DETROIT — He's always been a Best, but now he's "The Greatest."

Jaalen Best is the star of "The Greatest," the story of the rise of Muhammad Ali. The eight-episode series, which also stars Omari Hardwick and Michael Ealy and is executive produced by Michael B. Jordan, arrives on Prime Video on Wednesday.

Best is the 28-year-old actor who won the part of Ali in the show. It's the biggest role to date for the relative newcomer, whose previous credits include roles like "Hot Guy" in "American Horror Stories" and "Teammate #1" on an episode of the rebooted "Magnum P.I."

Playing the champ — "The Greatest" follows Ali from a young Cassius Clay, winning the gold medal at the 1960 Rome Olympics, to winning his first heavyweight championship title in 1964 — marked a significant first for Best.

"I don't really have any boxing experience outside of preparing for this role," Best said last month during a press tour in Detroit. "Everything I know about boxing is from everything I learned about Muhammad Ali."

Best says he showed up on set ready to go.

"I don't think anybody expected me to come into the role, especially the boxing situation, to be as well conditioned and in that shape that I was in," he says. "I think I surprised a lot of people; I surprised myself."

Best says he was bullied by his peers when he was a kid in Clinton, North Carolina, about 45 minutes east of Fayetteville.

"I had just moved down from Alexandria, Virginia. So you know when that pretty boy show up in school, and all the girls are attracted to him and everybody wants to be his friend? A lot of men get jealous," he says, showing a bit of that Ali confidence as he talks about himself.

To go from being bullied to portraying Ali onscreen was a personal triumph for the actor.

"It gave me a lot of confidence in myself, but it also is something I feel very grateful for," Best said. "A lot of the process of learning how to box was wanting to bring Muhammad Ali to life, but it was also the side of Jaalen who wanted to learn self defense. So I took my training very seriously."

In college, Best was chasing basketball dreams — he grew up admiring Kobe Bryant — and he was a walk-on at East Carolina University.

But he stumbled into an elective acting class in 2020 — "it was that or dance, and I didn't want to take dance," he says — and he found his true calling on the stage.

He was mesmerized by the process of acting, learning concentration exercises and improv training, and he felt like a natural in the space. Plus, "my teacher would always tell me, 'you have a face for television,'" he says.

Best appeared in a local stage production of "Pocahontas," playing the role of Chief Powhatan, Pocahontas' father, and had a blast, and he started taking acting a little more seriously.

"At that moment, acting seemed more realistic to me than basketball did," Best says.

He auditioned for Juilliard and made it to the final round of callbacks before getting cut. To make it that far, "I thought, maybe this is a calling for me, and I just need a little studying," he says.

He quit basketball, moved to L.A., and started pursuing acting as a career.

Now with "The Greatest," Best has officially arrived. And what better role than Ali for him really make his mark?

"I've always wanted a title, I've always wanted to be 'The Guy' for something," says Best. "So it's nice to be thought of now as 'The Boxing Man.'"

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