André Holland fights the power and impacts Hollywood’s framework in his role as real-life figure Huey P. Newton in Apple TV+’s “The Big Cigar.”
“The story I’m about to tell you is how I, Huey P. Newton, the Black Panther Party founder, was set free into a prison,” Newton (Holland) says in the beginning of the trailer, which was released Wednesday.
The six-episode limited series is based on Joshuah Bearman’s (“Argo”) magazine article “The Big Cigar.” Per Apple TV+’s description of the show, it “tells the incredible true story of Hollywood revolution meeting social revolution. It’s a wild caper about Black Panther founder Huey P. Newton escaping from the FBI to Cuba with the assistance of famed producer Bert Schneider [Alessandro Nivola] in an impossibly elaborate plan – involving a fake movie production – that goes wrong every way it possibly can.”
“All right, listen up. We’re going to get Huey to Cuba in the next 48 hours,” Schneider (Nivola) adds. “It’s a location shoot as far as the Fed are concerned … We got hair, makeup, wardrobe … Huey’s fight is worth risking everything to do.”
“We make it look like it’s one of your movies,” Newton then chimes in.
The full cast includes Holland, Nivola, Tiffany Boone, PJ Byrne, Marc Menchaca, Moses Ingram, Rebecca Dalton, Olli Haaskivi, Jordane Christie and Glynn Turman. The series was produced by Janine Sherman Barrois, Jim Hecht and Bearman. The first two episodes were directed and executive produced by Don Cheadle, while Barrois serves as showrunner and Hecht penned the show’s first episode.
“The Big Cigar” premieres on Friday, May 17 — the 70th anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education ruling.
