Serena (Serena's Version), Part 1

In "In the Arena: Serena Williams," the ESPN docuseries for Serena's latest retelling of her own story, the most interesting part is seeing what she chooses to leave out.

Now that all eight episodes of the new docuseries “In the Arena: Serena Williams” have now been published (on ESPN+, Hulu, and Disney+ stateside, and various other streaming services internationally), I thought Bounces would be the perfect place to have the space to work through my many thoughts and reactions to the series.

“In the Arena” is a fascinating document of how Serena¹ wants her career to be remembered. Serena is an executive producer on the series, and with Serena herself carrying the majority of narration each episode, the show feels autobiographical. This is her version of her life and career, and has to be understood as such, so my goal through these reviews of the show is to apply a more journalistic lens to her frequently non-journalistic docuseries.

Serena was the preeminent figure of both my reporting career and my preceding tennis fandom. So in some ways I’m the perfect audience for this show, and in other ways I know wayyyyy too much about Serena and her story to be able to watch without constantly thinking about all the things getting left out. And a whole, whole lot gets left out.

Why “In the Arena”?

Serena’s is the second “In the Arena” show that ESPN has produced, both directed by Gotham Chopra. The first was a ten-episode series featuring Tom Brady, who also serves as an executive producer on Serena’s sequel.

Brady’s show was called “Man in the Arena: Tom Brady” which makes the titular reference far more unmistakable: Teddy Roosevelt’s 1910 speech “The Man in the Arena,” which often gets used by public figures to dismiss and diminish the importance of detractors:

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

It’s an invigorating quote, for sure, but as a general rule I consider modern citations of “Man in the Arena” to be a pretty bright red flag. Almost always, the parable gets invoked by a justifiably embattled public figure who has no better argument than “Fuck the Haters!!!!” left to defend themselves. (Richard Nixon, famously, quoted from “Man in the Arena” in his resignation speech.)

“In the Arena” makes more sense as a touchstone for Brady, who was obsessive and loud about proving “doubters” wrong throughout his career, even when few doubters actually existed during his peak years with the New England Patriots. Serena never seemed to operate with quite as large a chip on her shoulder as Brady; if anything, her bigger goal through most of her career seemed to be lowering expectations on herself to reduce the weight of expectations, with she achieved with mixed results. Not that Serena didn’t have her share of critics and haters—she did and still does, in some quarters—but doubters of her talent were isolated to relatively short segments of her long career.

How Serena uses the primacy of being the titular woman “In the Arena” during her show is less about settling scores, and more about demarcating the focal points of her life story to her taste. Whereas Brady’s series was uniformly paced, featuring one of his ten Super Bowl appearances in each of the commensurate ten episodes, Serena’s eight episodes feature far more discretionary choices about when to slow down and when to speed up through her career. The result is a ride that lurches and pauses unpredictably at times (with one particular acceleration in the final episode that was genuinely flooring).

Two years into retirement, Serena is fully into legacy curation mode. She did extensive promotional work for “In the Arena,” including hosting the ESPYs and sitting for The New York Times’ “The Interview” podcast interview where she bristled at an entirely reasonable question about being a surprise inclusion on a list of people whom Donald Trump “frequently spoke to” during one of his court filings this year. That’s the exactly sort of thorny topic Serena gets to avoid in more cooperative media appearances like being one of Glamour's “Women of the Year” in their cover story this week, and certainly throughout “In the Arena.”

A Crowded Category

One thing is clear about “In the Arena” from the outset: Serena didn’t make this series because there was a shortage of documentaries about her out there already. I didn’t realize just how many there have already been about Serena and her family until I started making this list, which dates back more than two decades, to contextualize “In the Arena.”

The first major Williams family documentary, RAISING TENNIS ACES: THE WILLIAMS STORY (2002) includes a lot of the archive footage which subsequent documentaries have drawn from, and remains a compelling early look at their arrival. I remember getting it on DVD from my public library, and it is still available on The Roku Channel.

Then there was a six-episode reality show, VENUS & SERENA: FOR REAL (2005), which aired on ABC Family (now Freeform), and not especially notable beyond documenting the ickiness of Brett Ratner, who was dating Serena at the time.

After a gap in which Venus and Serena switched their focus from the screen to the page and each came out with their own books—Come to Win (2010) by Venus and On the Line (2009) by Serena—it was back to the documentary grind, and VENUS AND SERENA (2013) turned into maybe the most interesting one of them all. Directors Maiken Baird and Michelle Major had the fascinating fortune of following the sisters through the 2011 season, one of their rare Slamless seasons, in which both faced major health concerns. Serena suffered a life-threatening pulmonary embolism, and Venus was diagnosed with Sjogren’s syndrome. The sisters were more publicly vulnerable than they had been before, with several candid and revealing moments of Serena, especially, most memorably her emotional conversations with hitting partner Sascha Bajin during the 2011 U.S. Open.

The overall film was largely laudatory of the Williams’ story—New York Times critic A.O. Scott declared the film “detailed but also superficial, since Ms. Baird’s and Ms. Major’s intentions and methods are more promotional than journalistic”—but the sisters were unhappy. Venus and Serena took particular umbrage, reportedly, with how their father was depicted in the film, including scenes in which Serena has to sign to approve his expenditures, and in which Serena sheepishly admits she isn’t sure how many siblings she has on his side of the family after a man she doesn’t recognize, identifying himself as one of Richard’s sons, shows up to one of her practices.

Serena during an interview scene in VENUS AND SERENA (2013)

After being displeased by a screening of the final cut, neither Venus nor Serena ultimately attended the premiere at the Toronto Film Festival, as had been expected they would, with Venus remaining cold toward the film through its release. It is still available for streaming on Max.

As the streaming era hit its stride and platforms became insatiable for content, the next contemporaneous documentary came quickly, signaling a veritable conveyor belt of Serena content. Now the sole focus as she was putting distance between herself and Venus in the history books², SERENA (2016) followed Serena during the 2015 season, tracking her near-miss bid to win all four Grand Slam tournament. Though the lack of a fairytale ending perhaps makes director Ryan White’s film more interesting, the movie has fallen into streaming limbo. (I did find a ripped copy with Swedish subtitles on YouTube, though.)

Serena was back as the focus of a documentary crew less than two years later, for what became the five-episode HBO series BEING SERENA (2018). Serena gave cameras remarkable access to the birth of her daughter, Olympia—we meet Olympia as she is mere seconds old, freshly extracted via C-section—and to her struggles to regain her fitness after giving birth, but the revelations are more about the physical than psychological makeup of Serena. This show is still available on Max as well.

Then there was the slight detour into Hollywood scripted film with KING RICHARD (2021), the critically-acclaimed biopic on which Venus, Serena, and their sister Isha Price served as executive producers, and which won Will Smith his long-awaited Oscar for playing the patriarch (not his most memorable moment of that night).

In 2021, yet another docuseries about Serena was announced. This time, the UK studios Plum Pictures and Goalhanger Films were teaming with Amazon Studios to make a four-part docuseries, with both Serena and her longtime coach Patrick Mouratoglou named as executive producers on the project. I received an email in Summer 2021 (asking to use audio clips from my podcast No Challenges Remaining from episodes discussing Serena during her run at the 2021 Australian Open) and that included a synopsis of the project which gives a sense of their aims:

“Produced by Plum Pictures, ‘The Quest’ (working title) is a four-part landmark docuseries event for Amazon Prime following sporting legend and cultural icon Serena Williams both on and off the court. With behind-the-scenes intimate access during the most extraordinary two years in the history of tennis - the 2020 & 2021 Grand Slam seasons - can Serena finally win an elusive 24th Grand Slam Championship and become the undisputed Greatest of All Time?”

Perhaps because the executive producers did not achieve their goals during those 2020 and 2021 seasons, “The Quest” appears to have stalled and been shelved. My messages to Plum Pictures inquiring about the status of the project, both last year and again this week, have not been answered.³

I learned while writing this piece that there was actually yet another feature-length documentary about Serena that came out this year: SERENA WILLIAMS: THE POWER AND THE GLORY (2024), to which Serena gave no participation nor access, and which relies almost entirely on file footage and narration from media who have had little or no personal interaction with Serena.

Serena gets to say a lot in “In the Arena,” but it won’t be her last word on herself. Serena is set to return to print once more, signing a two-book deal with Penguin Random House last year. The first book in the deal is billed as a memoir giving a “full and open account of Williams’s remarkable life.” After watching “In the Arena,” how “full and open” the book might be remains unclear.

So, with all that (necessary) prologue out of the way, let’s get into the episode-by-episode reviews of “In the Arena: Serena Williams,” and a deep look at what the show shines a light on and what it chooses to leave in the dark.

(There was so much to say that I’m breaking my review into three parts to make it as wieldy as possible for readers.)

Episode 1: Out of the Shadow (Childhood to 1999 U.S. Open)

The first episode of “In the Arena” may be the best of all. Or, perhaps put another way, watching it calibrated my expectations for the series in a certain way, and I don’t think the rest of the series consistently cleared that bar.

With footage that dates back as early as 1989 when Serena was just eight years old, nearly everything that I felt should have been covered over these chapters of Serena’s career is covered, and the most notable things that were skipped chronologically (her early matches against Venus at the 1998 Australian Open and in the 1999 Miami final) are shown early in the second episode, which focuses on her match-up against Venus.

The episode’s core framing of Venus as the foregrounded sister is absolutely accurate: in early coverage of the Williamses, Serena was mentioned as an afterthought, if at all. Venus was out ahead in a way that meaningfully gave Serena cover from the spotlight and also smoothed the path that Serena traveled close behind. As the only person interviewed other than Serena in the first episode, Venus serves as an illuminating second voice in the episode, particularly about her famously funereal mood watching her younger sister win a first major title before she could.

“It wasn’t that I wasn’t happy for her,” Venus says. “It’s just, you know, we all get caught up in our inner struggle. And I was in my own inner struggles. I think I was still in the past, in my own match, way too much, instead of enjoying the moment.”

The biggest thing that the first two episodes of “In the Arena” have—that later episodes almost completely lack—is a robust discussion of one of Serena’s rivals. Rivals are, of course, an integral part of understanding any athlete’s story, and “In the Arena” really only does it at the beginning. Martina Hingis, who was No. 1 when Venus and Serena started contending on the tour, is discussed at length as a foil and a hurdle in the first episode, with an arc drawn from her early wins over Venus and Serena to her eventual loss to Serena in the 1999 U.S. Open final. Except for the focus on Venus in the second episode, this is the only time the series ever pays a rivalry its due, which I think is perhaps the greatest shortcoming of the rest of the series.

Serena shares a tasty new tidbit about how she rattled Hingis during the coin toss when Hingis won the coin toss and picked Serena to serve first—“And I looked at her, and I said, ‘Are you sure about that?’ And she was, like, startled.”

Sadly, that sort of popcorn moment isn’t repeated again for the entire run of the show.

There are also a few smaller name drops in the first episode (and sporadically through other episodes) that fall more into fun “Let’s Remember Some Guys” territory, like Serena’s discussion of Julie Halard-Decugis, which serve as catnip for diehard tennis fans of a certain age.

What Serena left out of Episode 1:

One of the most important things about understanding the Williams Sisters in the 1990s is grasping how famous they were before they had any seeming reason to be. Richard Williams attracted an unimaginable amount of attention onto his daughters starting years before they ever played professional tennis matches—particularly Venus, who was on the front page of The New York Times at age 10,

“Ask people in the [U.S. Open] stands: fewer of them know the name of the No. 5 [player in the WTA rankings] than know Venus Williams,” author Michael Mewshaw quoted an exasperated agent saying in Ladies of the Court, his book about the 1991 tennis season, when Venus was only eleven.

Their father’s knack for courting coverage and controversy is mentioned only briefly by Serena, and in very positive terms. “I think my dad was a marketing genius,” Serena says in Episode 1. “He always put Venus out there, and he had such a genius way of making our story be seen and told.”

What’s not discussed in the episode is the sheer breadth of this attention, nor how exposing these young girls to sensationalism, scrutiny, and skepticism might have affected them. That famous clip of Richard Williams interrupting the interviewer who challenges a young Venus on her confidence? It’s not in here.

Relatedly, the other major omission of the first episode is the spectre of the age-old worry over teen prodigies in tennis, and the impact that the clearest cautionary tale, Jennifer Capriati, had on both Venus and Serena’s early careers.

Capriati, who became a star on the pro tour when she was just 13, had trained with Rick Macci, the same coach as the Williamses. Her high-profile burnout while still a teenager—including a mugshot that made it onto the cover of major publications like People Magazine—loomed large in both the Williams family’s protective attitude toward their daughters and in the media coverage of the wave of teen prodigies of the 1990s.

Capriati’s flameout (an episode I might dive into in a future Bounces post, since I think it isn’t well understood) wasn’t just an ominous story in the background: it changed the rulebook and therefore how the family planned the launches of both Venus and Serena onto the pro tour. Both sisters ultimately turned pro and competed earlier than they would have otherwise in order to be grandfathered in before a stricter WTA rule prohibiting young teenagers competing—colloquially called “The Capriati Rule”— could take effect.

During the 2019 U.S. Open I asked Serena about her inauspicious tour debut as a 14-year-old in Quebec City—a match which is discussed in Episode 1—and she immediately cited the age eligibility rule as the reason for her premature premiere (video of our exchange clipped below):

But this episode mentions none of that important context, disappointingly. Skipping over those restrictions, and the root perils being a teen phenom in tennis that precipitated them, is definitely something I think the series could have addressed, and in a way that could have flatteringly highlighted how well the Williams family ultimately navigated the jungle for their daughters.

Episode 2: Into the Light (2000 to 2003 Australian Open)

The second episode of “In the Arena” is the most thematically coherent of the entire series, and that also arguably makes it a contender for the best of the series. This episode is almost exclusively about Serena vs Venus, the match-up which amazingly—and agonizingly—took place in six of eight major finals between the 2001 U.S. Open and 2003 Wimbledon, including the four in a row that Serena won over Venus for her first “Serena Slam.”

Like in the first episode, the only two people speaking to the camera in this episode are Serena and Venus, and having just their two voices describing about their uniquely shared story gives the viewer a intimate look into their dynamic. The episode carried both by a pair of sisters and a pair of rivals, and that duality makes the episode pretty special.

Their matches against one another have not been a favorite topic for Serena nor Venus, so that they were both willing to open up about it in this format feels pretty genuinely revelatory. This crucial stretch of their careers was ultimately lopsided in Serena’s favor—coming “at the cost of the happiness of my sister,” Serena says—and the strain that caused them both is apparent.

The episode starts with the most dominant stretch of Venus’ career, winning both Wimbledon and the U.S. Open back to back in 2000 and 2001, with a win over her little sister, again becoming something of an afterthought, in the 2001 U.S. Open final. “I wasn’t happy, but it was okay,” Serena says of that loss. “It almost felt better at that time for her to win. Because she should win. She’s Venus. She was the phenom. It was never me.”

Serena then describes, as she also did in her 2009 memoir, how being ghosted by her boyfriend—Washington NFL star LaVar Arrington, who is not named in the show (and himself finally confirmed his relationship with Serena only a few months ago)—motivated her to become ubiquitous to torture him: “I’m going to make sure that this person never forgets me, and I’m going to make sure that this person sees me everywhere for the rest of their life.”

Serena surges, and then describes a breakthrough against Venus in the 2002 French Open final, where she finally allowed herself to believe she could beat Venus, and stopped herself from looking at her older sister during the match. “That was the start of me never looking at Venus when we played,” Serena said. “…I’m gonna pretend that I’m not playing Venus Williams; I’m playing someone else. And it was so simple, but it was genius for me, and it really worked…As long as I don't look at her, I'm going to win.”

Serena’s wins in the next two major finals over Venus are covered at a brisk pace, which matches the way she her own joy was muzzled by facing Venus. “It was very, very businesslike, it was very matter of fact,” Serena says of her wins over Venus. “That person you care about the most in the world, you watch them have their lowest point in their life every fricking Grand Slam. And I cried. I really cried a lot about that.”

The 2003 Australian Open final, which gave Serena the honor of winning the “Serena Slam”—and gave Venus the distinct dishonor of losing four finals in a row—is ruefully scored to Nina Simone’s “Isn’t It a Pity.” Serena calls beating Venus for a fourth time in a row “absolute torture” and “the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my entire life.” This sequence could’ve been maudlin if botched, but I thought the emotion read as entirely earned authentic.

Venus says she was only able to hug Serena in defeat because “her happiness is wrapped up in mine,” and fairly suggests “If I would have played anyone else in those finals, I would have won those five.”

What Serena left out of Episode 2:

Because of the tight thematic framing around this episode, nearly everything else that happened for Serena between 2000 and the 2003 Australian Open is ignored in the episode. And that makes sense directorially, but what’s frustrating is that almost none of those themes, characters, and events—most of which anyone who followed Serena at that time would consider critically important—are circled back to later in the series, which would have had plenty of theoretical room over its eight-episode run. There’s one exception: the 2001 Indian Wells controversy, which is deservedly the focus of the sixth episode in the only major flashback of the series. But so much is forgotten.

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