'The Big Cigar' Is Captivating — But Struggles To Reconcile Man And Legend

After being charged with killing a 17-year-old sex worker, legend has it that Black Panther Party co-founder Huey P. Newton, who denied the charge, fled to Cuba in 1974 with the help of renowned white filmmakers who pretended to be producing a movie starring him. 

That’s a story so bizarrely true that it’s almost comical to learn that the only online proof of its actual details can be found in Joshuah Bearman’s Playboy magazine article that’s now hidden behind a paywall with the low, low price of $99. This only creates more intrigue about said story. 

And more opportunity to, let’s just say, massage the facts around it.

That’s where Apple TV+’s “The Big Cigar,” from showrunner Janine Sherman Barrois, comes in. The engrossing new series adaptation recounts the unbelievable magazine story through six slickly-paced episodes in the tone of a great heist tale. It’s a helluva way to mine new material from Newton’s otherwise recognizable name and story.

Even beyond the countless articles that have been written about both the BPP co-founder and the party itself leading up to and following Newton’s murder at age 47 in 1989, there’s been a few movies that detail his life and work. Those include documentaries such as 1971’s “Huey P. Newton: Prelude to a Revolution” and 2001’s “A Huey P. Newton Story.” 

But “The Big Cigar,” named after the faux movie title, is a rare screen treatment that Hollywoodifies his story. That is to say, it sprinkles some Tinseltown fairy dust on it; hikes up the suspense, attaches starry names to it (including André Holland as Newton and Don Cheadle as a director); a funky ’70s soundtrack; and makes it move as quickly as one of its own car chases.

If you’re familiar with Barrois’ work on “Claws,” you’re well primed for a series that is just as absorbing and barrels toward the absurd just before veering into more grounded territory. In the case of “The Big Cigar,” though, that latter point is a bit more ambiguous. 

Is the series reeducating audiences about Newton’s so-called “contradictions” and important legacy ― a powerful figure of Black empowerment who navigated drug addiction, his own infidelity and in-fighting in the movement? Is it to show another example of the unlikely yet true unions between Black revolutionaries and one of America’s most racist establishments: Hollywood? 

Is it to remind viewers of the great lengths Newton had to go to for his own freedom — fleeing his own country and people when he felt he couldn’t outrun bigoted American law enforcement?

Or is it purely to entertain audiences with a name many already know: a Black man who was immortalized while still young, handsome and obviously influential? Newton is, as Bert Schneider (Alessandro Nivola) — the filmmaker behind the faux movie — notes in the series, a marvel. “Talk about a star,” he gushes. “That guy’s a star.” He is the stuff of Hollywood dreams.

“The Big Cigar” seems aware of Newton’s own complications with how he was perceived and commodified by white America, which makes the series immediately interesting. Because it puts fictionalized words into a real-life Newton’s mouth that sound like something he might say if he actually had the chance to tell his own story ― but only within the confines of Hollywood. 

“The story I’m about to tell you is true,” Newton narrates in the first episode. “At least, uh, mostly true. At least how I remember it. But, uh, it is coming through the lens of Hollywood. So let’s see how much of my story they, uh, really willing to show.”

That narration is funny, in part because it follows the obligatory, “This series is based on real events. Some aspects and timelines have been fictionalized for purposes of dramatization…” disclaimer that opens this and other trueish series. 

It also suggests that even in his afterlife, the normally authoritative Newton still struggles to negotiate, and ultimately concede, his image to the dominant establishment. 

Maybe that’s true, and maybe that’s supposed to be the point of “The Big Cigar.” But aside from that early narration, we barely see Newton really grapple with that in the series, which would have made it a more compelling watch. And it’s hard to decide how to reconcile that as the series progresses further and further into “Let’s just tell a great story” territory. 

Sure, it’s one presumably not many audiences already know. Bert, a producer behind the seminal 1969 movie “Easy Rider,” becomes so enamored with Newton that he and a few other white celebrities such as Candice Bergen and Jack Nicholson work together to help fund the revolutionary’s escape amid serious criminal allegations.

That’s wild. 

So, of course audiences will be invested in what is essentially a captivating story detailing incredible events — some of which may or may not have actually happened. Just like how the 2012 film “Argo,” inspired by another Bearman article, similarly kept audiences on the edge of their seats with its recount of American hostages in Iran that posed as a film crew to escape.

The question becomes not how much of it is true, which is often the subject of many articles critiquing nonfiction-based series and films, rather it comes down to whether the story — massaged or otherwise — is a good one. 

In the case of “The Big Cigar,” it mostly is. Its sheer machinations are enough to keep you watching. How could something like successfully escaping a murder charge by being smuggled to Cuba through a fake movie production actually happen? Well, it did. And here’s how. *Insert popcorn emoji here*

The performances are also solid. Holland, who’s always dependable on screen, immerses himself in Newton’s Oakland, California, swag and accent, later embodying his paranoia as the Black Panther Party conflict deepens and the FBI continue to probe each member. Nivola is just as good as the charismatic white male filmmaking genius battling his own demons.

P.J. Byrne delivers some of his best work as Schneider’s producing partner, Steve Blauner, where he gets to use some of his comedy chops in an increasingly erratic yet surprisingly human portrayal. Meanwhile Tiffany Boone, who plays Newton’s girlfriend, Gwen, does her best despite the show only being interested in her through her famous boyfriend’s feelings about her.

Barrois, who is also a writer and executive producer on the series, weaves an extremely bingeable story. 

But despite however much the series wants us to stay hooked into the central heist of it all, the series also includes flashes of other aspects of Newton’s biography that are embedded in the Black Panther Party legacy. 

Those include the rift between him and the party’s minister of information, Eldridge Cleaver (Brenton Allen), and the FBI trailing Newton (a pair of racist white guys who mostly come off like knuckleheads here). We also see Newton struggle to keep the party’s many initiatives, like their free breakfast program, from falling apart as the members begin to dissipate. 

None of these things are particularly developed in the story of “The Big Cigar” to really take much notice in them, despite their prominence in Newton’s actual life. They’re written as merely distractions from the heist more than anything else, overwhelming Newton even more.  

There’s also the matter of what the series avoids entirely, and rather conveniently: the fact that Newton’s relationship with Gwen overlapped with his relationship with a woman named Fredrika, who would years later become his wife after his return to the U.S.    

Even mentioning those factual details might be pulling away from what matters in “The Big Cigar”: the caper. Still, what would make the series more fascinating is if it actually explored Newton’s complicated relationship with how his and the party’s stories were represented, which is teased in the first episode. But it doesn’t deliver on that.

We find a touch of this in the humbling scenes with Newton and his ailing father and pastor, played by the great Glynn Turman, and with Eldridge’s decision to have the revolutionary begrudgingly pose on a throne-like rattan chair in a now canonized image. 

“Huey didn’t want that photo taken,” Fredrika told Smithsonian Magazine in 2023. 

But the moments in “The Big Cigar” that are designed to capture these inner conflicts are hardly enough to really qualify. 

How did a legend like Newton feel about becoming this almost mythical figure that might have been bigger and/or greater than he actually was? And, in turn, how does “The Big Cigar” engage with its own mythmaking of a real-life Black legend who persistently wrestled with both his image with him and the image of how he was seen by white America? 

Those are the more crucial questions that linger long after the series concludes, making an otherwise thrilling watch also a bit frivolous. 

“The Big Cigar” premieres on Apple TV+ Friday.