Dear Gossips,

Serena Williams was at the Tribeca Film Festival premiere of her upcoming new ESPN docuseries, In The Arena: Serena Williams, yesterday. The eight-part series drops July 10 and I’m trying to find out where we can watch in Canada, because there is nothing I love more than a sports doc and there’s no player I love more than Serena Williams, the Greatest Of All Time, so let me just start by heading off any grumbling that there’s already a movie and other shows and books made and written about Serena…

And?!

When you’re the Greatest Of All Time, should there be a limit to how many times your story is told and through what medium? When you are the Greatest Of All Time shouldn’t your story be told as many times as possible? Do you know how many books and movies and documentaries there are about Babe Ruth? Off the top of my head I know of at least two docs, a scripted film, and I’m suuuure there’s a whole shelf of books. So anyone out here bitching about too much Serena is telling on themselves and should shut the f-ck up.

I will be watching the sh-t out of this doc, and I look forward to watching the part where she talks about how an ex-boyfriend who ghosted her became her motivation. Per USA Today:

"I got ghosted and it wasn't even that serious," Serena says with a laugh in the docuseries, as she recalls leaving a boyfriend's house after her 2001 U.S. Open match against Venus and never hearing from him again. Although it wasn't a big moment, the champion said she used that experience and made it bigger than it was.

"I remember thinking, 'He's going to regret this for the rest of his life' and that he'd see me everywhere. I can be vengeful," she admits, before giving her then-partner (who she shadily refers to as "so and so") a shout-out. "I'm grateful for it, so thank you!"

Serena was 20 at the time, and that’s what happens during those years – you get your heart broken, you get over it, you might make the same romantic mistakes a few more times, and then you might meet someone who’s the opposite of the f-ckboys who didn’t have the good sense to know that they were in the presence of the Greatest Of All Time. Alexis Ohanian is not one of them.

Did you hear about what he’s doing with her memorabilia?

“… if I’m married to Picasso, I’d want to own every Picasso I can. And I’d want to make sure my great-grandkids have all these Picassos. That’s been my mindset for five or six years.”⁠

Yes, that’s exactly right. So I’m not going to give him too many flowers for doing what’s obvious and expected. But he can have one stem from her bouquet, because as we have all seen, they’re not all like him, and in that respect, he is a rose among fools.

Yours in gossip,

Lainey

Serena Williams Gossip

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