Midway through Naomi Osaka: The Second Set, Osaka’s mother explains that when her daughter plays tennis well, she’s something to see. Tchaikovsky’s “Waltz of the Flowers” begins to play, with graceful shots of Osaka’s hits timed to the music. Despite knowing nothing about tennis, I was instantly charmed by the gorgeous, balletish cinematography.
Kat Jayme’s Naomi Osaka: The Second Set, the director’s cut of which premiered at the Rio Theatre earlier this month, follows the return of Japanese tennis star Osaka after her year away from the sport.
Osaka holds seven career titles — including four Grand Slams — and spent 25 weeks as the No. 1 player in 2019. If it isn’t already clear, she’s an absolute beast. We watch her return to tennis just one week postpartum, clawing her way back into contention while battling physical discomfort and postpartum depression.
Jayme, a UBC film production alum, previously directed the documentaries Finding Big Country and The Grizzlie Truth — both reflecting on the downfall of a Vancouver basketball team’s short stint in the NBA — and I’m Just Here for the Riot, which looks back on the riot sparked by the Vancouver Canucks’ loss in the 2011 Stanley Cup final. Continuing her sports documentary streak, she began developing a story about female athletes and motherhood, but couldn’t find any athletes to tell it — that is, until she met with production company Uninterrupted and happened to mention the project.
A few weeks later, the company asked her to get on a call, where they explained that a documentary about Osaka’s return to tennis would be in the works. Jayme now had just a few days to come up with a pitch that would inspire Osaka to pick her over five other directors — “I locked myself in a room for like [five] days,” she said. “I put my heart into this deck.”
Jayme, a UBC film production alum, previously directed the documentaries Finding Big Country and The Grizzlie Truth.
Aleah Kippan / The UbysseyJayme flew to L.A. for a chemistry check, and her pitch was accepted. It did take some trial and error to find a dynamic that worked for both her and Osaka, though. Jayme would be following the tennis star to all the major tournaments — the Australian Open, Wimbledon, Indian Wells — and at one of these events, Osaka told Jayme that having large crews around simply wasn’t going to work for her. Jayme quickly realized that this wasn’t going to be like other projects she had directed: she would have to take on most of the technical work herself. “I shot a lot of The Second Set,” Jayme said. “And I'm not a cinematographer. I had not picked up a camera since film school, but I had to.”
Initially, this change was difficult. I could track her progress throughout the film; the footage was slightly shaky in the opening scenes in Japan, but eventually smoothed out by the time we got to the first Grand Slam. Jayme took this in stride, however, and leaned into a feeling of closeness with Osaka within the documentary. Jayme continued to roll as Naomi spoke to her behind the camera. In one scene, she even gave the camera (and Jayme) a tour of her hotel room — ending with an enthusiastic “Stay out!” giggling and slamming her door.
Osaka has often been the centre of controversy. Her on-court behaviour has been scrutinized by fans, and she came under fire this year for yelling during her opponent’s serves. She has also struggled with her mental health, publicly disclosing that she experiences anxiety and depression, and withdrawing from the French Open in 2021. “I really wanted this film to help change the narrative … she's one of the funniest, kindest, most caring human beings, and she really, truly looked after me,” Jayme said.
For her prevalence as a public figure — speaking with the media, posing for billboards — Osaka is quite shy. At her daughter’s first birthday party, while her mother and friends yell, dance and sing, she stands in a corner, quietly smiling and soaking it in. She lives in her well-loved Beats headphones, and often sits quietly on her own. Glued to her phone, she is constantly looking through new videos and photos of “Shai Shai,” the daughter she loves more than anything in the world.
Jayme opted to shoot and edit this film as if it was addressed from Osaka to her child, Shai — a creative choice she credited in the Q-and-A as having secured her the opportunity to direct the film. As they moved from location to location, Jayme would employ captions like “0 miles from you” to show her proximity to her daughter, and included voiced-over letters from Osaka to Shai. The concept — and the scrapbook-style visuals that accompanied it — was a sweet way to visually represent how motherhood touched every part of Osaka’s life and career.
During the filming of The Second Set, Jayme was not allowed to show Shai’s face, meaning she had to get creative with focus, angles and other tricks to protect the child’s identity. Unfortunately, at times, it didn’t seem like Shai wanted that.
“It was really difficult, though, because Shai would always come up to me when I had a camera,” Jayme said. “She would hold my hand, and I'd be like, ‘Shai, go away, …[you’re] not supposed to be here.’ Try telling that to a little kid, right?”
In the film’s bittersweet conclusion, Osaka, who finished her Grand Slam tour not having made it further than the quarterfinals, brings Shai to Japan to meet her grandparents and speaks about how having her daughter changed her perspective on the sport she had dedicated her life to. It was at this point that we learned a little more about Osaka’s mental health, as well as her ongoing struggles with postpartum depression. In intimate confessionals and uncomfortable conversations between her and her team post-matches, the audience got a look into Osaka’s private life in a way that just teetered on voyeuristic, without becoming too uncomfortable. In the past, she tended to descend into what she called “a dark place” every time she lost, but having her daughter made all these Grand Slams and trophies feel like just a drop in the bucket. As she left the final tournament, a member of her team thanked her for not descending to that mindset, and she returned home, eager to see her daughter.
Jayme hopes this film helps reframe the perception surrounding women athletes returning to their sports. Several female athletes were also interviewed, candidly sharing their concerns about when to have children and how it might impact their career. Jayme and Osaka wanted to resist the narrative that women returning to professional sports were “making a comeback,” because “you're a completely different human being after you become a mom,” Jayme said. Instead, as Osaka explained in the film, she wanted this return to her career to feel like the second set of a tennis match — a new beginning full of opportunity.
