JuJu Watkins’ utter dominance on the basketball court will now be showcased in an upcoming docuseries that follows the USC phenom’s career.
According to The Hollywood Reporter’s Alex Weprin, NBC and Peacock are set to release a new sports documentary titled ‘On the Rise: JuJu Watkins’ that will shed light on Watkins’ rapid rise to national prominence. The six-episode series will pick up during the 19-year-old’s high school days at Sierra Canyon and carry through into her freshman year with the Trojans.
In her first season at the collegiate level, Watkins reset the record books with a performance to remember, recording the most points of any freshman in NCAA women’s basketball history with 920. The strong showing propelled the Trojans to an Elite Eight berth in the 2024 NCAA Tournament, where they lost to Paige Bueckers and the UConn Huskies.
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Through the series – which is produced by LeBron James’ Uninterrupted, Klutch Sports and 4.4.Forty – Watkins told the Hollywood Reporter that she hopes to “give people more insight into who I am, my values and my story, because I take so much pride in it.“
She added: “I’m an introvert, so I don’t really share that much online, honestly. I think to just give people more perspective into who I am, and my family, my friends, I think that’s also an important dynamic. And like I said, I’m introverted, so this is kind of my way of sharing myself a little bit with everyone else.”
The fact that there’s a documentary surrounding a college women’s basketball player being made is a testament to how much the sport has grown in recent years. Watkins, meanwhile, serves as the first student-athlete to create a docuseries centered around their life story while still actively playing in the NCAA.
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NBC’s series will follow Watkins’ career through high school and her freshman year of college (
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“The Olympics probably do this the best, right? You get these amazing, heartwarming packages, and now the stakes are so high when you’re watching that bobsledder,” Uninterrupted’s Jamal Henderson said. “Now imagine if Caitlin [Clark] had this before when we were watching those Iowa games.
“I think this is the new, innovative model in storytelling, and that’s why we’re really excited to be a part of it.”
Henderson and Watkins first crossed paths while the latter was still in high school. It didn’t take long for him and other producers to recognize that she was an incredibly unique talent who was worthy of a docuseries.
“The boom in women’s basketball was starting to take hold, obviously, and everything in the landscape was shifting, but it also was pretty clear early on that JuJu was special, even from that early stage,” 4.4.Forty Media’s Danny Barton said. “I actually remember calling Jamal about this when we first started, and just saying, ‘Look like we need to put cameras on her, because something great is going to come out of this.’
”And we didn’t even know what it was ultimately going to be.”
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