Natalie Portman is showing fans a behind-the-scenes look at the inspirational story of the Los Angeles’s Angel City Football Club’s first season in the National Women’s Soccer League.
The Oscar winner’s new three-part HBO documentary titled “Angel City” peels back the curtain on the female-founded team, following Natalie and her co-founders as they did something that had never been done before, starting a women’s soccer club.
At the documentary’s Los Angeles premiere, Natalie told Access Hollywood how it feels to make the impossible possible.
“Well, I think it just reminds me how it’s good not to be aware that your dreams are impossible because if you think they’re impossible, then you’ll never go forward,” she told Access. “To be a little bit ignorant about the difficulty, really kind of saved the day for me.”
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View GalleryBut getting the team off the ground wasn’t easy. While chatting with Access, the “Black Swan” star admitted one of the challenges she and her co-founders faced early on was funding for the team.
“Well, a lot of people didn’t want to give us money,” she said. “So, when we tried to raise money to buy the team, to buy the rights and also have enough money to support the team, we talked to probably like 100 people who said no to us before Alexis Ohanian said yes to us to be our lead investor. Once he came in and a lot of other people also joined.”
Natalie also admitted it was surprising how many people didn’t want to help fund the team from the start.
“That was surprising because it seemed so obvious to me that you have these incredibly popular women, playing the most popular sport in the world, playing the best in the world, that people would want to see them,” she said. “It seemed obvious to me that they were being undervalued and that there was a rabid audience for them. So it was, it was surprising to me when other people didn’t agree.”
“Angel City” will debut on HBO May 16 at 9 p.m. and will be available to stream on HBO Max.
– Emely Navarro