{"id":700343,"date":"2026-06-12T20:06:15","date_gmt":"2026-06-12T20:06:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/700343\/"},"modified":"2026-06-12T20:06:15","modified_gmt":"2026-06-12T20:06:15","slug":"billie-jean-king-on-refusing-producer-roll-for-doc-give-me-the-ball","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/700343\/","title":{"rendered":"Billie Jean King On Refusing Producer Roll For Doc ‘Give Me The Ball!’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tDC\/DOX<\/a> is off to a smashing start.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe documentary film festival in the nation\u2019s capital opened Thursday night with the Billie Jean King<\/a> film Give Me the Ball!, exploring the career and cultural impact of the tennis legend. King, 82, took part in a discussion after the screening, where she was joined by members of the filmmaking team including Elizabeth Wolff<\/a>, who co-directed the film with Liz Garbus<\/a>, and producers Dan Cogan and Chris James.<\/p>\n

\n\tUnlike many sports or celebrity-oriented documentaries, King did not approach the project as an opportunity to burnish her reputation.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI did not want what a lot of people do. I did not want to be a producer or a director in it because what happens, a person always just shows basically the best side of them. And I did not want that,\u201d King explained during the Q&A. \u201cI wanted the truth as much as we could get to the truth. And I knew it was going to hurt. I knew it was going to be not fun, but I thought we\u2019re going to do this. You have to be truthful to the people that are watching it. And so I had to really go through a lot of prayer and thought before I said yes, actually.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Billie<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tBillie Jean King speaks at a Q&A after the DC\/DOX screening of \u2018Give Me the Ball!<\/a>\u2018<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tMatthew Carey<\/p>\n

\n\tShe added, \u201cYou have to leave it to the experts. That\u2019s when you get out of the way because they\u2019re the best in what they do.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s not as if Billie Jean had zero input, Wolff revealed. \u201cOne of my favorite things was like when we went to film Billie playing tennis \u2014 Tony Hardmon was the DP that was filming \u2014 and then Billie was like, \u2018No, you want to be down here.\u2019 She knew the exact shots.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI love film. I always have. My mom and I would just watch everything,\u201d King shared. \u201cI\u2019m fascinated and I always thought I\u2019d want to work behind the camera, not in front of it. I love what they do. I would look at the photographer, I would look at the director, I\u2019d ask this. I\u2019d drive them crazy. But it\u2019s fun.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Billie<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tBillie Jean King at Wimbledon.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tGetty Images<\/p>\n

\n\tBillie Jean King is one of only a handful of athletes whose impact on society has gone well beyond the strict parameters of their sport, a shortlist that includes Muhammad Ali, Jackie Robinson, Arthur Ashe and Jim Brown. In the Q&A, she described her moment of realization about the potential to change the culture.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI was 12\u2026 I remember I was at the LA Tennis Club when I was looking around. Everybody played with white balls, they had white clothes and everybody who played was white,\u201d she recalled. \u201cWhen I was 12, that was the epiphany of epiphanies for me. And I knew I\u2019d found my calling, kind of like, \u2018This is it. Maybe I can make the world a better place.\u2019 \u2026And I thought, \u2018God, just maybe, maybe we can do it.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Billie<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tBillie Jean King and Bobby Riggs during a news conference in New York to publicize their match at the Houston Astrodome, July 11, 1973.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tAP<\/p>\n

\n\tKing became not only one of the greatest tennis champions ever \u2013 winning 39 Grand Slams in singles, doubles, and mixed doubles \u2014 but she used her public platform to advocate for social justice, women\u2019s liberation, and LGBTQ rights. As the documentary recounts, in the 1970s King led efforts to create the first women\u2019s professional tennis tour and achieved the unthinkable \u2013 convincing the powers that be (meaning white men who oversaw tennis) to grant equal pay to women, matching what men earned in the big tournaments. The film builds toward a pivotal moment \u2013 King\u2019s 1973 match against avowed sexist Bobby Riggs, a former no. 1 men\u2019s player, who had publicly dismissed the capacity of women to come anywhere close to the athletic ability of men. They squared off in what became known as \u201cthe battle of the sexes,\u201d a televised spectacle that was viewed by 93 million people.<\/p>\n

\n\tRestoring that footage would become one of the filmmaking team\u2019s biggest challenges.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"The<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tThe DC\/DOX Q&A for \u2018Give Me the Ball!\u2019: L-R moderator Sally Jenkins, Billie Jean King, director Elizabeth Wolff, producer Dan Cogan, producer Chris James.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tMatthew Carey<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cOne of the things about that is that the match wasn\u2019t considered historic enough \u2014 even though it was giant at the time,\u201d Cogan commented. \u201cSince then, there isn\u2019t one place that controls all that footage and that is responsible for keeping it. And so we were actually working off a copy of a copy of a copy, and it was the best that we could possibly get.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWolff noted, \u201cLiz [Garbus] and Dan were like, \u2018We can get this cleaned up.\u2019 And you guys sent it to not one restoration house, but a second and a third and a fourth and all the way to New Zealand.\u201d Added Cogan, \u201cWe had to clean that footage up in a way it had never been cleaned up since people saw it originally.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe documentary explores King\u2019s personal life and the evolution of her understanding about her sexuality. She was married to Larry King from 1969-1987, an attorney who became a key ally in her attempts to promote women\u2019s tennis (he died just two weeks ago at the age of 81). The film gets into the most painful moment in King\u2019s life after a woman with whom she had an affair, Marilyn Barnett, sued King for palimony in 1981. King doesn\u2019t avoid that topic, and she\u2019s equally open about sharing her joy now with wife Ilana Kloss, a former no. 1-ranked doubles player from South Africa. They married in 2018.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"(L-R)<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t(L-R) Billie Jean King and wife Ilana Kloss attend Center Gala 2026: The Place We Call Home at Los Angeles LGBT Center on May 16, 2026 in Los Angeles.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tJon Kopaloff\/Getty Images for Los Angeles LGBT Center<\/p>\n

\n\tGive Me the Ball!, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, is a production of Story Syndicate and ESPN Films for its acclaimed 30 For 30 series. Producers of the documentary are Elizabeth Wolff, Liz Garbus, Dan Cogan, Chris James, Carolyn Hepburn, Natalie Fiennes, Gentry Kirby, Scott Siebers, and Dominic Crossley-Holland.<\/p>\n

\n\tDisney and ESPN \u201cmade this film possible,\u201d Cogan said. \u201cThey gave us the budget that we needed to make this film, which was not inconsiderable. There\u2019s a ton of archival material up there, there\u2019s a ton of music. There\u2019s all of that. It was not an inexpensive film and we have to give all the credit to Disney and ESPN who really stepped up and are who are going to do a fantastic release in the fall.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Q&A was capped by King taking out a tennis racket to hit some autographed tennis balls into the audience. A few lucky fans departed with that souvenir, but all who attended left with words of encouragement and inspiration from King.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI really do love people. I do. Everyone matters. Everyone matters. I don\u2019t care who you are, what gender. I don\u2019t care. Everybody matters,\u201d she told the audience. \u201cAnd I always feel that. And I felt that with the players, I felt that with everybody. And don\u2019t take things personally. Can you imagine what they used to say to us? But I used to say to myself, \u2018You know what? They\u2019re doing the best they can.\u2019 Did you see all those guys that were the bosses [in professional tennis]? Did you see one other person, but a white man? I didn\u2019t. They controlled our lives, but I knew they were trying to do the best they could. They just couldn\u2019t get it sometimes.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tKing added, \u201cSo I used to say, \u2018Okay, they don\u2019t get it. It\u2019s all right. We\u2019re going to keep coming.\u2019 You just have to believe that things are going to shift.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DC\/DOX is off to a smashing start. The documentary film festival in the nation\u2019s capital opened Thursday night…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":700344,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[5367,266414,206255,88,205876,206256,206],"class_list":["post-700343","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-billie-jean-king","tag-dc-dox","tag-elizabeth-wolff","tag-entertainment","tag-give-me-the-ball","tag-liz-garbus","tag-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/700343","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=700343"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/700343\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/700344"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=700343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=700343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=700343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}