Sumith Prasad
In Peacock’s crime drama series ‘Fight Night: The Million Dollar Heist,’ Vivian Thomas is the girlfriend of Gordon “Chicken Man” Williams, who hosts a group of Black gangsters at a party in his house to welcome Frank Moten to Atlanta. While her partner accompanies Frank to watch Muhammad Ali beat Jerry Quarry, Vivian gets ready with her friends and acquaintances for the occasion. Before Chicken Man can bring his guests to the party, several robbers hijack the event and hold everyone under the roof hostage. Even though the period drama is based on a true story, Vivian’s storyline is not completely rooted in reality!
Vivian Thomas is Partially Inspired by Chicken Man’s Girlfriend, Barbara Smith
Vivian Thomas can be seen as a fictionalized version of Barbara Smith, an Atlanta-based woman with whom Gordon “Chicken Man” Williams had an extramarital affair in 1970. Barbara and Chicken Man owned the house at 2819 Handy Drive in the Collier Heights neighborhood of Northwest Atlanta, where the “million-dollar heist” occurred. On October 26, 1970, she was supposed to join her boyfriend to watch “The Return of the Champion.” However, she got engaged in the preparations ahead of the party thrown for Frank Moten and the gangster’s companions. According to Jeff Keating and Jim Roberts’ iHeart podcast series ‘Fight Night,’ the source material of the crime drama, Barbara was the person who opened the door and saw the group of robbers first.
After the robbers entered the house, Barbara’s experiences drastically differed from Vivian’s. In the third episode of the period drama, one of the robbers, Willie Black, forces the hostess to dance in front of the hostages as a punishment for trying to escape from her home. In reality, there aren’t any sources that state this particular development transpired during the heist. This can be a fictional plot point conceived to establish Willie’s viciousness. The same episode depicts Vivian joining Chicken Man to escape from the premises in a friend’s car, which also didn’t happen in real life.
The Robbers Used Barbara Smith to Flee After the Heist
After the heist, the group of robbers held Barbara Smith and another woman hostage and took them along with them while they fled. “One of the hostages was the Chicken Man’s old lady. The other was a kid from New York, a bargirl. I [heard] she didn’t get over it for a couple of weeks… really scared her,” Frank Moten told the revered journalist George Plimpton for the latter’s 1977 book ‘Shadow Box: An Amateur in the Ring.’ According to the source podcast series, the robbers might have forced Barbara to join them to open her house’s backdoor. With Barbara and the other hostage, the robbers drove to the other side of Atlanta. They gave the two women $10 each for cab fare. The two hostages returned to the same house while the guests were leaving.
In the show, one of the robbers injures Vivian. In reality, however, Barbara was seemingly unharmed physically. Two days after the heist, Chicken Man and his girlfriend went to the police headquarters in Atlanta to convince the authorities they had nothing to do with the robbery. They stated that the thieves robbed them as they stole from their guests to prove their innocence. After this meeting, Barbara seemingly chose to lead a private life. She stepped away from the spotlight and media attention the heist garnered. A June 1971 edition of The Atlanta Journal and Constitution Magazine stated she “dropped out of sight” after the robbery.
Chicken Man must have eventually broken up with her, especially considering how he didn’t talk about her extensively with Jeff Keating, who interviewed him in the early 2000s. The former drug dealer shared his life with Delores, his second wife. The couple served as pastors at International Ministries 2000 Church in Atlanta together. In ‘Fight Night: The Million Dollar Heist,’ Vivian has more prominence than Barbara had back in 1970. “The woman pays attention, and what I love is she finally gets her power. Any obstacle that she faces, she uses that as a way to learn something and to springboard her into the next place she’s trying to go in life,” Taraji P. Henson told Vanity Fair about her character. Through Vivian, the crime drama explores how a Black woman pursues the American dream by taking a diversion from reality.
