The true story that inspired the movie “King Richard: Raising Champions”

Some people have such interesting life stories that they even make it to movie screens. That was the case of Richard Williams, father of world tennis stars Venus and Serena Williams, who inspired the feature King Richard: Raising Champions. The work tells how was all the training that he himself set up for his daughters and all the path taken to achieve success in the sport.

we, from awesome.club, we love inspiring stories, so we decided to tell you the real story behind the film. Check out!

Richard Williams is the name of the man who inspired the Oscar-winning film King Richard: Raising Champions. The eldest of five children, the now retired coach was born in Louisiana in the 1940s. After graduating from high school, he moved to Michigan and later lived in California. The professional became known worldwide for being the father of tennis players Venus and Serena Williams, who together have won more than 120 individual tennis championships. A curiosity is that, Richard decided to learn the sport after seeing, on TV, a tennis player win a prize of 40 thousand dollars in a competition.

Richard has been married three times. His first wife was Betty Johnson, with whom he had five children. In 1980, he married his second wife Oracene Price, who is the mother of Venus and Serena. The couple split in 2002 and in 2010 he kicked off another relationship with his girlfriend Lakeisha Juanita Graham, with whom he had another child and remained together until 2017.

Richard didn’t know how to play tennis, and at first he wasn’t interested in the sport. At the time, he owned a security company. His attention was piqued after watching tennis player Virginia Ruzici win a $40,000 prize in a competition. After that, the coach told Oracene that he wanted to have more children and that he would make them tennis stars. He learned the sport from a man known as Old Whiskey and also by reading and watching content that taught him how to play tennis.

Richard even taught his wife, who helped him teach the girls, how to play. After that, he created an 85-page plan, in which he outlined all the steps necessary to make his daughters stars of the tennis world, and invested all the time he had available in training them. Even Venus, who is the oldest, took her first steps in the world of sport when she was 4 years old. His younger sister, Serena, started soon after, where the family lived, in the city of Compton, California.

Middle sister Isha Williams, another daughter from his second marriage to Oracene Price, was also coached by Richard. However, she had to stop after injuring her back. According to her, the sisters’ routine consisted of waking up very early to train, before going to school. On the way back, they had more training, which took place in a public court in the city where they lived. When they were 7 and 6 years old, they even went to a tennis academy, but Richard decided to take them out and took over all the training of his daughters in full.

Serena’s first tournament took place when she was 4 1/2 years old. Richard even claimed that his daughter won 46 competitions, out of the 49 in total she participated. This was even before she was 10 years old. However, when they were 10 and 11 years old, her father decided to take them out of children’s competitions and they took three years away from the championships. According to him, this was to prevent them from suffering the same pressures that he saw other parents put on their children. Venus returned to the court for a professional tournament in 1994. Years later, in 1999, Serena won the US Open tournament. Venus won Wimbledon in 2000, one of the most important competitions in the sport.

The movie that told the story of how he coached the two tennis stars premiered in 2021, had Will Smith in the lead role, and was considered very true to reality. The work even won the Oscar for Best Actor. Much of the information was taken from interviews and from Richard’s 2014 book Black and White: The Way I See It. His daughters also participated in the production of the work and gave their “special touches” to the plot.

In the film, he is shown as a loving father and always present in the lives of his daughters, but in real life he was also quite strict, mainly aiming at the success of the two girls, which, as we know, later came to fruition. He even probed his relationships and preferred that girls not have access to some hobbies, like playing with dolls.

Richard is currently retired and, after having suffered from some health problems, lives away from the spotlight. However, he still appears on the social networks of his daughters, who share moments he spends with them and their grandchildren. Venus and Serena are world tennis champions, winning hundreds of tournaments and becoming an inspiration to many people around the world and showing that with determination, strength and dedication, it is possible to reach seemingly unreachable places.

And you, did you know the story of Richard Williams and his daughters? How did she inspire you? Do you know any similar ones? Share with us in the comments!