Robert Glasper (The Photograph, Miles Ahead, The Best Man: The Final Chapters, Bel-Air) is the composer of the new Apple TV+ limited series The Big Cigar. The show is based on the magazine article of the same name by Joshuah Bearman (Argo) and stars André Holland, Alessandro Nivola, Tiffany Boone, Marc Menchaca, P.J. Byrne, Moses Ingram, Olli Haaskivi, Rebecca Dalton, Jordane Christie and Glynn Turman. The 6-part drama tells the true story of Black Panther founder Huey P. Newton who escaped from the FBI to Cuba with the assistance of movie producer Bert Schneider in an impossibly elaborate plan – involving a fake film production – that goes wrong every way it possibly can. Janine Sherman Barrois (Claws, ER) serves as the project’s showrunner and is also executive producing the Warner Bros. Television production with Jim Hecht (Ice Age: The Meltdown) who also scripted the first episode, as well as Bearman, Joshua Davis & Arthur Spector (Little America, Radical). Don Cheadle directed the first two episode. Glasper has previously collaborated with Hecht on the second season of HBO’s Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty. The Big Cigar will premiere tomorrow, May 17 exclusively on Apple TV+.
Glasper’s other recent scoring projects include Dawn Porter’s Luther: Never Too Much, which premiered at this year’s Sundance Film Festival and has just been picked up by CNN Films and OWN for a release in 2025, as well as Paris Barclay’s documentary Billy Preston: That’s the Way God Planned It (co-scored with Derrick Hodge), which premiered at this year’s SXSW Film Festival and is currently awaiting a distribution deal.
