Billie Jean King tells her story in new documentary Give Me the Ball
Billie Jean King is at the centre of a new documentary, Give Me the Ball, and she appears in it herself. The film includes talking-head interviews, the seated, look-at-the-camera segments that documentaries use for personal testimony. The Guardian's review, published on 11 November 2026, covered the film.
King was born Billie Jean Moffitt. She went on to help launch the Virginia Slims tour, a professional circuit for women players. Her career also reached beyond the court. In 1973 she beat Bobby Riggs, a former men's champion who had claimed he could beat women players, in a match billed as the "battle of the sexes".
The film also covers her private life. According to the Guardian review, in 1972 her husband, Larry King, revealed that she had had an abortion, and he did so without consulting her first. Larry King appears in the documentary as a supportive interviewee.
Later, in the 1980s, her former partner Marilyn Barnett sued her for "galimony". The word is a play on "alimony", the money one former spouse may be ordered to pay the other after a split. Barnett's claim was for financial support after the relationship ended. The case made King's sexuality public, and she had not announced it herself.
The documentary, then, is as much about the years away from the court as the matches on it. King's own voice runs through it, and the people around her, including her former husband, are part of the picture. For anyone who knows her mainly as a champion, the film widens the frame to her life as a whole.
