammad Ali. After stumbling into an intro to acting class, the 28-year-old quickly caught the professor’s attention. “She would tell me how great I was at improv and how I had a face for television and I should consider moving out to a bigger city or state and pursuing acting,” Best recalls. But he wasn’t ready to hear that yet. “I’m like, ‘I’m a basketball player. This ain’t happening.'” Best later got another acting push from his then-girlfriend, who convinced him to audition for his hometown production of Pocahontas in Clinton, North Carolina. Though skeptical at first, he decided to give it a real shot, landing the role of Pocahontas’ father, Chief Powhatan. “I would wake up early at 5 a.m., and I would do basketball practice for the first three hours of my day, finish classes, and then I would drive an hour and a half to my hometown and do two-hour rehearsal,” he says. Despite the chaotic schedule, Best eventually came to a realization while on stage: “I was having more fun than basketball.” While recounting this period of his life with The Hollywood Reporter over Zoom earlier in October, Best playfully acknowledges the similarities to the beloved Zac Efron-led Disney movie, with one exception: “I wasn’t the star player. I was riding the bench and just getting my opportunity,” he quips. Much like how Troy Bolton moved away to college to pursue his dreams, Best made the decision to move to Los Angeles post-college to follow his own. Jaalen Best in The Greatest. Prime Video The first few years in Tinseltown proved challenging, as Best was one of thousands who came to the city with the same goals. But after years of background work, occasional guest roles and finding new talent representation, he finally got the audition he had been longing for in 2023. “There were maybe seven or eight auditions,” he recalls, referring to the months-long audition process for the role of Muhammad Ali in Prime Video‘s The Greatest, which premieres Nov. 4. “It also was during the [actors] strike as well, so a lot of it was completely delayed and being pushed back.” As months drew by between auditions and no confirmed offers, Best sought other roles. He later got offered a six-month contract with Days of Our Lives, but admits he was still holding out hope for The Greatest. That’s when his team flagged producers on the biopic of his pending soap opera booking and “instantly they’re like, ‘OK, we’re sending him to L.A. to do a network test,'” the actor recalls. A day after the test, as he headed back to the airport, Best receives a call that The Greatest creator Ben Watkins wants to meet at his office. “I walk in and I shake his hand, and he’s just telling me, ‘Hey, there’s a couple of executives that don’t think you can hold up the voice, and they think you just practiced really well, and you just wowed us at these auditions.'” In that moment, a confused Best was willing to do whatever’s necessary to prove he’s meant for the role. “[Watkins’] like, ‘I’m going to put you on camera and I’m going to ask you some things, and I just want you to talk back,'” the actor says. “We do that, and then he wants me to repeat some phrases, like Muhammad Ali’s favorite line, ‘I am the greatest.'” After repeating a variety of phrases, the showrunner gives Best one final line: “Jaalen, you got the role.” “I’m so locked into repeating the phrases and making sure I’m giving, I’m like, ‘Jaalen, you got the role.’ And I say it in [Muhammad’s] dialect,” he recalls. “And [Watkins’] like, ‘No, Jaalen. You got the role.’ I started to say it again, and I’m like, ‘Wait, what?’ And then they bust in, and it’s like this moment.” The Greatest Prime Video Before Best could fully celebrate, he had to get one more blessing from Muhammad’s wife, Lonnie Ali, before officially stepping into the ring. After meeting her in Louisville, Kentucky, a nervous Best was on the flight home when he “got a text from Ben basically saying, Lonnie sent a message saying, ‘He’s the one in more ways than you know.'” Below, Best opens up to THR about honoring Ali with his performance; the advice he got from Michael B. Jordan, who served as an executive producer on The Greatest; and what he can’t live without. Playing such an iconic figure, how did you navigate honoring him with your performance, but also bringing your own portrayal to the screen? When I got the role, I started going down this deep dive on him, and I tried to gather my own perspective of what I believe he displayed to not just me but to the people. And people would tell me so many stories as well. Every time someone has an Ali story, I stop everything I’m doing and I listen in because I think it’s important to see how he affected people just off of one meeting, whether he just put his fist up or whether he just threw air punches at them or whatever the case is. It’s very beautiful to be able to rely on real connections that he made with people. I can’t ever be Ali, but I needed to get as close as possible to him. And it’s great because I feel like the look that I had, I’ve always grown up being told, “Hey, you remind us of a young Muhammad Ali,” and that never registered to me until I got in the training process. My body was naturally kind of shaped like his in a way. … And sometimes, I would just wear these white boots every single time I would train because he always wore his white boots. And my trainer would also give me footage to break down at night for homework. So on top of me doing all my studying, I broke down every punch and every movement and the rhythm of his bounces in the ring, and then I would be able to show up the next day and replicate all of that. So all of these things just allowed me to truly get to a place where I felt like I was embodying him and just really just showing up as him. And I started to rely on my own instincts and I would just say, “You know what? No more watching the movies, no more watching this.” Michael B. Jordan and Jaalen Best. Jason Mendez/Getty Images for Prime Video With Michael B. Jordan serving as an executive producer on the show, how much did you get to chat and learn from him? He’s a mentor for me. I call him Big Bro. He calls himself Big Bro. So it’s definitely something that has allowed me to feel much more of a personal connection to him as opposed to just business. Him looking out for me in terms of trying to make sure that I have a great, long career with incredible success. You hear him all the time say he wants the younger generation to be better than him, and he’s always coming with that energy when he comes to me, and I think that’s incredible. He’s somebody I can constantly look up to and see the greatness that he’s doing. I tell him, “Thank you for the blueprint and for showing us the way and continuing to lead us, especially as Black men who just want to be successful and help our community and just be a face of the world and the industry in a positive way and lead with great influence.” For those who are just getting to know you with your role in The Greatest, what do they need to know? I’m just a regular guy. I love just being inside, watching TV. Sometimes it’s hard to get me out of this room. I love going to parks and I love riding horses. I love doing just anything that people would say is boring. And then I just picked up tennis, so I’m learning tennis. I’m just trying to have fun. What’s something you absolutely cannot live without? I’m learning to relax a little bit on the coffee. I’ve been going a little crazy lately. I just love the taste of it so much. Sometimes I was literally, it’s so wild, two o’clock in the morning, I’m waking up and I’m processing, oh, should I chill off the coffee for tomorrow? Should I try to go the day without coffee? But I’m just constantly in this battle with myself because I feel like I sometimes would just order two different cups because I want to try a different coffee, but I don’t want to sacrifice to not get my favorite. *** The Greatest premieres Nov. 4 on Prime Video.