Serena Williams reflects on her life and legacy in a new docuseries

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 to happen 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’ 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 Serena Williams and her relatives, friends and tennis contemporaries, including her sisters, Venus Williams and Isha Price; her fellow legend Roger Federer; and former tennis star and current television commentator Mary Joe Fernández. Serena Williams 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 Spectators’ eyes are laser-focused on the players and their bodies, a reality that was originally made more fraught because of Williams’ race and class status in the predominantly white world of tennis.

I think about Williams’ multiple identities almost every time I see her: when she was a surprise Olympic torchbearer representing the United States at the opening ceremony in Paris; when I watched her in Arthur Ashe Stadium during the women’s final of the 2018 U.S. Open, being booed and losing to Naomi Osaka; and when I returned to the tournament years later and was part of the crowds that gave her standing ovations before her first match and for her final doubles match with Venus Williams. I still think about her impact even in her absence, as when Coco Gauff thanked the Williams sisters after winning the U.S. Open in 2023, a year after Serena Williams retired.

Williams was the greatest woman tennis player of all time, but she long ago transcended the sport she dominated. Her glam style, not-so-subtle swagger and her competitive (and contentious) moments on the court made it possible for a new generation of women athletes to flourish in the full breadth of their humanity, particularly Black women like Simone Biles, Angel Reese, Sha’Carri Richardson and Gabby Thomas.

“In the Arena” suggests that one of the keys to Williams’ rise to greatness and her ability to sustain it for 20 years was the community that stood by her and, in many cases, saved her.

For example, the discussion of Indian Wells, which comes in the sixth episode, reveals the long-term injury that the crowd’s abuse inflicted upon the entire family. Inspired by Venus Williams’ withdrawal from her semifinal against Serena Williams because of injury — which led the National Enquirer and others to accuse their father of fixing the tournament to Serena Williams’ advantage — the jeers were directed at Venus Williams and Richard Williams in the stands as well as at Serena Williams on the court. (She still won the final.)

The sisters boycotted the tournament for years, and in one moving scene, their sister Isha Price asks the crew to stop filming as she begins to cry because she feels guilty about not being there to protect her younger siblings. When Serena Williams returned to play at Indian Wells 14 years later, her journey to forgiveness was inspired by meeting Nelson Mandela and reading his memoir.

In Episode 3, Williams peels back the layers of grief she endured after her sister Yetunde Price was murdered in 2003. Williams initially wanted to quit tennis and had to work through her depression.

The most revelatory episode is the second one, which focuses on the years that Venus and Serena Williams competed against each other for Grand Slam titles. It is akin to hearing from Michael Jordan’s greatest rivals, like Reggie Miller and Isiah Thomas, in “The Last Dance,” with the added dimension that the sisters rooted for each other off the court as intensely as they battled one another on it.

In separate interviews, Venus and Serena Williams break down each other’s games, discuss how playing against the other influenced their self-esteem and reveal the strategies they deployed against each other. (Serena Williams could not look at her sister until the match was over.) It is a rare glimpse into their simultaneous closeness and competitiveness.

There is little mention of other players, like Jennifer Capriati, Martina Hingis or Maria Sharapova, who at different times challenged Serena Williams’ reign. But in watching her rise through her own eyes, it becomes clear that aside from Venus Williams, she believed that her biggest obstacles were bad calls from line judges, racist caricatures in the media and, like Jordan before her, the inevitably of time itself.

The final episode, arriving Wednesday, focuses on her decision to retire and have another child.

Watching tennis without seeing Williams on the court is still hard for me. I haven’t returned to Flushing Meadows because I miss her once-in-a-lifetime serve, versatile shot selection, keen fashion sense and intellectual fortitude.

And yet, on the heels of the Olympics, as another U.S. Open gets underway, and with the WNBA playoffs around the corner, her influence is ever apparent. “The Greatest of All Time” might be too small a title.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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