‘King Richard’ and His ‘Other’ Family — Textbook Definition of Dysfunction
‘Estranged’ Sister Calls for Stripping Will Smith of His Oscar
A dysfunctional family is one in which conflict and instability are common. Parents might abuse or neglect their children, and other family members are often forced to accommodate and enable negative behavior. In some cases, dysfunctional families can be the result of addiction, codependency, or untreated mental illness.
As the entire cosmos knows, Richard Williams is the 80-year-old father of tennis phenoms Venus and Serena Williams. He’s also the central character of the now tainted Oscar-winning flick, “King Richard,” starring troubled actor Will Smith in the title role.
What is not widely known, though, is that Richard Williams had (and still has) an entirely different and separate family from the one that produced Venus and Serena. That is, Richard’s oldest daughter from his first marriage has surfaced and declares that she wants Will Smith stripped of his Oscar for “The Slap” he delivered to comedian Chris Rock during the late Academy Awards show. One of my favorite authors explains this whole sordid affair much more succinctly than I ever could:
“So Will Smith got angry, went overboard and assaulted another person. Then you just can’t apologize two minutes later. You lost your mind. Wow,” Sabrina Williams, 57, told the US Sun. “I agree he should be stripped of the Oscar,” she added.
Again, right along with Sabrina, we all watched in shock and disbelief the storming of the stage, the squaring up in front of and towering over Rock, the extended right arm rearing back…. and the ubiquitous microphones picking up what sounded more like a “sucker-punch” than an open-handed “bitch-slap,” as Rock cringed, winced, and contorted his 5' 10" frame sideways-left.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has belatedly denounced Smith’s obvious and open assault and battery and has also finally announced that a “formal review” of the entire ‘incident’ is now underway.
Interestingly, Sabrina Williams said that she completely understood and, indeed, “related” to this whole mess because she, herself, has alopecia “really bad.”
“But it’s not the time or place. If somebody offends you, you let them know in a private setting, ‘Hey, you offended my wife. I did laugh at the joke, but my wife was offended,’” explaining what Smith should have done, should have said.
“But just to go on stage in the middle of an event and slap somebody, walk back, sit down, and then yell from your seat. That’s just not appropriate.
“If they don’t take the thing from him, they should ban him from attending the event ever again, as that’s just ridiculous. I have no sympathy for him because that’s just irresponsible behavior,” she said.
“He probably needs to seek counseling. I’m not saying he has mental health issues, but maybe he can talk to somebody because that’s not appropriate behavior.”
Sabrina Williams is just one of six children Richard Williams walked out on in his first marriage.
As for his take on this imbroglio, Richard Williams has expressed confusion, which may be understandable given that he has suffered two strokes.
“We don’t know all the details of what happened,” Richard Williams told NBC News through his 48-year-old son, Chavoita LeSane. “But we don’t condone anyone hitting anyone else unless it’s in self-defense.”
Sabrina also had this telling question and comment about Will Smith’s behavior: “Did he learn the violence from my dad as well? Maybe he took the thing too literally. But these actors are so entitled, they have their own actor privilege — ‘We can do whatever we want and it doesn’t matter to anybody,’” she told the Sun.
“That’s the proof in the pudding. I can’t just go slap you up on stage because a normal person in a normal society would get arrested for that crap. But you’re a celebrity and that doesn’t happen. You don’t fight the crap out of somebody with millions of people watching and then there’s no punishment. That’s like saying violence is okay,” she added.
To say that Sabrina Williams is “estranged” from her father would be the singular understatement of this still-young year. She has repeatedly criticized him in previous interviews for abandoning his first family which included her then eight-year-old self.
Indeed, Richard Williams was investigated for alleged domestic abuse against Serena and Venus’ mother, Oracene, in 1999 before their final breakup in 2002.
In 2001, Oracene told The Post that she was not concerned with rumors and gossip and whispers of abuse at the hands of her publicity-hungry husband — but she did not deny that abuse had occurred. At the time, Richard told police, health officials, and anybody who would listen that injuries suffered by Oracene occurred as a result of a jet-ski accident. She apparently never pressed charges against him; but her cryptic response was: “I don’t jet-ski.”
As noted, Richard Williams deserted his first family when Sabrina was just eight years old. She says that as a wide-eyed, trusting little girl, that initial act, that first day of desertion, was particularly hard on her and was forever burned into her memory because Richard had told her that he was going out to buy her a bicycle and just never returned.
That left her mother, Richard’s wife Betty, to raise Sabrina and her five siblings alone.
“I had two childhoods,” Sabrina recalled. “The childhood from one to eight [years old] was fantastic. But once he left, within a year, we became very poor. There wasn’t always meals on the table. We went downhill.
“In my teens, I was always thinking about suicide. I tried it once. It was always with me, and it was about my dad. I had mental health issues.”
Throughout her entire childhood, her father showed up just once — a full two years later when she was ten. The next time she saw him, she says, she was in college.
And even that meeting was traumatic.
“Somehow I got hold of my dad through a relative and asked for $1,000 to pay some of the college bills at Hope Christian University,” she said.
“He said he’d only give me the money as a loan. That’s when I knew he was an asshole.
“After college, I was done with my dad. He had never paid any child support, and all he wanted to give me was a loan.”
Sabrina’s famous half-sisters
It was at this point that Sabrina began hearing and reading about her much younger half-sisters Serena (now 40) and Venus (now 41), who had begun climbing and clawing their way to tennis stardom. People around Sabrina knew that she was related to this rising-star duo; but, to save face, Sabrina pretended that all was well within her fractured family.
“I’d say I was still in contact with my dad [and that] we [even] went on vacations, but it was a lie. The unwritten law in our family: you don’t speak badly about the girls, who were then living in Compton.
“I didn’t meet Serena and Venus until I bumped into them by complete chance at Knott’s Berry Farm, a theme park in California when they were teenagers.”
Death of a wife and mother
Betty, Richard’s first wife and Sabrina’s mother, died of breast cancer in 1998.
“She needed some medication for the cancer, and it was too expensive for her to pay for it. I reached out to my dad, but I couldn’t get hold of him.
“He had no interest whether she was dead or alive. It was utterly mind-numbing that my dad couldn’t even come to my mom’s funeral.”
Following her mother’s death, she would only hear from her father sporadically. But after she had the first of two sons — Elijah, now 21, then Solomon two years later — that always strained and thin father-daughter relationship completely disintegrated.
“My siblings called me and said that dad is at Indian Wells with the girls playing in a tournament and he wants to speak to you.
“When he called, I said: ‘What do you need, dad?’ He said: ‘I love you.’
“No you don’t, what do you want? Don’t try this love thing.
“The girls are playing here, why don’t you come down, you’ll get the good seats, see the girls, then the reporters can take the pictures.
“It was typical him. He wanted to make it a PR opportunity; but I never wanted to meet the girls for publicity or money — only in private.”
Sabrina allows that she has never harbored any bitterness, jealousy, or envy as she has watched her half-siblings make it to the very top of professional tennis. And, again, she has sought no money from the two millionaires.
She does say, however, that it sometimes “hurts” that, unlike her siblings from the Williams’ sisters’ mother Oracene Price’s first marriage — Isha and Lyndrea — are often seen partying it up on the tennis circuit and at showbiz parties, while she and her entire side of Richard Williams’ first family is always absent.
In 2020, she said: “I think they’ve [Venus and Serena] done fantastic. They have a lot of pressure from the black community to be role models.”
Still, as to her estranged father, Sabrina admitted that, “I always made excuses for him. I always believed in my heart that my dad would come back to get me. I think I was really disappointed my dad didn’t choose me.” Notice that that is “disappointment,” not jealousy, bitterness, envy or anger.
Richard Williams ‘extended’ family
Sabrina regularly accuses her father of being “just a sperm donor”. Indeed, she declares, he was a serial womanizer who very likely has numerous secret sons and daughters scattered across the US.
So sayeth Sabrina: “I know there are more siblings. I was told between fifteen and nineteen all over the place, from L.A. to Louisiana,” she told The Sun.
“My mom always argued with my dad about his affairs. He was a serial cheat. I remember that was always the main thing they’d talk about.
“He is a selfish man, lives only for himself. He just uses his kids to get what he needs. He’s not a dad, he was just a sperm donor. He had five kids, and left them to my mom to grow up in poverty, and never once helped.”
A tale of three dysfunctional families
Hopefully, this report reveals that the current Richard Williams family’s choice of Will Smith to portray their father was…well… “appropriate.”
As has been widely reported, for years now, Will Smith, wife Jada and their children have conducted public displays of their own dysfunctional union. Hopefully, this also helps shed light as to why Smith played Richard Williams so well, almost effortlessly, I’m told. And, in fact, Smith all but admitted during his teary-eyed acceptance-apology-non-apology speech — fresh from having cold-cocked Chris Rock, of course — that he probably is a lot like Richard Williams, something of a “crazy father.”
Full Disclosure:
I have not seen ‘King Richard,’ and probably will not see it unless asked to do a review. The reviews I have read indicate that ‘King Richard’ portrays the classic “rags to riches” narrative of a man with no background in tennis and with very limited financial resources; but through grit, determination and hard work in the face of racism, violence, and poverty guided his daughters to unimaginable success.
Finally, this flick delves into the “complicated” life of thrice-married Richard Williams. Interestingly, it does so without revealing his abandonment of his first family.