When you envision a dream biopic about the Williams family and their storied tennis career, what do you picture? A moving drama about Serena Williams’s life? A tribute to sisterhood following Venus and Serena as aspiring child tennis stars? Or is it a biopic of Richard Williams starring Will Smith?
Well, the latter is what’s being made, so deal with it. Variety reports that Will Smith has been cast as Venus and Serena’s father Richard in the new movie King Richard, which will follow him “overcoming hardship, skepticism, controversy, and his own troubled past to instruct his daughters, starting when they were four years old on the tennis courts of Compton, Calif. — despite not having a background in tennis.”
No disrespect to Richard Williams, who nurtured his daughters’ groundbreaking talent and repeatedly defied the extremely white world of tennis which doubted the sisters’ abilities from the beginning. Venus wouldn’t be Venus and Serena wouldn’t be Serena without Richard, period. But you know what would be better? A movie that centers on the star sisters!