Hulu has just released a teaser trailer for the upcoming biographical series Mike about the life and career of boxing legend Mike Tyson.
The series, starring Trevante Rhodes, comes from I, Tonya writer Steven Rogers and will tell Tyson’s story with flashbacks to his youth and the road he took to become of the greatest boxers of all time. According to showrunner Karin Gist, the series will not shy away from his most heinous moments which include his rape conviction in 1992 and biting Evander Holyfield’s ear off.
The show is not meant to glorify his life. We were never trying to say that Mike Tyson is a hero or Mike Tyson is a villain. Our goal was to take a very complicated and controversial figure and try to get under the hood of what he was praised and vilified for while staying true to our North Star of ‘no one person is one thing.’
Gist wants the viewer to have a full picture of Tyson’s life without casting judgment. She believes that confronting the horrific moments of Tyson’s past can possibly help take the conversation to the next level.
Fortunately, as a global society, we are all talking more and more about things that were once taboo or only whispered about among friends — rape, sexual assault, consent to name a few. Putting stories like this in the spotlight and pulling them out of the shadows is crucial to moving forward and getting the conversation to the next level. The goal was not to shy away from the scary or uncomfortable parts of the story just because they are scary and uncomfortable.
For Rogers, he wanted to achieve the same goal as I, Tonya.
I think the thing people responded to in I, Tonya was, we took a story everyone thought they knew and we tried to show there’s much more to it than just the sound bites the media gives us. Then one of us said, ‘What about doing that with Mike Tyson?’ I clicked to that because to me, his story is so compelling, contradictory, and complex. In some ways, it’s a cautionary tale of the American Dream. It also seemed like quite a ride. And you can find the roots of a lot of issues we’re grappling with today like #MeToo, Black Lives Matter, prison reform, mental health issues in it. It seemed like a good time to tell it.
Both Gist and Rogers want the audience to decide for themselves how to feel about Tyson’s legacy.
The limited series will have eight episodes and also star Russell Hornsby, Harvey Keitel, Laura Harrier, and Li Eubanks. Mike is slated to debut on August 25th on Hulu. You can check out the full teaser above.
