Williams and husband Alexis Ohanian are using the series to offer a glimpse into their personal livesGETTY IMAGES
HBO's “Being Serena” premieres tonight as the five-part docu-series follows Serena Williams through her "pregnancy, her life-threatening postnatal problems and her comeback in remarkably unvarnished fashion," according to Christopher Clarey of the N.Y. TIMES. The cameras follow Williams and her husband, Reddit co-Founder Alexis Ohanian, through "some of the most intimate moments of their lives: even into the delivery room" during the birth of their daughter Olympia. The scene and the series are "all the more surprising in light of Williams’s longtime reluctance to share much publicly about her previous relationships, or even acknowledge them." Williams said that she was the "one who initiated the process with the HBO series." Williams said, “HBO got wind of it, and they said, ‘We would love to do it for you.’ My original idea was to do more just Olympia stuff, and then I thought if we’re going to do this, let’s go all out.” Clarey wrote the series produces "scenes of raw emotional power" (N.Y. TIMES, 4/28).
REVIEWS ARE IN: In N.Y., Kirsten Fleming wrote the series is "so intimate and raw, it almost feels like you’re peering into the window" of Williams' house. The cameras "follow a makeup-free Williams everywhere" (N.Y. POST, 5/1). VOGUE's Zachary Schwartz wrote the project has "seemingly unlimited access to its subject." The series' "greatest trick may be how it manages to make the greatest female athlete of all time emphatically relatable" (VOGUE.com, 4/30). ESPNW.com's Kavitha Davidson wrote the show presents a Serena Williams that fans and media "haven't until now known, one who goes far beyond her larger-than-life public image to a woman who is imminently relatable, one who is surprisingly vulnerable, unsure of herself, scared" (ESPNW.com, 5/1). ROLLING STONE's Charles Bramesco wrote the series "provides fly-on-the-wall access to one of the biggest and most fascinating celebrities in any region of the sporting world, characterizing her as both a relatable human woman and a demigod walking among mere mortals" (ROLLINGSTONE.com, 5/1).
