What is there for Serena Williams—and the viewer—to be afraid of? Turns out, the answer is plenty. Fear of having peaked in her career. Fear of motherhood. Fear of not being able to have it all.
In the series opener, we follow 23-time major champion Serena Williams as she finds out she is pregnant during the 2017 Australian Open and awaits to birth of her first child. We—the viewer—understand the stakes of the pregnancy and the subsequent c-section/recovery that almost killed her. We know that Serena, who suffers from blood clots, survives a harrowing time in the hospital, demanding that doctors listen to her as she knows she might die.
So it’s disconcerting to watch her then-fiance, Alexis Ohanian, and mom, Oracene Price, exuding calm in the hospital room with her. They don’t yet know what awaits. But anyone who follows Serena knows how close to death she came. In the moment, Serena seems to know, too, as she has a nervous and quiet air about her, as if she is reserving all of her energy to walk down the hallway to tell the doctors, “I know what is wrong with my body! Listen to me!”
All the Way from Compton in VW Vanagon
Being Serena feels like important television thanks to Miles Hankins’ original score, the editing, and the production value. This is a docuseries, but this is HBO. It ain’t Bravo. We see inside Serena’s life but with enough distance and detachment that it never feels lowly like the Real Housewives (I say this as a rabid RH fangirl). Serena is shy and she gives us just a taste of her life. She refuses to give us a mouthful, where Bethenny Frankel would drown you in Skinny Girl.
Serena understands how her life is very different now, compared to learning to play tennis in the public parks of Compton, with her dad, Richard Williams, driving her and sister Venus around in a VW Vanagon like tennis hippies. The old home movies of her house show security bars over the windows, playing a sharp contrast to her Palm Beach mansion with touches of Hollywood-regency design.
I’m hoping as the series progresses, we get a bit more insight into her family life. I want to know how her Jehovah’s Witness upbringing impacted who she is as a person. I want to know how she navigates being in a big family of divorce that has had an overwhelming share of personal tragedies to deal with. And I’m really hoping we get a lot more of her love story with Alex. It’s so apparent from his face when he talks about Serena that he is beyond taken with her. It’s THE BEST.
Dance and Twirl
Sure, we talk about love and death and tennis. But not everything in Being Serena is heavy. Some cute tidbits:
- Baby Alexis Olympia has a rose gold crib, with a sequined pillow that says “Dance and Twirl”
- She has the same Aden + Anais swaddle blanket that I used for my daughter, Ruby.
- The nursery is where Serena keeps that 2017 Aussie Open trophy.
- Serena is very much a Rachel Green, in not being able to make out her baby on the ultrasound.
They say you should never meet your heroes, so I’m okay with there being some room between Serena and me. There is an intimacy that doesn’t shatter my adoration. Serena is the GOAT of tennis, but her worries are universal. Life as woman/mother/American is fraught. No, I don’t have to deal with what Serena deals with (body shaming, racism, haters), and I don’t succeed or fail in a stadium full of quiet-then-screaming spectators. But something Serena says in the first episode really struck me as relatable to anyone:
Still…there is no escaping the fear. I guess my only choice it to live and find out.
This past spring, I met a Olympic skier Cary Mullen and he signed a copy of his book for me. His inscription? “Keep living!” I tore it out and stuck it to my office wall. Keep living. Because what choice to we really have? The only choice is to live and find out.
Being Serena airs on HBO, Wednesdays at 10 PM
Images courtesy of HBO
