“King Richard” Williams reveals all about important career steps with the On The Line documentary and the new anthology

The father of SERENA and Venus Williams has spoken to Will Smith about his next career moves following the success of Oscar-winning film King Richard.

The 80-year-old tennis patriarch had little part in the Hollywood biopic, which told his daughter’s success story.

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But now he’ll have his own time in the spotlight with the main release of his documentary On The Line, which premiered at last year’s Tribeca Film Festival.

He also revealed to The US Sun that he is in early talks for a comprehensive second book about life now that Serena and Venus have achieved global fame and his three marriages.

Richard is still in the midst of a messy divorce from his wife Lakeisha, who is accused of stealing his Social Security checks and transferring vehicles and his home into her name, according to bomb court documents.

But before he works with a ghostwriter to reveal all the details, he’s going back to his roots with the new documentary.

Described as “emotionally reckoning” with unaired interviews from the 1980s to the present, Richard traces his past “from the impoverished streets of Shreveport, Louisiana to the grass courts of Wimbledon.”

The film tells the story of how he stood up to systems and racial oppression and violence, “breaking every rule of the lily-white tennis establishment to change the sport forever”.

The film, which is being directed by Stuart McClave, has his son Chavoita LeSane, 49, as one of the producers and the two say they look forward to its full release later this year.

Richard, who has been struggling with communication problems after suffering multiple strokes, told The US Sun: “It’s coming out in February, I just wanted people to see me a little bit better.” He joked that he was still “ugly”. , but agreed to appear on screen to tell his story.

His son Chavoita said: “The documentary is in the words of my father. I know a lot of people focus on the Venus and Serena story, but I think we all know the Venus and Serena story.

“You grew up in front of the cameras. But I feel like the world doesn’t know the story of Richard Williams. Who created it, what was the thinking, what madness?

“How does a parent create a number one and a number two [in sport] This is phenomenal, especially in a very racist sport. It’s tennis.

“How do you get two kids to believe in themselves so much? I have kids now, it’s hard to get them out of bed and get them to go to school in the mornings, you know?

“I wanted his POV [point of view] to see, to hear his true voice. I’m excited. Everyone who saw it is all blown away.

KKK FIGHT

“The documentary was shot about a year ago, maybe a year and a half. He speaks to the best of his knowledge and belief [after his health struggles in recent years].

“A lot of great people worked on this documentary, it really captures my father’s voice and it was important to me that it didn’t become a Venus and Serena documentary.

“That’s the story for the girls. Learning to play tennis from a drunk guy named Old Whiskey. My father’s story has so many different complexities. It’s crazy. Like how biased we are within our own race.

“He would go out there [but] because he wasn’t wearing the clothes they were wearing, because he didn’t have the new tennis balls, because he didn’t have the best tennis racquets…

“People who knew the black guys who could play tennis didn’t want to play tennis with him. These are crazy stories. Those are his stories.

Visionaries are people who are not afraid to be different.”

Chavoita LeSane on his father, Richard Williams

“Growing up in Shreveport, wanting to be a golfer, going to golf early in the morning and then having to deal with the KKK just because he likes golf clubs and golf balls. So those are the stories I want to tell out there now.

“My dad has been more of the storyteller with me my whole life. So we drove for hours and I just listened to all the stories and stuff he told me about the kid in Shreveport.

“I know a lot of people think I’m crazy or hate that statement or whatever, but I really don’t care, I think my dad is like a modern day Frederick Douglass or Malcolm X or Dr. King in a sense because he’s a visionary, and visionaries are people who aren’t afraid to be different.

“And I’m not saying he’s into politics or anything crazy, but he’s not afraid to go against the grain. He’s not afraid to say, ‘You know what? I am different. And I’m not afraid of being different. I’m not afraid to be who I am, even if everyone else tells me I have to be.'”

Richard first told his story in his memoir, Black and White: The Way I See It, which was published back in May 2014.

TELL ALL BOOK

His son said he has struggled to talk about the past since his strokes a few years ago and it hasn’t been easy to revisit some places he used to visit when he was young.

“He doesn’t like to think and talk about the past as much as he used to, but I can remember stories he gave me about Lil’ Man and his other friends.

“He talked about stealing from stores and how he would time the stealing, things I was sure were in the book Black and White.

“Now he doesn’t talk much about the past at all. He says the past is the past.

“I remember we went back to some of the areas [for the documentary], where he saw people being hanged. I think Lil’ Man was hung from a tree and he saw his hands cut off.

“It frightened him so much it brought him to tears when we were there and we left immediately.

“It wouldn’t have bothered him that much before. So I know he’s different since my dad had the strokes.”

But he still plans to get back to paper with the help of a ghost writer, with his son revealing a book deal is on the table.

“The first book was really about him and the beginning of his life,” Chavoita said. “It didn’t go into much detail about life in the game of tennis and his marriages.

“He will choose his own [ghost] Writer, but we can’t say too much about that at the moment. It’s exciting, there’s still a lot to come that we’re looking forward to.”

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