When people see the film, that’s what makes it so nuanced and different.” “It was interesting seeing and hearing everybody’s perspective. “We were willing to tell the tough stuff,” says Isha. He would start and stop things all the time.” He had started all these other businesses that either had not broken out in the way he wanted to or had failed. “That obviously is in reference to his other children, but it was also that Richard was a dreamer who was always looking for that opportunity that was going to both change his family circumstances and also change the way the world looked at him. “Oracene basically tells Richard, ‘You quit on things, you walk out,’” says Baylin, recalling the scene. In it, Aunjanue Ellis’s Oracene stands her ground, delivering a blistering monologue in which she calls out Richard’s fatal flaw. In King Richard, this discovery coincides with Richard temporarily faltering in his plan for his daughters, inciting one of the film’s powerhouse scenes. I found out he was divorced, and that was enough for me.” Isha has not, however, broached the subject with her father: “I’m not going to ask him that. He has a daughter that ended up living with us for a while.” Her mother, Isha says, “is just very matter-of-fact. It is what it is, and that’s what it was.’” What was I supposed to say? I’m not getting to judge him based on that. I think I asked her, ‘Why didn’t you tell us? Why are you telling Zach this?’ She was like, ‘You guys were kids. You didn’t know before they came?!’ I never knew my mom didn’t know. “I looked at her and was like, ‘Wait a minute. Her mother confessed that she only learned about Richard’s first five children when his son, Richard III, showed up at the family’s door. “Zach was like, ‘How did you feel finally meeting Richard’s other kids?’ And my mother says, ‘I didn’t know about them,’” says Isha. “She said, ‘Well if it’s going to be there, let’s get it right,’” says Baylin.ĭuring one conversation, Oracene dropped a bombshell unknown to even Isha. When Oracene realized that Richard’s first marriage and children were going to be addressed onscreen, she did not try to sanitize the story line. The original King Richard script referenced Richard’s five children from his previous marriage. (In addition to Venus and Serena, Richard raised three of Oracene’s daughters from her previous marriage-Yetunde, Lyndrea, and Isha-as his own.) But the relationship had its challenges. Oracene and Richard were successful in their parenting partnership and dream for their five daughters. So we really needed to sit down and hear her story.” “She was the mother and the primary breadwinner, and also a coach. “The girls talk about Richard as being the mastermind carnival barker of this plan, but that it fell on Oracene to be the backbone of the family and to really be the one to figure out, ‘Okay, if we’re going to do this, then here’s what everyone’s role has to be,’” says Baylin. He was an extremely soft and encouraging father and coach.” But what was brilliant was he knew that without the resources, he was going to have to build up this aura and myth around them to get people to invest in them.… I think the outward impression was that that bombastic-ness and that contentiousness would’ve been there in the family as well. At the time, I think people saw that somewhat contentiously. “He really saw his job as their coach being not just about what was happening on the court, but about being their hype man. “In the ’90s and the early 2000s, when he was much more forward-facing, Richard was a very controversial and contentious figure in the tennis world,” says Baylin. “Daddy washed the van every week.”) Isha, Venus, and Williams matriarch Oracene Price also spent considerable time speaking with the filmmakers to make sure that they understood the private side of Richard Williams. (“I was mad that the van was dusty,” laughs Isha about one nitpick. Serena and Venus submitted script feedback their sister Lyndrea Price worked in the costume department and Isha helped with everything from choosing the director, Reinaldo Marcus Green, to making sure minute details of her family life were accurately depicted. Though Richard stayed removed from the process, the rest of the family got involved.
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