Mahershala Ali & Jaylen Brown on Aug. 9, 2026, at PMC Studios, Los Angeles. Styling by Van Van Alonso. On Brown: NB44 top; Oakley glasses; Jacquie Aiche jewelry. On Ali: Dunhill suit; 18 East shirt; Garrett Leight glasses; Jacquie Aiche jewelry. Photographed by Beau Grealy; Tailoring by Erin Castle; Mahershala Ali grooming by Tasha Reiko Brown; Jaylen Brown grooming by Saisha Beecham; Fashion Assistants Robi Morales, GYA Assistants Jaylen Brown is nervous. At least, that’s what he says. There’s certainly little outward indication of anxiety as the five-time NBA All-Star preps for the inaugural taping of Game Recognize Game, THR‘s new series uniting an actor — in this case, Mahershala Ali — with one of his favorite athletes. With the sports and entertainment ecosystems intersecting more than ever, we thought it was time to bring stars at the top of each industry together for raw and candid conversations on everything from the pressures of fame to coping with failure. And we’ll count any butterflies as a win — though neither man is easily rattled.
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Brown, 29, is as famous for his off-court fearlessness as his on-court ferocity. From questioning NBA officiating and league politics to calling out ESPN and Nike, the 2024 NBA Finals MVP has never been one to shy away from saying what he thinks — and he thinks about a lot more than basketball. He has spoken at Harvard, was an MIT Media Lab fellow and is the first active NBA player to launch a fully independent performance brand, 741. When Boston recently traded him to the Philadelphia 76ers (where he will earn $183 million over the next three years), Brown held his introductory news conference not in the safe confines of an arena press room but at a community rec center, immediately placing him on the right side of his new city. Publicly imploring LeBron James to join him in Philly — and then seeing him do just that — didn’t hurt either.
When we asked Ali, 52, what athlete he would most like to sit with for this new series, it’s not shocking Brown was at the top of his list. If Brown is on edge about the taping, it’s because Ali has the type of résumé that could reasonably intimidate any performer. He’s a two-time Oscar winner and Emmy-winning producer, with a new film (Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother) about to hit theaters and a new role on the second season of HBO’s hit Task. Ali also played basketball. Maybe not at Brown’s level, but well enough to land a scholarship at Saint Mary’s College before embarking on the path that would lead him here today. Before this, the two men had never met. Yet it didn’t take them long to get comfortable and candid on issues beyond sport and screen — from the weight of Black trauma to how their shared commitment to faith guides them at the top of their respective games. — David Katz
Jaylen Brown wears NB44 top; Dzojchen pants; Oakley glasses; Jacquie Aiche jewelry; Prada shoes. Photographed by Beau Grealy Mahershala Ali wears Dunhill suit; 18 East shirt; Garrett Leight glasses; Jacquie Aiche jewelry; Thom Browne shoes. Photographed by Beau Grealy “IT’S ALWAYS ME VERSUS ME”
MAHERSHALA ALI I’m a lot older than you, but I have to say, in so many ways I look up to you. I think you are just a profound talent and a really important person in the world. What you mean to the culture, I think, to the culture of sports, and specifically speaking as a former athlete and a Black man, just how important you are as a disrupter.
We live in a world that has seen us in such limited ways for so long, and I think the biggest thing that makes me a fan, for lack of a better word, is just seeing how well you’ve embraced the fullness of yourself.
JAYLEN BROWN Thank you. I appreciate you for sharing that. The people that come before are also the people that paved the way.
ALI Right now, I’m working in Philadelphia [on Task], and the announcement of you coming from Boston to Philly — to be there while that happened — was pretty remarkable. On top of that, LeBron deciding to join you. Tell me about how you’re feeling about that transition.
BROWN Obviously it was disappointing, to some degree, in terms of how things transpired at the end in Boston. But I’m also very excited for the opportunity. You know, I’m more focused on that excitement. The past is the past.
ALI Yeah.
BROWN I’m putting all my energy toward that. It’s a lot, you know, moving all your stuff, your family, looking for a new place. Parting ways with the things that I grew comfortable with in Boston. Now I gotta find new things in Philadelphia, which is just rebirth. It’s just another form of transformation.
ALI I love that. Transformation. I would love to be, when it’s all said and done, considered a transformational actor. I don’t know if I’ll always achieve that, but that is my baseline goal. I don’t ever want to repeat a character. I would like to eliminate character bleed from role to role. Meaning, “Oh, I saw him do that same thing in that part and that part and that part.” And I’m still learning. I’ve been doing this since 1993. But I really feel like I just started, on some level. What about you? How are you experiencing transformation?
BROWN For me, growth and transformation are synonymous. So for me — I’m a Scorpio — I’ve had to transform many times. Once you recognize areas of your life where you need to grow, something has to die.
ALI Yeah.
Photographed by Beau Grealy BROWN So it’s always me versus me, that’s what it comes down to at the end of the day — you versus you. I’m my greatest opponent. When you say being a transformational actor, it resonates highly with me, because I would consider myself a transformational athlete.
ALI So much of how I look at acting comes from the years I spent playing ball. It’s almost as if the career before my career has had such an influence and impact on me. In terms of preparing, in terms of embracing the work, in terms of telling stories and taking on character, being in service of something bigger than myself — so much of that, for me, was informed by my time playing sports. Discipline, hard work, sacrifice, integrity, selflessness, the best qualities that athletes can learn how to embrace, all of those things transfer over into the arts and performing.
I would actually say you would be better prepared as an actor if you’ve had some real serious background in team sports. Because you can get tricked very quickly into thinking that acting is all about me. It’s about me and my character. The camera’s on me. It really doesn’t work, not only without that other actor, but without everybody on the other side of that camera.
BROWN Well, I got some background in playing ball. So what I’m hearing is that for the next movie that you produce … I got a shot.
ALI You got a shot.
BROWN Y’all heard it here first.
ALI I played four years undergrad at Saint Mary’s College. And then I took a year off and got into the graduate acting program at NYU …
BROWN I just wanna say, at Saint Mary’s, man — I went back and found joy in watching clips of you playing. Because when you played, you didn’t just play, like, “I’ma just come out here, shoot some threes or da, da, da.” Nah, you, you played hard.
ALI Thank you.
BROWN You played with a level of tenacity … you played defense. You were a two-way player. You got after it, man. Watching how you played the game before I came to this interview told me a lot about you. You weren’t trying to be cool, make friends, none of that. You were like, “I’ma put my shoulder through somebody’s chest if I got to.”
ALI (Laughs.) I tried. I tried, man. Thank you, brother. That means a lot coming from you.
“I DON’T KNOW WHAT I’M DOING HALF THE TIME”
ALI When I was playing ball, something I quietly struggled with was beating other people. The emphasis on winning. And how you could win but not actually be your best. And then I got into grad school, and I and everyone else in the room were doing the same monologue that day. Everyone sort of brought their own thing to it, and it began to change my relationship around competition. That’s when, at the age of 23 or something like that, it dawned on me why I felt a more natural fit in the artist space. There was something in that space that allowed the conversation around competition to be more about you being your best self.
BROWN I think most people think winning is one-dimensional. They think it’s black and white. I disagree. Obviously, there’s a result at the end of each game. But I think winning has context. Winning has dimensions. One is how I felt about myself. About my output. About how I interacted with my teammates. You know, did I do my job? Was I afraid? Was it a leadership moment where I could’ve stepped up?
ALI When someone like yourself does so much at such a high clip and success rate — how does that shape embracing new things? Do you have this expectation or pressure that you put on yourself to excel?
BROWN Good question. Nobody has ever asked me that. I rarely ever show things publicly that I’ve not already spent some time on. For the most part, it bothers me when I’m not good at things. The other day, my teammate Tyrese Maxey had a golf outing. I’ve never played golf before. Inside, it was hurting me to know that these guys were better than me. You know what I mean?
ALI Yeah, yeah.
BROWN Like, a lot better than me. And even though they were like, “It’s cool, man. We’re just vibing, having a good time, building chemistry with your teammates,” it was eating me alive.
ALI I’m in pain for you right now. I feel it.
Photographed by Beau Grealy BROWN It’s eating me up. So in my brain, I’m like, “Man, I’m about to go hire a golf instructor. I’m about to go grind for two months straight, come back, act like I didn’t do that at all. A lot of things do come naturally to me, but like the stuff that doesn’t, it frustrates me. So I will go behind the scenes and put in the work. Hire an instructor, whatever it is, and then come back and pretend like none of that happened.
ALI I love that.
BROWN And they be like, “Oh, man, like, what happened?” I’m, like, “Yeah, yeah.”
ALI That’s great.
BROWN We’re talking about winning and losing. Are there any rejections in your career that kind of stick out in your mind?
ALI There’s a lot of examining that happens when I feel attached to something and it doesn’t go my way. I’ve had enough experiences, though, in life where I feel like with some patience and maybe grace, I got somewhat of an answer in time as to why that thing was not for me. I try as best as I can to tolerate the feelings around disappointment. And try not to internalize it too much. There is that thing around rejection being you’re closer to the “yes.” Like, I’m closer to the thing that actually is for me — and if I allow that “no” to stop me, that’s more about me. Am I worthy of the next thing if I’m going to allow this to stop me?
For Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother, I got to unite with a director by the name of Bassam Tariq. We were originally supposed to work on Blade together. That didn’t happen, but we were able to use that training and the time we spent together and put it to good use on Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother.
I’m playing a character that had sort of required me to immerse myself in some martial arts training. I also got to bring some qualities from my faith into this character in a very overt way, because this character is a Muslim assassin who is dealing with searching for breast milk for his child.
BROWN What’s your relationship with faith?
ALI I would say it makes the experience of being an actor so much richer because it allows me to be honest about my lack of talent or lack of skill in certain areas. Because I don’t know what I’m doing half the time. I take jobs and I show up and I’m like, “I’m here. I don’t know what I’m doing.”
BROWN That’s hard to believe …
ALI (Laughs.) I swear! I kid you not. I’m like, “I don’t know what I’m doing. All right, we gonna have to figure this out.” So to me, acting is all faith. I don’t walk out on set and have not prayed, like, “Need help today.” Whether I feel like I got it or not. Because I would like to avoid any arrogance around storytelling. I’m so aware of my responsibility to reflect life and to work to extract a truth out of these characters that can impact people. I’ve had people just come up to me weeping, you know. When we first shared Moonlight in Telluride …
BROWN Great movie.
ALI Thank you. I kid you not, I saw people holding [director] Barry Jenkins, shaking — it so impacted their lives. I see a lot of actors sometimes throw away the importance of this work, and it’s sort of a false humility. This work is important. It can really impact lives, and I think it’s important that we look at it that way so that we’re responsible with it. So I take the work really seriously.
BROWN I feel the same way about faith. I am completely faith-driven. I don’t need to see the staircase to take my next step. Faith is the basis of who Jaylen Brown is.
ALI Let me ask, what were the priorities of your household growing up?
BROWN It’s making me smile, ’cause it’s my mom. Like, she used to always say, “If you lie, you’ll cheat. If you cheat, you’ll steal. If you steal, you’ll kill.” It’s just engraved in my brain. Probably so many Black families grew up hearing that. So the worst thing you could do in our household was to lie. Like, if I got in trouble at school, it wouldn’t even matter the crime I committed, if I lied to my mother about it, that would be worse than the punishment of what I actually did.
ALI Mm-hmm. Yeah.
BROWN So as I got older, as I entered spaces and made mistakes, it was just part of my character development. I always would hear my mother and my grandmother’s voice.
ALI For so many youths, sports is considered a way out. Did you relate to sports as “my ticket out”? Or did having a route to get an education — and forgive me if I’m making assumptions — but did that remove any kind of pressure you felt to use basketball as a tool to get somewhere?
BROWN Not at all, to be honest. Like, obviously the overarching reality is that to make it to a high level of success, it was my greatest option. Like, I didn’t have a father, I didn’t have a family office, or another pathway that would’ve led me to reaching a certain level of success. But in reality, I just love the game. I just love the game so much that I was like, “I’m gonna be the best.” I learned to walk by chasing after a ball. So I wasn’t thinking, at 2 years old, “This is my ticket to making it out.”
ALI Right.
BROWN It’s just in my design. It was always just, “I love this game so much, I wanna play it at the highest level.” And in that thought, I made it out.
ALI And is it still play for you? Because I know it changes.
BROWN The NBA is a little different from just the altruistic love that you develop. It becomes work.
ALI Yeah.
BROWN And then there are politics that exist within the game. There’s things that get emphasized for entertainment, for bottom lines, for metrics. Yes, that sometimes takes the love away a little bit. But I love it so much, it could never really take the love away.
ALI Just all the things on top of the reality of that love, right?
BROWN As you climb industries, and you get to the top, it just gets more …
ALI More cutthroat.
BROWN Yes.
ALI Right? It’s so important for those who do have moral fiber to be in those spaces. Because those highly competitive spaces tend to be spaces that end up impacting the rest of the world.
BROWN So how do we normalize that? How do we make that the example versus the exception to the rule?
ALI We need people like yourself. You know, the first thing that you did upon getting this crazy contract was speak about what you wanted to do in the community, right? And so now, years later, you have this to show for it in these communities in Atlanta and Oakland and Boston and, God willing, Philadelphia now.
BROWN That’s the goal.
ALI I was asking you a little bit earlier about your upbringing, and I was curious about some of the things that you may have had — or didn’t have — that are now sort of inspiring you to do certain work.
Photographed by Beau Grealy BROWN The thing that I wish that I had around me more often was discipline. You know? Because if you lack discipline — a man who can’t say “no,” he’s susceptible to a lot of the distractions in the world. And I feel like if I had a son — or daughter — that would be one of the greatest tools that I can give. How to say no to all the distractions and everything that’s pulling at you in the most distracting era maybe in human history. How do you say no when the algorithm is placing everything in front of you? How do you have a strong enough discipline where you can still have control?
ALI Yeah. And was this something that you learned from a certain coach?
BROWN For me it was Islam. You know, when I started to dive into that.
ALI And how old were you?
BROWN I think like 13, 14, 15 — I had some good people around me that shaped the type of man that I wanted to be. But ultimately, for me it was Islam. For somebody else, it may be something else. What motivates you?
ALI I think the motivation is to resonate. To leave you vibrating afterward. That’s it. If you can accomplish that, you moved a mountain that day. That’s a miracle, bro. To make somebody feel and think and consider.
“THEY ONLY WANT YOU TO BE THE ENTERTAINER”
ALI There’s real resistance in the sports world to athletes that have any real interest beyond the sport itself, especially as Black men.
BROWN Yep. I would say this, it might be a little controversial, but I think it’s rooted in fear, even within our own community. There’s pushback, or almost like a hesitancy, rooted in the trauma of slavery. At one point, to do anything outside of being a slave was problematic. Reading, writing, anything. It’s similar when you think of an athlete doing anything out of what you’re just supposed to be doing.
ALI Right.
BROWN You’re supposed to just be entertaining me. Right? You’re not supposed to be doing anything else outside of that. And some people firmly still believe that. But I disagree. My responsibility is not to entertain you. My responsibility is to be influential. I think that fear is projected onto us in order to make us smaller, to make us more digestible, for the people who only …
ALI Who are uncomfortable around us …
BROWN Who only want you to be the slave. They only want you to be the entertainer.
ALI Right.
BROWN I think it’s a fear that’s instilled in talented people’s brains that if I use my abilities beyond what people are comfortable with, there’s going to be major pushback.
ALI Right.
BROWN And for me, the reason why I’m comfortable doing it is because I just don’t care.
ALI Yeah. I feel like that is going to be your legacy on some level — how effective you’ve been able to be in spaces that go beyond the sport itself.
BROWN When it’s all said and done, I want to break down that fear. That fear that I’m speaking to that is still instilled within our community. It’s in our parents, in our grandparents — because of the trauma and experiences that they’ve had. I want to break that fear down for the next generation. My legacy will be, hopefully, inspiring the next generation to be fearless.
Photographed by Beau Grealy This story appears in The Hollywood Reporter’s September 2026 Sports issue. Click here to read more.
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