Michele StuevenGrowing up in Louisiana, Dana Gourrier’s parents still have vivid memories of drinking at the colored fountain and riding in the back of the bus in the 60s.
And while the actress has appeared in Quentin Tarantino cult classics like Django Unchained and The Hateful Eight, nothing made them more proud than when she landed the role of Odessa “Bird” Clay, the mother of boxer Muhammad Ali, in the series The Greatest.
The eight-episode series premiered this week on Prime Video and chronicles Ali’s life and legacy. It also stars newcomer Jaalen Best (Muhammad Ali), Omari Hardwick (Cassius Clay Sr.), Giovanni Ribisi, Michael Ely, and Aleks Paunovic. Produced in collaboration with Ali’s estate, the film is executive produced by his widow, Lonnie Ali, and Academy Award winner Michael B. Jordan.
“My dad was always a super fan of Ali,” Gourrier tells LA Weekly. “My mom not so much in the beginning. All the other ladies loved him then. But as she saw his prolific activism and watched him grow before her eyes, her whole experience changed. She saw what he was doing for our community. His bravado got the attention of the world while he was saying something important and people actually listened.”
Dana Gourrier (Photographer: Storm Santos
Hair Stylist: Richard Norman Grant
Makeup Artist: Beau Nelson)
Gourrier expertly and gracefully interprets the complexities of the women behind extraordinary men, how Bird lived with equal parts fear and faith in the raw context of the 60s, the civil rights movement, and how she pushed her son to become The Greatest.
“I researched Birdie as much as possible, but there’s not a ton of information out there on her,” says the New Orleans native. “But to understand her, you really have to listen to how Muhammad Ali talked about his mom over the years. There are countless takes and examples of him speaking about this woman through his lens. I started piecing her together from the perspective of a mother and a black woman.”
“Odessa was a little slick in the sense that she led with her femininity,” Gourrier says. “She wasn’t a big time yeller or screamer. She was very soft. I’m the opposite – loud and zany. I’m a speak-up-kinda-person. She was so dedicated to her duties as a woman, wife, and mother as the roles were in the 60s. She was the perfect example of that era. But she got what she wanted, which was their betterment. She would do anything necessary for her kids.”
The Greatest (Courtesy Prime Video)
The series, which follows the boxer’s career highs and lows, triumphs and struggles inside and outside of the ring, is beautifully photographed by Jeremy Benning and Stuart Campbell and captures the era in a way that many who may be hearing the story for the first time can connect with.
“There’s that age-old trope of the angry black woman,” says Gourrier, who reprises her role in P-Valley as Lauren ‘The Jukebox’ Hawkins on Starz in December.
“Odessa is no different from what all women of that time and ethnicity felt,” she says in reference to the sometimes violent relationship Bird had with her husband. “She just kept it right under the surface because she had to. We didn’t even have bank accounts until 1974. If she left, what was she going to do? Where would she go? What were her options? Her only option was to make it work. For better or for worse, however, people will see Cassius Sr.; he is a part of the story. He’s a partner in how Ali became who he was. I’ll never defend domestic violence or an abuser. But Odessa loved that man, and the truth is he loved her too. It doesn’t make it ok and it doesn’t make it right, but that’s still a fact. It’s hard to do the dance .”
Dana Gourrier, Kai Parham, Omari Hardwick (Courtesy Prime Video)
Gourrier has been doing the Hollywood dance since she left college while studying behavioral psychology, which comes in handy when studying her characters and what makes them tick. Some of her most treasured memories include working with Tarantino.
“Quentin is a genius in his own way and a database and encyclopedia of film,” she says. “I loved both times working with him. I love the crew he assembles. He’s got this policy that you have to really love being there and love filmmaking. We were all a bunch of theater nerds and film geeks. Nobody’s jaded. One of my favorite things was the playfulness of exploring and coming up with ideas. He’s always game. But my favorite thing was that every Sunday he would screen a film during production. He’d rent out a theater or space. It was like your own Sunday film class. He’d screen anything from Foxy Brown to The Sweet Smell of Success and Dial M for Murder, all genres across all cultures. He also loved westerns. When we were making The Hateful Eight, we’d just watch westerns.”
An affirmed foodie, if you don’t find her watching westerns with Tarantino, she’ll be indulging her French culinary DNA at Thomas Keller’s French Laundry, Michael Cimarusti’s Providence, or 2026 James Beard Award-winning Chef Dave Beran’s Selene.