Robin Roberts has long wanted to make a film about her friend Pat Summitt.
Now the co-anchor of ABC’s “Good Morning America,” Roberts first started exploring the possibility of a project on Summitt in 2016, not long after the death of the Hall of Fame coach who guided Tennessee’s women’s basketball program. She began discussing some plans with Summitt’s son and Roberts’ production company even lined up some writers. Then, the COVID-19 pandemic happened in 2020.
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“It was the perfect storm in the wrong kind of way, but I believe that everything happens for a reason, and this is the perfect timing for it,” Roberts told USA TODAY Sports. “What we’re seeing is the explosion of women’s basketball. And I want people to be reminded that Pat Summitt was at the cornerstone of what we’re seeing right now. I mean, the Lady Vols — they were like the Caitlin Clark of that era. When they would come into town, arenas would sell out.
“She was just not about her program. She wanted to elevate the entire sport.”
A documentary about Summitt executive produced by Roberts and directed by the Emmy Award-winning filmmaker Dawn Porter will debut on Wednesday on Hulu and Hulu on Disney+ for bundle subscribers to the streaming services. “Breaking Glass: The Pat Summitt Story” will later air on March 29 on ESPN2 and April 5 on ESPN.
And indeed, as Roberts says, the timing couldn’t be better. The film will be unveiled amid March Madness, during Women’s History Month, and just a few months before the 10-year anniversary of Summitt’s passing.
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For Roberts, making a film about Summitt that encapsulates her life and honors her legacy was both a privilege and a stressful task.
“I have never felt more pressure in my life, and I mean that in a positive way, because I know the steely look I would get from Pat if I didn’t get it right,” Roberts said with a laugh. “She honestly deserved for it to be done in the right way. And it was also very emotional for me. … Just bringing us back to that time, especially in the ’90s, it’s really tugged at my heartstrings, and it’s something that my production company has been working on for a number of years.”
The documentary is unique in that it doesn’t have a narrator. A majority of the film’s 83-minute run time is told through Summitt’s own voice. Porter and Roberts’ production company was able to obtain home videos from Summitt’s family, behind-the-scenes videos taken from the locker room and practices during her reign at Tennessee and interviews with national and local outlets.
Summit’s voice also comes through thanks to recordings from Sally Jenkins, the former longtime Washington Post columnist who co-authored three books with the coach who piled up 1,098 victories.
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“It’s so hard right now with social media and other things. So, to be able to find some footage that people actually have not seen, some audio that people actually have not heard — it’s a side that people have not seen of Pat. So we were really striving for that,” Roberts said. “Sally recorded all of their sessions when she was doing her books and freely gave them to us. And then Tyler (Summitt’s son) and others just opened the vault. Everybody was on the same page.”
The film begins with SEC media days ahead of the 2011-12 women’s basketball season, one of Summitt’s first public appearances after revealing her diagnosis of Alzheimer’s. The film then goes back in time and shows viewers a video of Summitt riding a horse on her parents’ dairy farm.
Viewers will see clips of Summitt shucking corn and driving a tractor, images of her playing basketball and volleyball at UT Martin, and videos of her earliest days coaching at Tennessee when she was named head coach of the Lady Vols at the age of 22. The film moves through Summitt’s life on and off the court, from her national championship triumphs and rivalry battles with UConn, to her coaching Team USA to a gold medal at the 1984 Olympics, to her journey into motherhood, and even her goofing off with longtime assistant coaches Holly Warlick and Mickie DeMoss.
Tyler Summitt, Warlick and DeMoss are a handful of the people who knew Pat Summitt best that are interviewed, and the film also features conversations with Peyton Manning, Dawn Staley, Billie Jean King and Tamika Catchings, among others.
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Roberts was struck by the emotion that Manning showed when discussing Summitt.
“There was nobody that we asked to sit down that said no,” Roberts said. “I think Peyton really, hearing from him — you know, Super Bowl winner who, in part, went to Tennessee because of the Lady Vols — he became very dear friends with Pat.
“And then Billie Jean King — an icon of course in her own right — talking about what a badass Pat was and talking about how radical she was and how much smarter she was than people gave credit to.”
Summitt was a crucial part of pushing women’s basketball into the mainstream because of how dominant her teams at Tennessee were and how she demanded respect, equity and equality when it came to women’s sports. When she retired with eight national championships, no coach in college basketball — man or woman — had won more games, and she sent 39 players into the WNBA.
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Among the professional players to come through Summitt’s program was Kara Lawson, who will coach the Duke Blue Devils in their third consecutive Sweet 16 this Friday. Lawson’s Duke team was part of a historic opening weekend for the Women’s NCAA Tournament as ESPN delivered its second most-watched first round on-record with 1.3 billion minutes of live tournament games watched. A first-round game between Tennessee and NC State drew a peak audience of 835,000 viewers, making it the most-watched weekday first-round game ever.
Roberts hopes that what people take away from the film is that Summitt deserves credit for the boom that women’s basketball is experiencing now.
“What I would hope that they would learn is that Pat and others like her were ahead of their time in many ways. She is a real integral part of what we’re seeing right now,” Roberts said. “You should really thank your lucky stars that this woman was in our lifetime and created all the opportunities that she did that people are really being able to enjoy right now.”
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Robin Roberts on the making of new Hulu film on Pat Summitt
