When Dana Gourrier first read the script for “The Greatest,” one image stayed with her. Odessa Clay spent her days cooking and cleaning for another family, came home, and made a second full meal for her own. And every single night, she was the last to sit down at the table.
“Every time,” Gourrier says. “She dedicated her life to her family and her community. It was my objective to honor this most.”
The eight-episode series, which premieres November 4 on Prime Video, is the first authorized scripted series about Ali’s life, made with his estate and with his widow, Lonnie Ali, as an executive producer. Created by showrunner Ben Watkins, it follows Jaalen Best as the young Cassius Clay, with Omari Hardwick as his father, Cassius “Cash” Clay Sr., and Kai Parham as his brother, Rudy. But at the center of the household the legend grew out of is Bird, the woman Ali famously adored, played by Gourrier, whose credits include “P-Valley,” “Django Unchained,” “The Hateful Eight” and “The United States vs. Billie Holiday.”
History remembers the icon. Gourrier wanted to remember his mother.
Finding Bird
What drew her in first was Odessa’s faith and what she calls her “generosity of Spirit.” “From the moment I read the script, I was immediately drawn to her,” Gourrier says. “I knew that if I won this role, I had to do her justice. I had to give her a voice.”
That voice had to be built from very little. Far less has been written about Odessa Clay than about her famous son, so Gourrier listened to the person who knew her best. “There may not have been much written about her, but it was the way Ali spoke about her that told me everything I needed to know,” she says. “Ali was extremely reverent in the way he expressed the love and respect he had for his mother.”
The rest came from the page, the period, and the heart. She credits Watkins and the writing team with making it easy to create Odessa’s inner world, while the era itself shaped her movement, her dialect, and the cadence of her voice. “All of it was found through the empathy of understanding what a mother must be feeling during such a precarious time,” she says.
In Gourrier’s reading, Bird knew from the start that her son was exceptional. “She always knew he was meant for extraordinary things,” she says. “So every choice she made on his behalf, every caregiving moment, was made with this central idea at the forefront of her mind. I think she is a stunning example of the self-sacrifice we all experience as mothers.”
“A mother’s love is complete”
Gourrier didn’t have to look far for the emotional blueprint. She is a mother herself, and she says her son lives in the performance through something like muscle memory.
“The sleepless nights, the anxiety and stress over their well-being, the adoration, the laughter and unmatched joy. It’s all there,” she says. “I’ve never loved another human soul the way I love my son. Odessa was no different.”
She is quick to make room for her husband, too. “I wholly and completely love his father, twice around the moon and beyond,” she says, laughing. “But it’s so distinct a feeling from the love you may have for anyone else in your life. Even your own mother or father. A mother’s love is complete.”
“I’ve never loved another human soul the way I love my son. Odessa was no different.”
Carrying a family’s trust
Playing a real woman means answering to the people who loved her. Gourrier admits she was nervous meeting Lonnie Ali. “She is such a beautiful person,” she says. “I did want her approval and to be validated in my work. But I knew I had to trust myself and where I was being led spiritually and emotionally. I knew Bird would shine through because she deserves to.”
The moment of reassurance came early. After Gourrier and Best finished the first scene Lonnie watched them shoot together, Lonnie came up to her in tears, generous with her encouragement and visibly moved by the work. “I knew in that moment I had done right by Bird,” Gourrier says.
“Is that my baby?”
The on-screen family came together quickly, starting in the audition room. The first time Gourrier saw Best, she couldn’t contain herself. “I literally yelled out, in front of ten-plus people, ‘Is that my baby?!’” she says. “In that moment, I loved him, and I have loved him every day since. He is the best kind of human.”
She describes Hardwick as a leader on set (“I learned so much from his choices and nuances. He is a brilliant actor”) and Parham as the one who kept everyone laughing while standing shoulder to shoulder with Best. “Our family bond was built with hard work and the genuine care we have for each other,” she says. “It was a beautiful experience.”
Out of the shadows
Early response to the series has been enormous, and for Gourrier, it lands after years of quietly doing the work. “I have been under the radar for so long. Invisible,” she says. “I just kept my head down and did the work. I am elated about this being a real moment.”
But she is clear about who the moment is for. “Not just for me, but for Odessa,” she says. “It took me fifteen years to find her, and she deserves the brightest light to be cast on her and all the mothers she represents.”
That is the message she hopes reaches every mother watching. So much of a mother’s labor, the shaping, the sacrificing, the believing, happens without credit. Gourrier wants them to know it still counts. “What they do may go unseen, but it is not unfelt by the children they love,” she says. “And that feeling has a rippling effect in everything their children do and has the power to be felt all over the world.”
“What they do may go unseen, but it is not unfelt by the children they love.”
The guilt in the makeup chair
Motherhood has changed Gourrier as an artist “in every way,” she says: how she thinks, which roles she takes, how she approaches the work. “How unserious I am sometimes, because my priorities have changed. How too serious I am sometimes because of the urgency of what’s at stake,” she says. “I mean, the bills are in perpetuity.”
The traffic runs both ways. From set, she brings home exhaustion and sometimes the weight of a character. From home, she sometimes brings guilt. “At the beginning of every shoot since my son has been born, there is at least one day I am sitting in the makeup chair thinking, ‘What am I doing?’” she says. “I used to feel relentless guilt for leaving my child and having the audacity to continue following a crazy dream after he was born.”
What eased it was a few words from an older co-star on an indie film. “She told me, ‘He’s gonna need shoes, tuition, new clothes, a house. You’re making way for him; that’s what you’re doing,’” Gourrier recalls. “The guilt was quelled quite a bit after that.”
What she hopes her son sees
One day, her son will watch his mother play the mother of “The Greatest.” Gourrier knows exactly what she hopes he takes from it.
“I hope he comes to understand that his own mother is a fighter,” she says. “That I am a whole woman who had dreams and goals and a full life before we ever met. And I hope that inspires him. But most of all, I hope that my son learns that I too see greatness in him and that I will always endeavor to cultivate his gifts. I will always protect him and I will always, always love him.”
It is, in the end, the same promise Bird made. And Gourrier saves her final thanks for the people who made it to her: the cast and crew she calls “champions that never gave up,” her mother and father “for always supporting me and pushing me forward,” and her husband, “for being the best father to our son, and thank you for taking care of us every step of the way.”
“The Greatest” premieres November 4 on Prime Video.
