Director Sam Pollard spoke to Broadcast Sport about the upcoming Netflix doc
Two-part documentary Bill Russell: Legend is released on Netflix on 8 February, telling the story of one of the NBA’s greatest ever players and a civil rights icon.
The film features exclusive interviews with Russell from before his passing in 2022, as well as conversations with the likes of Steph Curry, Chris Paul, Magic Johnson, Shaquille O’Neal, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and more, as well as Russell’s friends and family. It is narrated by actors Jeffrey Wright and Corey Stoll.
Bill Russell: Legend is produced by High Five Productions, with Larry Gordon (Field of Dreams, Die Hard), Ross Greenburg (Magic & Bird: A Courtship of Rivals, Miracle), Mike Richardson (Hellboy, The Umbrella Academy) producing and Pollard (MLK/FBI, Lowndes County and the Road to Black Power) directing.
The documentary covers Russell’s life on the court and off it. He won two back-to-back NCAA titles, a gold medal at the 1956 Melbourne Olympic Games, and 11 championship titles in his thirteen-year career as a Boston Celtic (his last two as the first black head coach in NBA history), while also marching with Martin Luther King Jr., leading boycotts in the NBA over racist practices and speaking out against segregation - efforts which earned him the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Pollard told Broadcast Sport that one of the main challenges was finding the balance between sport and Russell’s wider involvement in the civil rights movement: “That was the big challenge. How much of the sports we needed to put into the film, and how to balance it with his off court activities? It was one of those things where, at some point in the early versions of the cuts, we had too much basketball, and we got to the civil rights material too late.
“Then we started to shrink the basketball stuff to get to the civil rights material sooner, and really figured out how to bounce it from segment to segment in this unfolding story. Now, I think if you have an opportunity to watch all of both films, you’ll see that we were able to, successfully in my opinion, create that balance between Bill’s on court activities and his off court activities.”
Pollard became involved in production in late 2020, when asked by Greenberg to come on as director: “When Ross reached out to me, I was excited to get involved. We did our first interview in August of 2021 with Bob Cousy in Massachusetts, and that started the ball rolling. We were able to then get Bill Walton, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, Julius Erving, Bill Bradley, Isaiah Thomas, the list goes on. All of these people were flattered and wanted to do it because they all have tremendous, tremendous respect for Mr. Bill Russell.”
Bringing Russell’s basketball career and civil rights activities involved extensive use of archive, with access to Russell’s personal archives bringing unique footage to the documentary. Pollard added: “We had a wonderful archival producer, Helen Russell, who, along with another producer, was able to find great stuff of Bill’s years, at USF, and also material of his early years with the Celtics. We found home movies with filled with his teammates. It was extraordinary material, and they were even able to find material of Bill, not only in footage but in stills, involved in civil rights activities off the court in Boston, at the march in Washington, and going down to Jackson, Mississippi after the death of Medgar Evers. It was a treasure trove of material.”
Bill Russell: Legend will be available on netflix in two parts from 8 February.
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