‘The Big Cigar’: André Holland Brings Black Panther Huey P. Newton to Life

Making a piece of work about Black liberation starring an abundance of white actors is an uneasy prospect. Films about the triumphs of pianist Don Shirley (Green Book), the African American mathematicians at NASA (Hidden Figures), the Mende tribesmen (Amistad), and football star Michael Oher (The Blind Side) have inserted white saviors into Black struggles in ways that have aged extraordinarily poorly.

Commencing The Big Cigar is, for that reason, slightly nerve-wracking, as it’s adapted from the article by journalist Joshuah Bearman, whose most high-profile project, the Wired story that helped to inspired the Oscar-winning Argo, featured orientalist depictions of the Iranian population in its screen adaptation. But Bearman’s latest project affords empathy and humanity to its central crew of freedom fighters and doesn’t diminish the legacy of Black Panther founder Huey P. Newton (André Holland) in order to heap credit on white associate Bert Schneider (Alessandro Nivola).

The Apple TV+ series’ six episodes cover a deeply disturbing and truly bizarre series of events. Newton’s profile rises in 1966 after he led an armed escort for Malcolm X’s widow Betty Shabazz (Liz Adjei) from the San Francisco airport to an interview in the city on the anniversary of his death, which puts him “in the crosshairs of every cop in the country.” He spends 72 months in solitary confinement after being falsely accused of shooting a police officer, which nearly destroys his body and spirit. But thanks to a plethora of white guilt and an introduction from Richard Pryor (Inny Clemons), who says, “This here is a special bread of honky; deep in their genes, they got a lot of guilt,” he finds an ally in Schnieder, a Hollywood mega-producer who is fresh off the success of Easy Rider and hopes to make a film about Newton’s struggles.

The Big Cigar, a biopic series about the planned biopic, plays into the metatextual nature of the premise, with executives discussing the project and Schneider explaining that, for their film to work, it should do precisely what the television show is doing and “pick a moment in Huey’s life that means something. Don’t just make it womb-to-tomb.” The choice pays off in spades.

In focusing on Newton’s life in the early 1970s, as well as including fantasy sequences and timeline jumps, this non-traditional narrative makes for a much more interesting watch than a more staid approach. Needless to say, his time in the film business and attempts to end white supremacy do not entirely go according to plan, and each episode sees increasingly desperate attempts to use everything at the civil rights activists’ and Hollywood hedonists’ disposal to keep Newton safe.

Executive producer and director Don Cheadle introduces a gorgeous, grainy ’70s aesthetic, and The Big Cigar, unsurprisingly, adds another striking performance to Holland’s inspiring oeuvre. Most impressive is how Cheadle commands tone, with a jazziness to the dialogue and editing that can inject fun and humor but also lend appropriate weight to the moments where Newton describes the feeling that death waits for him around every corner.

The Big Cigar shows that this man’s significance did not lie in martyrdom; the actions of white supremacists and saviors do not define him. Though not without his flaws, he was a brilliant mind with moral fortitude, warm emotional vulnerability, and the ability to see beyond the limited imaginations of one another to form plans of action and inspire further activism where others would have simply collapsed.

In bringing this story to 2024, the series doesn’t only revisit the remarkable life of a Black man during a despicable period of American history. It also further illuminates so many of today’s contemporary tragedies—what it is to live under occupation, how state-sanctioned violence and mass incarceration is a form of modern-day enslavement, and how the labels of terrorism and criminality are weaponized against the oppressed.

There’s plenty to feel depressed about within these six episodes, but the show also sketches the importance of art to form a counternarrative to the rampant propaganda and stereotyping that dehumanizes so many marginalized people. That ahistorical context makes the present-day confidence that Cheadle and Bearman have in Newton’s story even more powerful. Even with an influential figure like Schneider in the narrative, and a superb performance from Nivola bringing it to the screen, it’s clear that Newton doesn’t need a white savior.