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Billie Jean King talks Battle Of The Sexes, Howard Cosell and Emma Stone

BATTLE OF THE SEXES directed by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, written by Simon Beaufoy, with Emma Stone, Steve Carell and Andrea Riseborough. 121 minutes. A Fox Searchlight release. Opens Friday (September 22). See listing.


Battles Of The Sexes is ostensibly about Billie Jean King’s famous 1973 tennis match with Bobbie Riggs. But it’s actually more about how women were treated on the tennis circuit at the time and, surprisingly, about King’s struggles as a lesbian in the closet than it is about the actual match.

“I wanted it that way,” she says about the lesbian content, on the phone from Los Angeles after the film’s premiere at TIFF last week. “I thought maybe I could help somebody else find a way to live in her own skin.”

King, and the film itself, recalls how she and her colleagues established a women’s tennis circuit as the 70s began, protesting the fact that at the upcoming U.S. Open, the men’s winner was going to make 12 times as much money as the female champion. 

“We wanted to tell the story of the birth of women’s professional tennis. We started our own organization to give women a place to compete and to be celebrated for their accomplishments, not just for their looks.”

The movie gives you a strong sense of the era, when women couldn’t get a credit card without their husbands’ consent and were making 50 cents on the male dollar.

Emblematic of the times is archival footage of commentator Howard Cosell during the match, which featured pathetic put-downs of King and an obnoxious sequence in which he’s interviewing co-commentator Rosie Casals.

“We got that footage because his daughters are feminists and wanted to contribute to the film,” says King. “I could not believe those clips. He was relentless in his put-downs.”

“And he kept putting his arm around her,” I add.

“Not just around her shoulder, around her neck,” says King, still outraged.

About Riggs, however, she’s almost kind.

“Bobby Riggs wanted to make a lot of money, but he was actually one of my heroes. He’d won the triple at Wimbledon in the 40s – singles, doubles and mixed doubles titles – and he never got his due because of the war. As a hustler he finally got the attention he deserved.”

As for Emma Stone, who plays King in the film, she and King did develop a friendship, but not until after the movie was shot.

“I helped her out with the tennis, but we didn’t spend too much time together. She told me that I was too fully formed now that I was in my 70s and she needed to go away and figure out how to get inside the person I was in 1973.”

The two were seen together a few weeks ago at the U.S. Open, congratulating women’s singles champion Sloane Stephens who, not incidentally, took home $3.7 million for her efforts.

“Yeah, that’s something,” says King. 

Even on the phone, I can hear her grinning proudly.

See review of Battle Of The Sexes here

susanc@nowtoronto.com | @susangcole

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