As the remnants of Hurricane Debby passed over Martha’s Vineyard on a recent weekend, the Hollywood producer Will Packer, whose credits include “Girls Trip,” “Stomp the Yard,” and the 2022 Academy Awards ceremony (when Will Smith slapped Chris Rock), stood on the front porch of the Harbor View Hotel, where he was staying, and watched the rain. He was planning to visit Inkwell Beach, historically frequented by Black bathers, and to see some friends. But he wasn’t optimistic about the weather. “It’s rough out there,” he said.
Not too far away, a muscly man was working out in the rain. Packer, who’d adopted the Vineyard aesthetic—cap, polo, and chinos, all in soft, greenish hues—said that he’d been training for a marathon himself, even while on vacation. “I tell you, that was me,” he said, comparing himself to the jock. “I was sweating all up and down these streets.” He left his running shoes at home, though, so he had to pick up a pair of Hokas from a local shop.
Packer’s trip had been memorable so far. “Michelle O.,” as he called the former First Lady, had “swung by” a book panel he attended a couple of days earlier. He’d also spent time with the actor Sanaa Lathan and the former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder. “Because it’s my first time at the Vineyard, I overbooked everything,” Packer said. “Because, you know, there’s so many invites. ‘Oh, come to this, come to that.’ Yeah, sure!” The past few days had included brunches, parties, film events, and R. and R. “Now that I’m here, I get the appeal,” he said. “I love the fact that the Vineyard is so brown right now. There’s so many of us.”
Packer continued, “This year, I’m doing a lot of things that I’ve never done before.” Recently, he has been celebrating turning fifty with a newfound “Why not?” approach. He recounted his growing list of firsts, ticking them off on his fingers: “I came to Martha’s Vineyard, I came to the Olympics, I’m running my first marathon, I bought into the Atlanta Falcons.” How does one decide to purchase part of an N.F.L. team? “Well, first of all, you don’t just decide,” he said. “You have to be invited.”
Another first—producing a limited series, “Fight Night: The Million Dollar Heist,” for Peacock. The show dramatizes the lead-up to a little-known historical event: a robbery in Atlanta in 1970 after a Muhammad Ali fight. Packer was premièring the show’s first episode at the Martha’s Vineyard African American Film Festival later that day. “It’s a project that was in the works for a very long time,” he said. “And the thing that people don’t understand about our industry is that, man, these things take so long to get going. ‘Ride Along’—ten years in the making. ‘Straight Outta Compton’—ten years. Ten-plus years! Nobody cares if it comes out and it’s good. If the doughnut tastes good, you don’t care how it was made.”
Packer originally conceived of the “Fight Night” doughnut as a movie. “I went through the process, set it up as a feature film, had a script written, everything,” he said. “Did all the things. It just was not meant to be. And it sat for a while.” He sighed. He turned the story into a podcast for iHeartRadio. Afterward, he sent it to Kevin Hart, a frequent collaborator. “A very good friend of mine,” Packer said. “But I also say that he is the spawn of Satan. An evil man.” Hart appears prominently in an upcoming motivational book written by Packer. “A story I tell in the book is about how Kevin almost single-handedly ruined the biggest movie of both of our careers at the time”—“Ride Along”—with a scheduling conflict, he said, laughing. He asked Hart to listen to just twenty minutes of the podcast, but Hart devoured the whole thing. The actor stars as the protagonist of the series, a hustler named Chicken Man. The cast also includes Taraji P. Henson, Samuel L. Jackson, Don Cheadle, and Chloe Bailey.
Packer sat back in a wicker chair, cradling a cup of tea. The rain was easing, and he figured he still had enough time to hit the beach. He had a marathon of work planned for afterward: a speech at the Martha’s Vineyard Black Book Festival, some press interviews for “Fight Night,” a talk following the première, with Henson, Bailey, and Cheadle, and then an after-party. “My track coach in high school used to tell me, ‘Packer!’ ” He clapped. “ ‘Don’t focus on that finish line. You focus on that finish line, you’re not going to make it.’ ” ♦
