Actor Omari Hardwick Talks Prime Video’s ‘The Greatest’ & More with Rich

Omari Hardwick believes he got his newest role from two sources. One was the producers and Amazon. The other was Muhammad Ali himself.

"As much as Ben Watkins and Kim Coleman and Amazon hired me, Rich, Muhammad Ali hired me for this role," Hardwick said on The Rich Eisen Show. "He hired me for this role, bro."

Hardwick plays Cassius Clay Sr. in The Greatest, the Prime Video series about Ali, opposite Jaalen Best as the young champ. Rich had Best on the show two days earlier, and the overlap made for an easy opening.

Both actors were athletes first. Best had a stint with East Carolina basketball. Hardwick had a shot with the San Diego Chargers. When the two met for a sit-down in Marina del Rey, Best told Hardwick the show was a chance to finish what he didn't start athletically. Hardwick said it was the same for him. "He said, 'No, you went further,'" Hardwick recalled. So there was respect.

When Rich mentioned Best had compared himself to Kobe Bryant, Hardwick offered his own comp from his father. "I asked my pops one day, 'Pops, who did I run most like?' And he said, 'You ran more like Tony Dorsett.'"

Rich pointed out that every sports story worth its salt comes down to a father and son, from Field of Dreams to Hoosiers to Friday Night Lights. Hardwick found his way into that relationship through his own upbringing. He and Rich, he noted, come from similar places, Brooklyn for Rich and Decatur for Hardwick, where "nothing is owed" and "everything's earned."

His grandfathers and father hammered home one rule. "Whatever anybody else does to your left or your right, you got to do it 10 times better," he said. He carried that onto set with the younger actors, telling them, "I'm expecting a lot from you but don't expect for anybody to give you anything." Off set, he tried to balance it out. "A lot of talks, a lot of walks, a lot of hang time with Jaalen," he said, calling Best "a remarkable young man."

Part of the calling, Hardwick said, was that he had met Ali before he passed. Ali's eldest daughter, Maryum, approached him on a red carpet and told him her father had been a fan for years. Hardwick froze, and a tear dropped.

Ali had followed his work all the way back to Gridiron Gang in 2005 with Dwayne Johnson and through Power. Hardwick later went to see Ali, and they watched an episode of Power together at the Phoenix house, with Maryum and Lonnie, one of the series' producers, there too. He described a photo he plans to give Rich: Ali on one computer watching Ghost, Hardwick on another watching one of Ali's early fights, side by side. "And then I held him in my hands as he falls asleep," he said.

Ali was a hero to his grandparents and his father, and Hardwick said the series gives a look at "how the king is made," while also showing a father and son who, for all their clashing, "didn't clash in terms of both wanting to be the best at whatever they did. One worked with his hands in terms of painting, one worked with his hands in terms of fighting."

Rich then turned to Power. Hardwick got a kick out of the fact that Rich watched it, and shared what fans actually say to him at places like baggage claim. "They'll be like, 'Yo, man, but I miss you.' And I'll say, 'But I'm right here.'"

He understands why. Ghost, he said, was a character of complication and complexity that people either related to or fantasized about, "either his cool, either his vulnerability," or his ferocity. "Who doesn't want to be kind of the bad guy if not the whole bad guy?"

As for why it worked, Hardwick credited a combination that he said can't be taught: "the athlete meets the poet," with "a poetic sensibility" and a "super defensive back mentality." His description of that mindset: "If the man gets behind me, there's nobody behind me to get the man, so I must keep the man in front of me."

He put as much of himself into the character as possible. "There's a big O between the G, the H, the S, and the T," he said, a nod to how Ghost is spelled. And when a DB gets flagged? Claim it wasn't you. "The ref always gets the second one, right?" Hardwick said. "So, as long as I get the first one in, then I didn't make the foul."

The scenes fans bring up depend on who is asking. Many mention the fight scene with Tommy, played by Joseph Sikora, which Hardwick called a breakup scene. Fans who lived a version of Ghost's life love the pilot, when he takes somebody out and then "smooths out his tie, takes a deep breath, and walks back in and has a drink." Hardwick compared it to the end of the Mad Men pilot, where you find out who Don Draper is, and credited the writing above all. "When the writing is that good, it is an overrated reality of an actor being that good," he said.

Before letting him go, Rich asked about his football dream. Hardwick played running back and defensive back at Marist and was a little frustrated that most of his recruiting was at DB, because he wanted to play both. He pointed to Champ Bailey, one of his closest friends and a college teammate, as someone who went both ways.

In the end, he said, he just wanted to do his job, a nod to the Bill Belichick "Do Your Job" sign hanging in the show's green room bathroom. His shot came with the Chargers under Bobby Ross, through an agent who also represented Bailey. "Hey, it all worked out," Rich said, noting that many players try acting but few reach where Hardwick is sitting. "Rich, I could kiss you on your forehead," Hardwick replied.

The conversation wrapped with family. Hardwick remembered that on his last visit Rich mentioned a kid with a love for SZA. It turns out it was Rich's oldest son, and now the whole family is on board. Rich has even been to one of her concerts. Hardwick suggested SZA come sit in the guest chair, and Rich said his son "would cut school on the spot." The son is 18 and driving now, and when Hardwick asked whether Rich got him a nice whip, Rich kept it real: "It's no hoopty, but it's, you know, it's not a whip." Practical, they agreed.

The Greatest streams exclusively on Prime Video starting November 4.