While the tennis world has seen the highs of the Williams family owing to the successes of Venus and Serena Williams and their father-turned-coach Richard Williams, their half-sister Sabrina Williams does not actually see Richard as great as he is considered and more so after his biopic, produced by Venus and Serena, ‘King Richard‘ has hit the theatres.
Sabrina recently spoke with The Sun where she talked about how Richard’s walking away from the family on the pretext of going out to get a bicycle for Sabrina damaged her and the family. While all the burden of the family fell on her mother Betty Johnson, Sabrina was under the impression that it was because of his mother that her father was not with her.
This incorrect assumption of her led to the relationship with her mother getting damaged and it took a long time for Sabrina to repair her relation with Betty who passed away in 1988 after succumbing to a cancer. “There were times I didn’t even talk to her until I came to the conclusion it wasn’t my mom who put us in this situation – it was my dad,” said Sabrina.
“In my mind, he was a good dad, my mom was just holding us back from seeing him. Or maybe my mom did something to make him change his number. I was always finding a reason to blame her. I thought my dad wanted to see me, that he had been looking for me, and he was still going out for that proverbial bike. That’s how silly it was and how deluded I was,” added Sabrina further.
“He’s not the King” Sabrina Williams takes a jibe at the title ‘King Richard’
With the movie ‘King Richard‘ hitting theatres and receiving praise for the actors and the story but Sabrina had no emotions than that of laughing. Calling the title “completely over the top”, she said actor Will Smith, who portrays Richard Williams in the movie, should be ashamed of himself.
“He thinks he’s the king of the world, but no one that’s ever been around him thinks he’s King Richard. It is an outrageous title, but to truth be told, it fits him. He’s not the king of the world.
“If you look at him psychologically, it’s something he’s never achieved apart from in his head – he’s lived only through two of his daughters forsaking all his other children. Truth be told, those girls rose to the top while his other children had to suffer because of the choices my dad made, we were raised in poverty after he left,” Sabrina said during the interview.
