“In the Arena: Serena Williams,” an eight-part documentary on ESPN+, revisits the highs and lows of the star’s career and considers her impact on tennis and beyond.
In March 2001, Serena Williams, then just 19, was booed mercilessly by the crowd during the tournament final of the Indian Wells Open in California. The jeering included racist slurs, and it was arguably the most terrifying and scarring thing that ever happened to Williams during her spectacular career.
In “In the Arena: Serena Williams,” an eight-part documentary streaming on ESPN+ — the final episode premieres on Wednesday — the retired star looks back on how she was shaped by the experience.
“Having to go through those scathing, nasty, awful things just because of the color of my skin opened a lot of doors for other people,” she said. “I have been able to provide a platform for Black girls and Black women to be proud of who they are.”
I welcomed Williams’s newfound ease in talking so explicitly about race and her continued impact on women’s sports. One of the most visible athletes of all time, she has been the subject of countless interviews and biographies during her career, but she did not often seem eager to reveal much about her private life. This has changed in the past few years with projects like the HBO documentary “Being Serena” (2018), about her pregnancy and struggle to return to tennis, and her active posting on Instagram. She was also an executive producer of “King Richard,” the 2021, Oscar-winning biopic of her father, Richard Williams.
But “In the Arena” reveals still more layers of its subject. Directed by Gotham Chopra, it features candid interviews with Williams and her relatives, friends and tennis contemporaries, including her sisters, Venus Williams and Isha Price; her fellow legend Roger Federer; and the former tennis star and current television commentator Mary Joe Fernández. Serena is also an executive producer.
The series is a follow-up to “Man in the Arena: Tom Brady” (2021), which was also directed by Chopra and was produced by Brady’s 199 Productions. But tennis is far more solitary than a team sport like football. Spectators’ eyes are laser-focused on the players and their bodies, a reality that was originally made more fraught because of Williams’s race and class status in the predominately white world of tennis.
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Source: Television - nytimes.com
