At 82 years old, tennis icon Billie Jean King maintains a daily practice of mental gratitude, listing those who have shaped her life, including her wife, former player Ilana Kloss, and Susan Williams, a childhood friend from her Long Beach, California school days. It was Williams who first introduced King to tennis when they were 11, describing it as a sport involving running, jumping, and hitting a ball—three activities that immediately captivated the future world number one. E very day, Billie Jean King tries to come up with a “gratitude list” in her head, identifying the people who have played a part in making her life so fulfilling. Three of my favourite things.’”, and I went: ‘Oh. We speak via video call – King, 82, is at home in New York, while I’m in London – and she bursts on screen in a hot pink jacket and matching pink glasses, and immediately begins talking energetically. She tells me my name, Lucy, is a favourite of hers and Kloss’s. “We named our dog that,” she adds, which I think she means as a compliment. With dark brown hair immaculately coiffed, pearls around her neck and in her ears, she cuts a stately figure. She is serious and authoritative, on topics such as the state of the US (we are speaking on the day of the midterm elections) and the importance of access to sport. According to she, She learned a lot from Richards, and it was easy to believe when she was young that there was a God looking out for her. “Look at all the unbelievable things that happened to me,” she says, pointing to the offer to play tennis from Williams, and the fact that she was able to access free tennis instruction from the professional player Clyde Walker at her city’s public courts. Which she had in 1971 because “I did not want to bring a baby into the world not knowing what was going to happen with Larry and me”, and which was made public the following year, against her will, when King, without asking her, agreed for her name to appear in a Ms magazine list of high-profile women who had had abortions, the resulting film doesn’t shy away from anything – not King’s abortion.
King’s rise to prominence was rapid. She famously told her parents she would become the best player in the world, a goal she achieved by winning 39 grand slam titles, including 12 in singles, 16 in doubles, and 11 in mixed doubles. Her Wimbledon record is particularly notable, with 20 titles across all disciplines, a tally matched only by Martina Navratilova. As soon as she tried it, King was hooked, and it wasn’t long before she was telling her parents she was going to be the No 1 player in the world, which indeed she became.
Beyond her playing career, King was a driving force behind the “Original 9,” the group of women who founded the first major professional tennis tour in 1970. Especially leading the fight to secure equal prize money for men and women, and that’s not to mention her off-court achievements.
By signing symbolic one-dollar contracts with publisher Gladys Heldman, they protested the extreme gender inequality in prize money.
This era, including her 1973 “Battle of the Sexes” victory over Bobby Riggs, is chronicled in the new documentary Give Me the Ball!. King admits that 1973 was a pivotal year, though she struggled significantly with the emotional pressure of the time. The year King beat self-identifying “male chauvinist pig” Bobby Riggs in the historic “ Battle of the Sexes ” exhibition match, much of the film focuses on 1973.
Known for her integrity and work ethic, King has never touched cigarettes, even when the women’s tour was sponsored by the brand Virginia Slims. This disciplined approach defined her career and carried over into her mentorship. In 1988, she led a tennis clinic where she spotted a six-year-old Serena Williams, whose serve she immediately identified as beautiful. King urged her to keep that natural form intact, an experience Serena later cited as having a profound impact on her life. After she retired from professional singles tennis in 1983, King repaid that good fortune, famously instructing the then-children, Serena and Venus Williams, at a tennis clinic they attended in 1988.
King’s personal journey has been marked by challenges regarding her sexuality and mental health. She has previously been open about her struggles with a binge-eating disorder, which she attributes to the discomfort of suppressing her true identity. In recent years, she has utilized GLP-1 weight loss medication to manage intrusive thoughts. Reflecting on her past, she notes that her relationship with her former husband, Larry King, was marked by genuine love, which made realizing her sexual orientation more complex. And her marriage to the lawyer and sports promoter Larry King was becoming increasingly strained, her internal struggle with her sexuality (she now identifies as a lesbian) was coming to a head. Which shouldn’t come as a surprise, given the way she has thrown herself into all kinds of projects over the years: from a cameo role in the cult lesbian TV show The L Word to her more recent appearance on the US edition of The Masked Singer, in which she performed Philadelphia Freedom, the song her friend Elton John wrote about her, dressed as a giant hen, but she is also enormous fun. She has started using small doses of a GLP-1 weight loss medication to help quiet the intrusive thoughts she experiences around eating. “I think it’s OK to worry about your health and your body,” King sa, in recent years.
Her public coming out in 1981 followed years of legal threats from former partner Marilyn Barnett, who attempted to leverage the relationship against her. King eventually decided to stop hiding, declaring, “I’m going to tell the truth. Screw this!” The aftermath resulted in significant professional losses, though she draws strength from the values her parents instilled in her, even if they struggled with her orientation for most of their lives. And her parents, unusually for the time, encouraged her athletic ambitions just as much as they did her brother’s (he later became a major league baseball pitcher), she had always been a sporty child. Where her pastor was the two-time Olympic pole-vaulting champion Bob Richards, but she attended church with her family as a child. After her secret relationship with Los Angeles hairdresser Marilyn Barnett ended and Barnett sued her, threatening to make the love letters King had sent her public if her demands for a share of King’s property and earnings weren’t met, nor the “mess” of being publicly outed.
While King is renowned for her competitive drive, she describes herself as a “sought” person in relationships, noting that partners have historically approached her. She considers Ilana Kloss her life partner, though they encountered significant societal hurdles when attempting to start a family in the 1980s. While she expresses a regret that they could not have children, she remains deeply connected to her nieces and nephews.
King’s curiosity remains undimmed by age. Last year, she completed the history degree she had abandoned in 1964, finally graduating. She remains active in nonprofit work and continues to emphasize the importance of knowing what one loves and committing to it daily. During the production ofGive Me the Ball!she intentionally stepped back, allowing the documentary to be an unvarnished look at her life rather than a curated version, ensuring that even the most difficult chapters were addressed directly. Although she is “still spiritual” and continues to pray, King dislikes organised religion, because in many cases she thinks women are still treated “as second-class citizens”. I have to remind her at one point. “I’m always interested in everybody else,” she says, adding that she has been told throughout her life that she asks “too many questions”. Graduating earlier this year – just one example of King’s refusal to stop pushing hersel, her appetite for broadening her knowledge is so great that last year she returned to the history degree she dropped out of in 1964. At times, King makes for a difficult interviewee – not because of any lack of openness, quite the opposite, but because she is so reluctant to have a one-way conversation, and keeps batting questions back at me after she has answered them. “We’re talking about you.
