Icon Serena Williams attended the premiere of the upcoming docuseries on her 27 years in professional tennis.
The 42-year-old said on the Tribeca Festival red carpet in New York that the new series sheds light on the truth of what happens behind the scenes.
“In my position and growing up as a teenager and 14, I kind of had to be guarded to just kind of stay sane, and just being in so much press and doing everything that I was doing and traveling the globe every year. And it wasn’t like you were on tour and you took a break and you had a couple of years off,”
“It was every week. And so it was a grind, and it’s really cool to see a different side of — or not a different side, a true Side of what happens behind the scenes. So I’ve seen these episodes — there’s eight episodes in there, in the show, in the docuseries, but I’m just as excited to see them tonight all over again. I’ve seen it I don’t know how many times.”
The series is co-produced by ESPN, Religion of Sports, Tom Brady’s 199 Productions, and Williams and Caroline Currier’s Nine Two Six Productions.
Lauren Fisher and Gotham Chopra who directed the project were on the red carpet on Thursday (Jun. 13).
Chopra has worked with other sports legends.
“Serena Williams. She’s the GOAT (Greatest of All Time) of GOATS. And, you know, I’ve had the great privilege of working with Tom Brady and Kobe Bryant and Stephan Curry and Simone Biles and Serena’s special, like she’s head of the class. Maybe with Simone — she’s right there too. But like, you know, you’re talking about an African-American woman in a predominantly white sport who had to navigate so much, you know, not just on the court, but in the locker room, in society”
Lauren Fisher believes that even if people think they now Serena Williams, “every episode” has “something new.”
“She gives these really intimate views and like she’s really candid. She’s funny at times, she’s emotional at times […] But my one of my favorite sort of takeaways that I didn’t know having thought I knew her so well is that she’s obsessed with Green Day and has been since she was, you know, a kid.”
“In the Arena: Serena Williams” will premiere on ESPN+ on July 10 after the Excellence in Sports Performance Yearly award, which Williams is hosting.
It marks only the fourth time a woman has hosted the sports awards show, following Danica Patrick in 2018, and Megan Rapinoe and Sue Bird who co-hosted the 2020 show with Russell Wilson, which was virtual because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Additional sources • ESPN Press Room
