Muhammad Ali had his first television interview with British journalist David Frost in 1968.Over the years, Frost conducted 12 televised interviews with the heavyweight champion, with the final one airing in 2002.Ali and Frost’s decades-long association is examined in episode 2 of the new six-part MSNBC documentary series David Frost Vs..
Although he’s highly regarded as one of the greatest athletes of all time (and if he were still alive, he’d probably correct that to the greatest of all time), heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali was perhaps just as influential for his activism during the turbulent late ’60s and early ’70s.
Ali, who was born Cassius Clay in 1942 and became Muhammad Ali after joining the Nation of Islam in 1964, refused to be drafted into service during the Vietnam War, which effectively ended his boxing career from 1967 to 1970. Meanwhile, his early views on race relations in the U.S. went well beyond the extreme.
Muhammad Ali in 1967.
Bettmann Archive/Getty
Some of these opinions are explored in the new six-part MSNBC documentary series David Frost Vs., which highlights television interviews conducted by the esteemed British journalist with luminaries like Ali, Jane Fonda, Elton John and the Beatles over the years. The second episode, “David Frost Vs. Muhammad Ali,” which premieres on May 4, is devoted to Frost’s series of interviews with Ali, four of which took place while Ali was banned from boxing. (According to the documentary, Frost did 12 interviews with Ali during the 34-year period between 1968 and 2002.)
Things get off to a rocky start as their first televised interview — which took place in 1968 when both men were still in their twenties — is shown in the episode. When Frost confronts Ali over one of his previous declarations, Ali doubles down.
“Yes, sir. I really believe that all White people are devils,” Ali says in the rare clip. “And you think I’m gonna get on this TV show and deny what I believe? No. I believe every bit of it.”
David Frost circa 1970.
Radio Times via Getty
Frost challenges him on the accuracy of such a blanket statement and counters that every race has good and bad people. They argue back and forth, and Ali even stops the interview briefly to get “the Christian Bible” from his briefcase to try to prove his point.
“Everybody’s like, you can hear a pin drop.” Ali’s former wife Khalilah Ali, 75, who was in the live television audience, says in the episode. “You can hear a pin drop. People’s looking around…”
More back and forth follows, including a debate over whether the Biblical reference to Gentiles includes Black people. “I think a lot of the things you’re fighting for are marvelous, but it’s dangerous rubbish to suggest that all White people are devils and all Black people are saints,” Frost says.
Ali replies: “See you the devil now, how you’re talking. I didn’t say all Black people are saints. You lying just like the devil. I said, we got bad Black people that take after you.”
“At the time that he spoke, he generally believed that,” attorney and speechwriter Clarence Jones, 94, who was a friend of both Ali and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., says in the episode. “He wasn’t — Muhammad Ali wasn’t acting. The majority of Black people — we love him, we respect him — but on this matter, we don’t agree.”
David Frost (left) and Muhammad Ali in 1978.
Ron Frehm/AP
The argument between Frost and Ali continues, touching on Black excellence, black coffee, integration and the infamously segregationist Alabama governor George Wallace, who unsuccessfully ran for U.S. president in 1968. (Ali says if he had voted, he would have voted for Wallace, who Ali says, “talks like the way White people feel.”)
“It was such an unfiltered, live television interview,” Frost’s son Wilfred, 39, says in the episode. “You have a slot to fill, and that’s it. The credits just start to roll, and they’re still going at it. Clearly the two had unfinished business.”
They certainly did. In 1969, Ali did his next interview with Frost, who noted his more “gentle” demeanor. “As so-called militant or controversial as I may be,” Ali says, “I walk the streets daily with no guards, I socialize with everybody, I stay out of trouble, but when I see White boys signing draft cards and… leaving the country and then me being more crucified than them, and I haven’t done nothing illegal — this is what cause your riots and make people hostile.”
David Frost (left) and Muhammad Ali in 1974.
BBC
When Frost asks him if he’s become any “gentler” in his views about hate, Ali replies: “What I have been taught is not hate. We don’t hate White people. We don’t hate nobody. Obviously, I know you better now.”
Although the focus of “David Frost Vs. Muhammad Ali” is mostly on Frost and Ali, it includes snippets of Frost’s interviews with other Black VIPs, including Olympian Jesse Owens, activist Jesse Jackson, politician Shirley Chisholm and Black Panther founder Huey P. Newton, as well as musical guests like Roberta Flack, Nina Simone, Stevie Wonder and Shirley Bassey. Liam Neeson and Ruth Pointer of the Pointer Sisters are among the people who offer commentary in the episode, and Frost’s three-year romance with Diahann Carroll is also covered.
David Frost in 2012.
Simon James/FilmMagic
Toward the end of the episode, a segment of Frost’s final interview with Ali in 2002, 34 years after they first met, is shown. Frost, who died in 2013 at age 74, was portrayed by Michael Sheen in director Ron Howard’s Oscar-nominated 2008 film Frost Vs. Nixon, which covered a series of 1977 interviews Frost conducted with disgraced former U.S. president Richard Nixon.
Muhammad Ali in 2002.
Steve Granitz/WireImage
In that last interview with, Ali, who died in 2016 at age 74, the boxing great’s speech and movements are halting, due to the affects of Parkinson’s disease, but his mind remains sharp. Frost asks him if he still believes all White men are devils.
“That’s not true,” Ali says. “The devil can be in any man. Any color. Anybody can be evil. It’s the mentality, not the color.”
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