Hulu’s Mike uses Mike Tyson’s one-man Broadway show, Mike Tyson: Undisputed Truth, as a framing device, with the legendary boxer (Trevante Rhodes) strutting the stage while he regales a live audience with the story of his life. By now, Tyson is a figure so ultra-famous and endlessly parodied that it would be hard to play him without succumbing to impersonation. But Rhodes brings the same volatile mix of tenderness and fury that he did to his breakout performance in Moonlight, ensuring that Tyson always feels like a human being rather than just an ably replicated set of idiosyncrasies. The imposing physique, face tattoo, and famous lisp are all there, but this is Mike Tyson, not Drederick Tatum.
As Tyson begins talking about his childhood, we zip away into a series of flashbacks showing how “Iron Mike” was forged. From this moment on, Mike goes full Scorsese, whizzing between time periods at breakneck pace, blaring old-timey pop standards over brutally violent images, and staging its boxing scenes with a balletic quality reminiscent of Raging Bull.
Scorsese’s influence is also evident in Mike’s cheeky use of voiceover and fourth-wall breaks. Our narrator regularly interrupts his tale to speak directly to the camera, as when a 10-year-old Mike furiously denies a series of petty crimes while his adult self smirkingly clues us in on the truth. From a Casino-inspired moment in which Tyson’s voiceover is stopped in its tracks by a thunderous blow to an alternate version of his first meeting with Don King (Russell Hornsby), to a gorgeous scene in which the camera circles from the center of the ring while Tyson towers above the crumpled bodies of his fallen foes, Mike crackles with energy.
The depiction of Tyson’s early years carves out space for a few powerful supporting performances, with Olunike Adeliyi bringing a steely complexity to Tyson’s mother, Lorna Mae. Terrified for her wayward son, she tries to beat him back onto the straight and narrow. Eventually, she introduces him to boxing trainer Cus D’Amato (Harvey Keitel, taking to the part with all the relish and effortless gravitas you expect from the acting legend), who adopts young Tyson into his picket-fenced home and begins sculpting him into a champion.
Even someone with no interest in boxing likely knows enough about Tyson that some aspects of Mike’s first few episodes are hard to swallow. Staging a gleeful montage of the protagonist’s sexual adventures hits different when you know that the man in question is a convicted rapist. The series also paints Tyson’s first wife, Robin Givens (Laura Harrier), as a conniving, careerist gold-digger who kept Tyson numbed out on prescription drugs so she could siphon off his money and ruin his name. It’s unsettling that even this heavily slanted version of events never denies that Tyson physically abused his wife yet still positions him as the victim.
But just when it seems like Mike might be going the way of shameless, unadulterated hagiography, the last of the five episodes made available to press introduces Desiree Washington (Li Eubanks), the beauty queen who was assaulted and raped by Tyson in 1991. The series allows us to see the vivacious young woman that Desiree was, then how she’s reduced to a scared, quiet shadow of her former self as seemingly half of the world condemns her for her accusations. But Mike refuses to equivocate on Tyson’s guilt and, as a result, finally seems ready to reckon with everything that its lead character truly is. And unless they pull their punches, the final three episodes are squared up to deliver a total knock-out.
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