How Natalie Portman became a saviour of women’s soccer

Angel City
★★★ ½ stars
Binge

“I never imagined that I’d have anything to do with professional sports, certainly not that I’d be a co-owner of a professional women’s soccer team,” says Hollywood star Natalie Portman at the start of Angel City, HBO’s new three-part docuseries on the titular NWSL (US national women’s soccer league) team. To which the obvious reply is, “Us neither, Natalie Portman.” But by the last episode, you might wish the Black Swan actor was the new owner of the Wests Tigers, such is her righteous ambition.

Angel City follows Natalie Portman’s efforts to supersize the US women’s soccer league. Credit: HBO/Binge

Like an underdog squad parking the bus in the penalty box to preserve an unexpected lead, the football docuseries landscape has suddenly become ridiculously overloaded (excuse the forced metaphor). Ever since Sunderland ’Til I Die debuted to acclaim on Netflix in 2018, streamers have been commissioning fly-on-the-wall football docos like they’re money-spinners. It makes sense: they seem cheap enough to produce, offer free promo for the clubs, and are stacked with enough inbuilt drama to sustain multi-episode narrative arcs.

Off the top of my head, there’s Amazon’s All or Nothing instalments on Manchester City, Tottenham Hotspur and Juventus; there’s Take Us Home: Leeds United which followed the English club’s short-lived promotion to the Premier League under Marcelo Bielsa. Netflix had Maradona in Mexico, about his odd coaching stint in the heart of the Sinaloa Cartel; and perhaps most popular is Disney’s Welcome to Wrexham, in which Hollywood actors Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney bought the oldest club in Wales. And they’re just the ones I’ve seen.

A timely release on the eve of the FIFA Women’s World Cup, Angel City is a fascinating entry to the mix. Directed by Arlene Nelson, a cinematographer on documentaries including Seduced: Inside the Nxivm Cult and This Is Paris, the series follows the fortunes of the Los Angeles club through its debut season in 2022, as it tries to blow up the traditional limitations of women’s soccer. Like Wrexham, the initial attraction is its star power.

The team was formed by Portman, alongside Hollywood entrepreneur Julie Uhrman and venture capitalist Kara Nortman, as an extension of her feminist activism. As a key spokesperson for Time’s Up, Portman first entered the sport’s orbit after attending an event for the US women’s national team (the reigning World Cup champions) who were fighting for equal pay with their male counterparts.

The series differentiates itself from the glut of soccer docos by highlighting the unique challenges facing women’s sports.Credit: HBO/Binge

As we quickly learn, Portman knows nothing about the sport. She was shocked at her ignorance of the NWSL’s existence and, after exploring it closer, of the minimal value the league commanded for broadcasting, advertising and sponsorship despite a willing public. She wanted to build a team differently to see if it could succeed and lift the entire league’s profile in the process.

As such, Angel City is backed by the largest female ownership group in professional sports, including a list of stars that command attention. Investors include Jennifer Garner, Jessica Chastain, Eva Longoria, America Ferrara, Serena Williams and her husband Alexis Ohanian, singer Becky G, and sports stars such as Billie Jean King and Mia Hamm, who all make cameos in the series.

While the show hits the same dramatic points as those other soccer docos – team injuries, clashing personalities, fan loyalty – things get interesting when it zeroes in on challenges exclusive to the women’s game.

For starters, the history of the NWSL lends Angel City’s story a dramatic precariousness. Much of women’s sport has been denied the big money and promotional opportunities afforded to men’s, and Angel City are entering the third iteration of the league, which began in 2012 after successive dissolutions (neither of the other iterations lasted past year three). There’s a weight to their challenge – essentially, the right to exist and to make a livelihood from the game – that makes the win-or-lose drama of male-team series seem laughable.

Essentially a startup doco, centred on a league yet trying to prove itself, the first episode leans heavily on the business mechanics of launching a professional sports team against the odds. If there’s a Silicon Valley spirit to it all (“move fast and break things”, etc), there’s also some ingenuity to the team’s ideas, including a remarkable “no-trade policy” to ensure workers’ rights for players in what’s traditionally been a volatile environment.

Peeking through are glimpses of the overwhelming structural sexism hampering the team’s goals; for example, they’re forced to share a field with the NFL’s Los Angeles Rams, who take priority, leaving the women unable to practice till the sun’s at its afternoon peak. Elsewhere, we see mid-season news reports of an abuse and sexual misconduct scandal that rocked the league, implicating five coaches and a general manager.

With the team, and the wider women’s game, still in its professional infancy, we see the players take on the role of activists, earning gains – including a historic equal pay lawsuit, and a collective bargaining agreement that allows free agency – they hope will consolidate the league for the future. With the Women’s World Cup on our door, it’s a prescient reminder of what female footballers have already achieved without support and how much further the women’s game will go given the proper opportunity – and, I guess, a Natalie Portman.

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