‘Rafa’ director Zach Heinzerling and Netflix Spain VP Content Diego Ávalos drill down on the first non-English language docuseries nominated for a Primetime Emmy and its memorable Mallorca family setting
Produced by Skydance Sports and Netflix Sports, “Rafa,” a four-part portrait of Spain’s greatest sports icon Rafael Nadal, packs several singular punches.
It’s the first time a non-English language docuseries has ever nominated for a Primetime Emmy, Netflix notes. Also, it takes up Nadal’s story in a largely present tense of early 2024 where he’s not No. 1 in the world, but No. 652, almost 38, nearly a year and a half out without winning a title and plagued by a chronic hip injury. This may be about a last dance. It is certainly about a global icon battling sports players’ biggest challenge: The passage of time.
Directed by Zach Heinzerling, Oscar nominated for “Cutie and the Boxer,” Rafa delivers some extraordinary statistics: A record 912 consecutive weeks in the Top 10, nearly 18 years, Nadal is the only player in tennis history to be ranked No 1 in three different decades
His 14 French Open victories are the most ever in a single Grand Slam and his 112-4 record the greatest single tournament win rate of all time.
The most extraordinary fact, however, bringing home the magnitude of his achievement, is delivered across the whole of the series itself.
Shuttling back and forth to his early childhood to his breakout 2004 Davis Cup victory and epic gladitorial matches against Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic, “Rafa” shows that he won only one Grand Slam – his first Roland-Garros in June 2004 – without playing in pain. In October 2004, he broke his foot, and when again, was diagnosed with Mueller-Weiss syndrome. By 2013 he’s carrying his own pain killers and at a U.S. Open press conference can’t even sit in chair, falling onto the ground. Yet he continued playing another decade.
Added to that, much of “Rafa” is shot in the intimacy of Nadal’s luxury home in Mallorca with his lovely wife María Francisca Perelló and child Rafalet, Heinzerling’s footage begging the question of why Nadal didn’t move on far quicker to his a family life in paradise. This sense of place, of Mallorca, its bays, clouds, Rafa’s family, his sense of ease with them, or his playing with his little son, make for some of the strongest impacts in the series.
“Rafa” delivers tactical analysis for the hard-core tennis fan. Following his coach and uncle Toni’s advice, Nadal finally beat Roger Federer at Wimbledon in 2008, breaking Federer’s Open-Era-record five-year winning streak on grass, by playing high balls to Federer’s back hand, his weak point. He raised his game against Djokovic in 2012 hitting a more aggressive forehand.
More than anything else, however, “Rafa” works as an insistent multi-level psychological thriller, asking why he came to become such a great tennis player and why, 20 years later, he’s attempting one last comeback and is so reluctant to retire.
That deep dive into the psychology, or maybe pathology, of success resonates far beyond tennis playing.
“Toni has helped Rafa a huge lot to become as strong as he’s been. He started very young to fight mental battles. ‘It always seems like I have to be getter.’ It always seems like it’s not enough. It always seems like you have to go higher,” Nadal’s mother says in “Rafa.”
“Now what are you plans, Nadal is asked in Ep. 3. “To go on training. Winning this tournament doesn’t mean you’re going to be very good,” Nadal answers, aged 13.
If “Rafa” ends on a note of triumph, it is not given by a victory over Federer of Djokovic but over himself. “I’d have been very unhappy if I hadn’t done everything to fight until the end. This has always been my biggest fear. And now there is no fear of anything, I’ve achieved my goal which is to give my all and to reach my retirement in peace,” he tells the camera.
And, saying that, for once in a miniseries where he is often so serious, so stressed about his tennis, Rafa Nadal breaks out in a smile.
Variety caught up with Heinzerling and Diego Ávalos, Content VP at Netflix Spain which guided the Spanish shoot, as the Primetime Emmy race steps up a gear.
“Rafa” begins on a mental, not just purely sporting note, with his facing retirement. But that means in his own mind the abandonment and betrayal of his sense of identity as a tennis player who never gives up, who has staged so many comebacks. But am I reading that correctly?
Heinzerling: Yes, that’s a pretty accurate description. The narrative was the last comeback. His career is essentially made up of when he was injured, down and out, and then made miraculous comebacks, all the way until 2022, where he won two Grand Slams, when everyone thought his career was over. But I think “Rafa” developed its own internal plot, becoming a deep dive into the mind of someone who in some ways was driven by a fear, a fear of the end, a fear of disappointment, of disappointing his uncle, perhaps. Where that fear as motivation came from was great grounds for exploration.
There’s a strategic moment, the last scene of Ep. 3, when Nadal has just lost in the Italian Open in May 2024, overcome by exhaustion, and questions to María Francisca in a car ride back in Mallorca what tennis is now giving him. “Another life is waiting for you,” she answers, and they take each other’s hand.
Heinzerling: Yes, there were moments when everyone was like: Why can’t he see what we see? Why can’t he step outside of the tennis mentality? You see him sitting there. He’s drinking a glass of wine. It’s beautiful: Mallorca with his wife and child and life is so amazing. There was an intention there to show: This is what you have in life, and it’s so incredibly wonderful. Just go to it. It’s like he’s in purgatory, but heaven is there. Just walk through the gates. But he kept on hoping for one last comeback. Retiring was always his being at peace with his career, his body and mind and, and understanding, it’s time to go. It was always very personal.
Ávalos: Zach captures beautifully perfectly where Nadal was at his personal life too, that intimacy that he has kept [private] so far. Media coverage of Nadal is all about his tennis, the intensity of his game and so on. Zach managed to create that trust with Rafa, his team and his family and bring that other side. The way the series ends captures that beautifully as well. This made for a beautiful journey in the story Zach puts together.
To what extent would you call this a Spanish series?
Ávalos: Obviously, Skydance is a producer of this. But I don’t think that’s makes it any less Spanish or having Zach, an American director, makes it any less Spanish. It’s a multi-national story given Rafa’s career but it’s also centered on Mallorca. And Rafa transcends everything and Rafa couldn’t be more Spanish.
To what extent would you call this a Spanish series?
Ávalos: I think it couldn’t be more Rafa and Rafa couldn’t be more Spanish. Like everything is Rafa’s life. It’s a multi-national story but very centered on Mallorca.Obviously, Skydance is a producer of the series. But I don’t think that makes it any less Spanish or having Zach, an American director, makes it any less Spanish.
Heinzerling: “Rafa” is a testament to the collaboration that this series was. If something is not primarily English-language, it’s usually very much rooted in the country that it was produced in and its culture and the language. Rafa is a kind of enigma, an international sports figure who’s massively well liked and well known across the globe, but who has maintained an inner private life that is very authentically Spanish. The scenes where he’s speaking in Mallorca with his family are kind of priceless. To get to the essence of Rafa, you have to see him in his native language at home with his family and his team. And I guess the public and the Academy have responded to a series with that cultural specificity within the kind of larger umbrella of a celebrity athlete show.
Ávalos: It’s not even Spanish. It’s very Mallorca. Nadal has lived all his life in Mallorca. And we show that. It’s that kind of specificity that also connected with Zach and hasn’t been analyzed that much, much less with this intimacy. From my perspective as somebody who works in Spain, it is a historic moment to get nominated. Like “It’s All Over: the Kiss That Changed Spanish Football” that won an International Emmy last year, it’s great storytelling and has a human element that isn’t just about sports. It’s important for us at Netflix that that we look at the story behind the sport.
Episode 1 focuses on the passage of time, a sense that it’s running out, Episodes 2 and 3 on Nadal’s rivalry with Federer and Djokovic but you begin to mix times such weaving the 2014 Australian Open where he’s suddenly paralysed by back pain and the 2024 Italian Open, where he near collapses from exhaustion. “Injuries, the stress of always pushing your body and mind to the limit, there comes a moment when all of that stared to show,” Rafa’s long term physio Rafael Maymó comments, in an observation that serves for both occasions….
Heinzerling: Those are the best moments of the series where you can see that the exact same thing that he was facing, you know, 10, 15, 20 years ago, he’s staring in the face today. And it’s the thing that is preventing him from moving on. If you had just seen him in 2024, the audience reaction might be: ‘Why don’t you retire? You’re too old.’ Really the point of constantly going back and forth the entire time is that you understand what Rafael has overcome along the way and what it means to him. Then by the end, you understand and empathize with him, but you have to feel the magnitude of a career for it to mean anything when it’s over.
Ávalos: I’m a huge fan and was at Roland Garros when he won there the last time and I had obviously pursued and tried to get this story told at Netflix for a long time until it happened.
When he won, my reaction was: Retire now you’re at the top. Through the documentary, you understand that how since he was young, he managed to push every boundary and win, win win against his own body and he thought that he could do it again. Until you fully understand that in a non-intellectual way but in a human way and going through that journey with him I also gained a perspective at least for me about my own life and my own decisions that sometimes I make. I think it’s something that you learn about too through the documentary.