Tim White, Trevor White and Demi Singleton on The Underdog Mentality That Won King Richard

Building Champions for Life

Tim White, Trevor White, and Demi Singleton discuss their journey in creating the film 'King Richard,' emphasizing perseverance, the underdo

Key takeaways

Turning passion into purpose requires relentless commitment and strategic effort over many years.
The underdog mentality—believing you can succeed despite odds—is a powerful mindset for achieving greatness.

Main topics

The creative process behind making 'King Richard'
Overcoming obstacles in film development

Notable quotes

"You're one win away from your life changing." – Speaker 4

Conclusion

The journey of creating 'King Richard' exemplifies how unwavering dedi

Transcript preview

Speaker 5 (0:04) Welcome to Building Champions for Life, where we dive into the minds of extraordinary leaders, trailblazers, and champions from every corner of the world. I'm your host, Kirk Spahn, and together we're going to meet with visionaries who've conquered challenges, shattered ceilings, and redefined what's possible. From sports, tech, entertainment, to entrepreneurship, our guests have one thing in common. They are building legacies of greatness, and they're here to share their passion. and their process with you. Welcome to the show. Speaker 1 (0:35) I Speaker 5 (0:43) mean, what an unbelievable experience all around. Demi, I'm not sure if you know a little bit of the background, but I'll never forget a lot of years ago talking with Tim and always discussing inspirational stories and the storytellers, like what are stories that can move you? And being tennis players together, it's like, what are your big ones? It's like, Kirk, you go. And I said, well, Arthur Ashe was always my hero. And one day he said, you know, what do you think about Richard Williams? And I was like, it's incredible. And when I first heard kind of not knowing about the manifesto and everything, you know, the story was so amazing. And, you know, to hear Tim and Trevor like kind of go down this rabbit hole and be like, this is such a unique story, not just because of. tennis and life, but just like manifesting things and being a student kind of the way we all just found out like Demi's at Dwight Global. Like Tim was literally around when I was like helping create Dwight Global at ICL. And like, this is all full circle. And then, you know, in some of the businesses I had when Tim and Trevor were starting Star Thrower, like we shared a lot of like all these mutual people that were helping support investors and just sort of how worlds interconnect. We're kind of mixing all worlds. This is our first webinar where we not only get to have a Hollywood star, but also a colleague of many of the people on here. Demi may look familiar, not just from billboards of King Richard, but also from your math class or your science class, which is also a small world. But it's really exciting. So first, I want to thank all of you for coming. You know, I feel I have like a big smile on my face because it's it's all of our worlds. You know, it's it's tennis, Hollywood education. We kind of quoted this webinar as daring to dream, you know, knowing the process and seeing it from start to finish with Tim and Trevor. And people always forget that the journey is everything, right? Like, you know, this is, oh, King Richard. Oh, yeah. Will Smith. We heard about that a year ago or whatever. Like this is this has been. Tim, Trevor, five years? At least. I'm in 2014. I wasn't married yet. We were sitting on the plumber park. We were playing tennis and I wasn't married. I'm a five-year-old. It's definitely six years for sure. Wow. Speaker 3 (3:19) At the 2013 latest was when the idea I think sort of began to formulate. You're right. And, you know, I think you're exactly right on the inspiration for the idea. I think Trevor and I were really looking for stories that I think we thought could really inspire people. And we talked a lot about the Richard Williams story. And I talked to you about it, Kirk. I talked to Zach Gallen about it, another friend of ours, big tennis player. And I remember Zach telling me that Jim Currier had told him. When Zach brought up the idea with Jim, Jim had said that's the greatest coaching story in sports history. And that was also a line that I think always stuck with us. So around 2015, Trevor and I really decided to start to pursue the project. I sent an email to Venus Williams, completely cold email. I got her. I think Trevor got her. assistance email somehow and we wrote her this this sort of crazy note just saying we wanted to do this obviously we got no response i mean why would she respond to that but then after that you know i think what we thought basically was the best way to go was to actually develop our own script that was going to be so good that it'd be something that everyone Would have to pay attention to. And we started meeting with writers. In 2015. And we probably met with 20, 25. 30 writers. And heard a. Zil different takes on it. And then finally in 2017. In the fall we sat down. With Zach Bale. Zach Bale. Who. It just had the exact. Right take the right point of view. He seemed to really understand. Dan Richard, and we hired Zach. And he wrote this script that was exactly as we planned. And it just really took off off of that. Well, Speaker 5 (5:32) I remember things. I mean, I was lucky enough to get a couple versions of the script, like the first like the first four or whatever. I was so sold. I mean, to all the people out there listening, like we have tennis players, tennis fans, we have actors, actresses, filmmakers, like we have a an extensive group here of young people who are really, really excited about learning how this process. So I just want to give a little spiel that we talk about ICL six P's and, you know, Dwight global always talks about everyone's spark of genius, right? Like everyone has a spark of genius at ICL. We have these six P's, which is if you're passionate about something. So the way I look at this experience from my lens was Tim and Trevor have this passion for tennis. How do you make it a purpose? Because like you can be passionate about music, but that doesn't mean you're a musician. And I remember Tim saying that, you know, it's so hard. No one's ever made a good tennis movie. It's just such a hard thing to do. It's like one of those things is just a brutal. And we talk for hours about how do you actually do it? And they need to know how to play and everything else. It's just tough. And then you have to create a process, right? And that's the script. And this is what we're going to talk about. How is this process kind of spread out? Because it's not just like. oh, made a phone call to Will Smith and said, Will, want to play Richard Williams? Like, it's not how it goes. And so I will say, well, you know, you have this process and then you get perspective on it. All the rewrites, people having inputs. How do you take this lifetime of just world-class achievement and put it into a two-hour movie? Like, that's Hollywood, right? It's brutal. What do you cut out? How do you tell a story? And then it's perseverance. You know, there were times where... I would talk to you, you know, funny budget COVID hits, right? I mean, God, you guys were in the middle of filming and the world shut down. Like, I remember it. I mean, it was like, that is unbelievable. And then it's personalization. How do you tell this story in a unique way? And you just did such a great, a great job of it. So we have like a ridiculous amount of questions already. So I mean, a lot of this is going to be Q &A, but I do want to pass it over because Demi, I'll never forget the day that we were talking about, who do we get to play Venus and Serena? And I will never forget Tim telling me, oh my God, Kirk, we nailed it. It's like Trevor Speaker 3 (7:57) found, you know, Trevor. Speaker 3 (8:01) I don't think Demi knows that. Yeah. I don't think Demi even knows that. I never first saw the Bumble commercial. I think it was Bumble or something. Oh, Speaker 1 (8:08) my God. Speaker 3 (8:09) And. Speaker 5 (8:09) Not Speaker 1 (8:10) the Bumble commercial. Hold on. Can Speaker 5 (8:12) we top right there how it connects to tennis? Obviously, Tim, our friend Tommy Haas, his wife was the creative director of Bumble and may have actually been a part of. Wow. Speaker 3 (8:21) Well, Speaker 5 (8:22) I Speaker 3 (8:22) didn't even know that. But I think what was interesting was Trevor saw that commercial. And I think. showed it to me and instantly we couldn't tell if that was actual like sort of archival footage of the actual Serena like it looked that close I think ultimately we could tell it wasn't but I think at sort of first glance we were like whoa but you know luckily like it's one thing to look like the main character I mean I think when we we first saw Demi actually audition At that point, we were like, oh, my God, this is the lottery ticket here. Because not only does she look like Serena, she's an amazing actress. And, Speaker 4 (9:05) you know, one of the things and Demi, I don't know. We haven't really spoken much about the casting process from our perspective. You know, Demi goes through months and months of waiting and audition and waiting. And like, you know, in the early iterations, you didn't even know. This was for the Venus and Serena movie. I think we had fake names up there. Speaker 2 (9:27) Oh, no, no, no. Spelling bee, right? I definitely was so, it was so obvious. We Speaker 4 (9:33) changed the dialogue to be like a spelling bee competition. But Demi put in a tape and it was instant. It was, at that point, it was only. me, Tim, and our casting director, Rich Delia, involved in the movie. There was no one else involved in the movie at this point. We didn't even have a director yet. Yeah, we had no director. We had no studio. We had, I mean, nothing, really. I Speaker 5 (9:56) was in the Speaker 4 (9:57) background. I was there. You saw stuff so early because of your connection with Tim, but we saw that tape and we were like, that's the bar. We were like, and the reason it took so long for you, Demi, is because we didn't have, we couldn't make that decision without a filmmaker making that decision. But the first thing we told Ray without trying to influence him too much is there's someone that's unbeatable in this, you know, in the hundreds of tapes you're going to get. Let's see if your person is the same person as us. And he just texted me and Tim that night going, Demi? And we were like, yep. So we knew so early that Demi was our Serena. You know, Venus took a little bit more time to find, but Demi, we were pretty dialed in on her right out the gate. Speaker 5 (10:42) Yeah, that's so cool. We have so many questions coming in already. I'm going to bring, I like kind of bringing kids up to ask and things. I think we have Leah first, but I'm going to answer because before when we were chatting a little bit before the webinar started, Demi, people were so impressed with your tennis skills. And I do have to give a shout out to our friend Eric Taino. People are asking, you know, if you grew up playing and what that was like and how you trained for it. So I'll ask that first question, then we'll let Leah come and ask. Even though Leah missed my leadership class this morning, but I did get your notes. Okay. Thank you for the note. But Demi, yeah, do you want to talk a little bit about your tennis background and how, you know, how did you learn? Did you play before? What's your background with tennis, if any? Speaker 2 (11:30) Yeah, absolutely. So as for tennis, I had very, very little experience with the sport. I think, you know, during the Speaker 6 (11:40) audition process, I took three lessons and each lesson was like an hour, an hour and a half. And that was all the tennis I'd ever played in my life before I found out that I got the before I got the role. And then once I did get the job, it was some very intense tennis training. I think it was how long, guys? Maybe three months? Speaker 3 (12:02) Three months Speaker 6 (12:04) pre-COVID and another three months post-COVID. So altogether, it was almost six months of tennis. Are you the Speaker 5 (12:14) captain of the Dwight Global Tennis Team? Speaker 6 (12:17) Me? Speaker 5 (12:17) Yeah, I think you've just been elected captain of the Dwight Global Tennis Squad. You know, Speaker 2 (12:26) honestly, I think... I honestly think I'm not that good. I think, you know, part of the reason why it looks so good is because I'm an actress and that's my job to make things look really, really good. So if I were to actually play against someone who has been playing their entire life, I'm not sure how well I would do. Again, I think I could make myself look pretty intense. Maybe that'll scare the opponent, but I don't really think that I'm all that great. I think I'm decent, but in all honesty, I think. All Speaker 5 (12:55) right. All right. Well, Eric, Eric helped you a little bit. So Leah, do you want to, do you want to come on, on screen and ask, and ask your questions? Anyone? Speaker 7 (13:04) Yeah. Hi. So my question is, so I know you guys are all just like very successful and all that you do. So what did it take to get to where you are now? And could you guys talk a little bit about all of the hard times and also the great times that it took to basically get to where you are? Speaker 1 (13:22) I don't know if our webinar is that long, but that's a great question. That's a big one. Yeah. Speaker 3 (13:27) You know, I mean, I can start and just say, I mean, Trevor and I really started our company probably 10 years ago or maybe in that area. And we spent a couple of years where we couldn't get people to return our calls. And it's very hard and it can be very depressing. for a while. You know, I think the fact that we sort of had to, you know, eat each other the whole time. And I think when one of us was a little bit down, you know, the other could sort of pick the other up. That was really helpful. But I think at the end of the day, you know, it just really came down to perseverance. I think we both wanted it really badly and we both believed in it. And I think also, you know, for me, From my tennis background, because I had played tennis as a junior, junior nationals and also in college, I think that just sort of knowing what it feels like to be out there sort of in a match at five all in the third set and be tight and to really grind out a win and not miss a ball. And I think that was actually really helpful and something that's been helpful. for me in sort of all assets of my life is transferring you know the Speaker 3 (14:54) perseverance and I think the grit that an individual sport like tennis can get you into other aspects