PLAYING TENNIS’ QUEEN ORACENE
AUNJANUE ELLIS’ PORTRAYAL OF THE MOTHER OF VENUS AND SERENA WILLIAMS IN ‘KING RICHARD’ SHINES A LIGHT ON WOMEN WHO WORK HARD FOR THEIR FAMILY WITHOUT NOTICE
Vernay and the rest of us who were involved in [“When They See Us”], it was an act of restorative justice. And because of that, there’s a certain kind of demand on us. It reopened that discussion that needed to happen about the injustice that happened to those young men. So it was a different kind of calculation.
In Miss Oracene, there was some liberty that I took there. That’s the character work that comes in. How does someone, how does anyone, who has to share the space of someone like Richard Williams, how do they navigate that space? And I made sure also that I went to a church service, a worship service of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, because, at least at the time, Miss Oracene was a devout Jehovah’s Witness. Doing that kind of work is really, really important.
You mentioned the unsung nature of Oracene’s work, and there’s a scene where the girls’ coach confronts Richard about Richard’s decision to pull the girls from juniors competitions. And Oracene waits until they’re alone and then she expresses her displeasure with Richard. Can you talk about how you felt about that tension between her wanting advocacy and agency in working with the girls, but also in part because of her faith, feeling that she had to follow Richard’s lead?
I think that Miss Oracene embodied this kind of womanhood that gets discarded and looked over because it is a womanhood that is defined by a relationship with God, that is defined by faith, and that informs her marriage. It orders the kind of parent she is. It orders how she moves around in the world. Her marriage was in service to something bigger. Her marriage was in service to her faith and that’s what separated her. And so for her, her religion, her faith in God dictates that he, in the presence of other people, take the lead. And that’s what she was referring to. But after that is over, she tells them how she feels.
There’s a moment when a neighbor has called Child Protective Services and Richard deals with the police and the officials that are there. Later Oracene confronts the neighbor and we see a side of her that we’ve really not seen before.
That was a scene we worked on a bit more because we wanted Miss Oracene to have more presence in the scene. And here’s the thing: That scene was stripped down. I don’t say a whole lot to her. I don’t read her the riot act. I don’t curse her out. I just say a couple of things to her. It’s not what I would have done at all. I was making all these suggestions of all the things I would have said and wanted to say to that woman in that situation. And Rei very brilliantly said, “No, she doesn’t need to say that.” So we just stripped it down, stripped it down, stripped it down, stripped it down, and I loved the simplicity of it. And I wanted Miss Oracene to have a chance to have her say, and Zach Baylin wrote something that did that.
I’ve also heard you say that you felt like you had to sort of stick up for Oracene at times. Were there moments that you feel came about because of the conversations you were having? Because there’s been some criticism of the movie for telling the Williams sisters’ story through the perspective of their father.
I’ve said this a lot. There are going to be more stories told about Venus and Serena because they’re just fascinating figures. They’re these two sisters who were incredible tennis players, incredible sports figures. But how many times are we going to have a story where it focuses on their mother? And I wanted us to go even further because I felt like people don’t know who she is. Honestly, I feel every time someone is talking to me, every time I get a nomination or something like that, I feel like it’s Miss Oracene’s nomination.
People are hearing her name in a way that they have not heard it before, and she deserves that. She’s been clapping for her daughters her entire life. I’m excited about the fact that somebody is clapping for her now. You know she deserves that. When is she going to get that chance again? The thing is, she didn’t care. She’s fine. She’s contented. It is not important to her. But it was important to me and I also felt like there’s so many Miss Orcenes in the world who were all in the stands cheering on. And no one knows the full measure of who they are and what they are and how they figure into the world that we live in. I just felt that this was my shot to speak for Miss Oracene and to speak for those other women like her.
I’ve heard you say that when picking roles you ask yourself the question: Is this role in ser vice of Black women? And that’s a question I’m assuming your white counterparts are not asking themselves. When did that question in particular become something that enters your mind when you’re making decisions about what roles to take?
I would say, in earnest, 10 years ago when I went back home [to Mississippi]. I think that actors have different, you know, they might be white but they might be incredibly driven by the climate crisis. They might be white but they have concerns about racial injustice as well. But for me, it is what I have to do. And the reason why I say that I have to do it is because there is a concerted attack on women’s bodies, and when there’s an attack on women’s bodies, it’s magnified when it’s Black women’s bodies.
When I say attack, I mean what’s happening with reproductive rights particularly in the South, which is where I’m from. There’s an attack on voting rights. There’s an attack on education being used as a tool to tell young people who we are in this country, there’s a concerted attack on that. So I feel I know that that is my job. It is my job to use cinema, to use film and television for the purpose of doing the work that the rest of the world may not want to do. And when you have great collaborators like Ava, like other people that I’ve worked with, it makes what I do not in vain, not vanity. And that’s why I can get up and do it.