The Interview: Gwendolyn Oxenham
The Interview: Gwendolyn Oxenham
The long-form writing specialist, a former Duke midfielder, has a new podcast series called Hustle Rule: The Untold Stories of Women's Soccer, hosted by Ted Lasso's Hannah Waddingham
For more than a decade, I have associated quality long-form soccer storytelling with Gwendolyn Oxenham. That started with Pelada, her 2010 film about playing pickup soccer in 25 countries with her now-husband Luke Boughen, and continues to this day. We met up again recently to discuss her new podcast series Hustle Rule.
The entirety of the written interview below is reserved for paid subscribers. As always, you can still get the entire free audio version of my podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you like to go for your pods.
Grant Wahl:
Our guest now is in my opinion the best long-form writer on women's soccer in the world. Gwendolyn Oxenham's phenomenal new project is the podcast series Hustle Rule: The Untold Stories of Women's Soccer, which is hosted by Hannah Waddingham from Ted Lasso. The series is based on Gwendolyn's book Under the Lights and In the Dark.
She also has a terrific new feature story for Sports Illustrated on Naomi Girma that you should check out. And she wrote the essays for the soon to be released coffee table book, Pride of a Nation, on the U.S. women's national team. Gwendolyn, it's great to talk to you. Congratulations on all this and thanks for coming on the show.
Gwendolyn Oxenham:
Thank you, Grant. It's great to be here.
“I played against the [Charlotte] Eagles, so I've been following them since I was 17 years old, and my gay friends would go play for them and come back ‘not gay,’ in their words, and I've just always been really perplexed by this whole situation. While in my day there was sort of an unspoken understanding that you weren't allowed to be gay, nowadays they have players sign a contract saying ‘I will not engage in homosexual behavior.’ And this is 2022, and it blows my mind. I don't understand how this is allowed. We interviewed player after player, and it just keeps happening every year, of gay players who go play on this team and leave in pain.” — Gwendolyn Oxenham
Grant Wahl:
Lots to talk about here, but let's focus on the podcast series. What is this podcast series, if you could explain a little bit to listeners?
Gwendolyn Oxenham:
Yeah, definitely. So my book Under the Lights and In the Dark were all the crazy unknown stories in the game. I played professionally in Brazil, and I just remember hitchhiking to practice, and as I stood there on the side of a dirt road with my thumb out, I just remember thinking, like, holy shit, if this is what the women's game is like in Brazil, the best country at futebol in the world, what's it like in the rest of the world?
So that made me write the book, and now it's an audio docuseries. So it's not interview-style, it's a story, but it's their stories, now it's told in their own voices, so you hear from the players themselves. And since I wrote the book, a lot of the stories have evolved, and it's different from the book too.
And then Hannah Waddingham might have the most magical voice in the entire universe, in my opinion, and hearing a woman who I had watched as Rebecca Welton in Ted Lasso, who was such an inspiring force of life, and that whole show just moved me, having her give voice to these stories, and she's passionate about it, and it's been an awesome experience. And so it's a seven-part series, and it's essentially little documentaries, audio documentaries. It felt like making seven little movies.
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Grant Wahl:
And it's been a couple years since your book came out, and it's a phenomenal book, people should check out your book as well in addition to the podcast. How did this go from being a book to being a podcast series with a pretty prominent actor tied to it?
Gwendolyn Oxenham:
Well, Waffle Iron production company, it's Nike's content branch, they approached me and said, we would love to turn this into a series, and so they've been awesome. And then we worked with Audio Up and iHeart Radio podcasts and turned each chapter into a story.
Grant Wahl:
And I've done a couple, two narrative podcast series over the last few years, and I really enjoyed doing it, and it sort of exercises some different muscles maybe than writing. What's the process been like for you on this, and what are you involved in with the podcast series?
Gwendolyn Oxenham:
It's been intense. Definitely when I was writing the Naomi piece, it felt like such a relief to just be able to write. I mean, there's so many steps, so you're tracking down all of these players all over the world, I think we've talked to like 50 players, and then I was interviewing all of the players, and then you're shaping their stories to sort of fit the storyline, and then you're finding the sound effects.
We have this amazing theme song by A1 LaFlare who introduces each episode, and then making the scripts, and then you're hearing the bites and picking which bite most gets to the heart of the story. I mean, it felt like making Pelada again, the documentary I made about pickup soccer, but seven times. I mean, just a lot of juggling multiple characters, and it was so fun getting to talk to players all over the world. So that was great.
Grant Wahl:
I want to talk about a particular episode, episode two, which is called Play Away the Gay, and you're a big part of this episode, your voice is all over it. And I was just wondering, to start, could you explain a bit about what the storyline in that episode is?
Gwendolyn Oxenham:
So when I was playing, I played against the [Charlotte] Eagles, so I've been following them since I was 17 years old, and my gay friends would go play and they would come back “not gay,” in their words, and I've just always been really perplexed by this whole situation. And so I went to dive into it. And now, while in my day there was sort of an unspoken understanding that you weren't allowed to be gay, nowadays they have players sign a contract saying I will not engage in homosexual behavior. And this is 2022, and it blows my mind.
They also were named like a Southern franchise of the year last season by the WPSL, and I don't understand how more people don't talk about this. I don't understand how this is allowed. I mean, how? And we interviewed player after player after player, and it just keeps happening every year, of gay players who go play on this team and leave in pain. And Makena Silber was two seasons ago, and she asked them, can I come back to the team with a girlfriend? And I mean, they basically said no, and I think that's crazy, and it's definitely one of the stories I'm most passionate about.
Grant Wahl:
It's an incredible episode, they're all very, very good. I was just absolutely floored by this episode and the people you interviewed and the stories they told, and this is a team in Charlotte, North Carolina, forcing players to sign documentation saying that they're not gay, they will not engage in homosexual activities while they're with the team. My first reaction is how is that legal? And then I remember this week in the Supreme court is another part of the story potentially, who knows?
Gwendolyn Oxenham:
Yeah, I don't understand how it's a USSF-sanctioned team. I don't get how this is okay. I don't think a lot of people know, and what's just really upsetting is, when you're 20 years old you don't know what your sexuality is necessarily. So a lot of these players, they go because they have a strong faith, so they go because one, the Eagles are the best team in the South. I mean, they won the conference last year, I think they're undefeated, have been crushing everyone, they're really good.
So all of these college players want to go play for the best, and if they love God, they think this is the perfect spot for them. But then there's this asterisk that you must be straight essentially, and it's really painful and it causes a lot of players a ton of confusion, and we talked to multiple players, and that's not all of them. So to me it's just really important that people know about this team so that more players don’t go there and then leave in pain.
Grant Wahl:
Well, another interesting part of the story is there's another team in Asheville that you talked to people from, including some players who played at one point for the Charlotte Eagles, and these are teams that actually play against each other, and Asheville is entirely welcoming to anyone of all types of sexual preferences.
Gwendolyn Oxenham:
Yeah, I think that's my favorite part of the story, which wasn't in the book, because it hadn't happened yet But a lot of these players who were turned away from the Eagles then go start their own team. And Asheville, I lived in Asheville, love Asheville, and on Gay Pride Night they're playing the Charlotte Eagles, which is just such an intense moment, but to me that episode ends with hope. This is what it looks like when, if a community shuts you out, you can make your own community, and that's what the women in Asheville who I'm so inspired by did.
And then we also talk to other gay players, because this isn't just... I mean, I think that's the important piece of it, this is not just the Charlotte Eagles. Fellowship of Christian Athletes, I mean, I went to an FCA meeting without having any idea... It's just everywhere, everywhere, and they believe homosexuality is a sin. And when they're creating the conversation on so many campuses, that's a real problem. And then we also talked to a Brazilian player and what it's like to be gay in Brazil. Religion and sexuality create some really tense moments and experiences.
Grant Wahl:
Have you gotten any response since this came out?
Gwendolyn Oxenham:
Maybe the most interesting response I've had so far was just a tweet of someone saying, I wasn't emotionally prepared to hear Hannah Waddingham talk about the Eagles. I worked for this organization and I loved them, but they never knew who I really was, they never knew the full me, and this is grief worthy and complicated. And I think that moved me just knowing that there are so many other people who've had experiences too. But no, I think people still don't really know about this story. I mean, it's still very fresh too, so we're kind of waiting to see what the response will be.
Grant Wahl:
I've tried to think about the best way to describe your work, you've produced more, what I would call holy-shit stories on women's soccer, like great journalism than anyone I can think of over the years, and it's-
Gwendolyn Oxenham:
That's really flattering. Thank you.
Grant Wahl:
It's pretty incredible, but as a journalist, how do you find these stories? I don't want you to give away your secrets if you’ve got some, but how do you do this?
Gwendolyn Oxenham:
I mean, I've played, I played professionally in Brazil, so I knew that I was hitchhiking to practice, and I knew that I found that crazy. And the soccer community is tight-knit, so Dani Foxhoven, I played with Rebecca Moros at Duke, and then I was talking to her, and she connected me to Dani who played in Russia. And so through friends of a friend I'll just hear about something and go and investigate. And I think that even though there is so much more attention on the women's game now, it's still like five or six players usually, and it's player 100 that oftentimes has the crazier story, because the women's game...
You asked me once a long time ago, like there is just so much unchartered territory. I mean, for a long time no one was covering anything, so it was easy to find a great story, it's very different than the men's game when every player's been interviewed 8,000 times. And it's definitely changed in the women's game, where now I don't think there's quite as much accessibility talking with players, but there are just so many players who have been willing to do anything to play. And that's where the great stories grow out of, is that willingness to find a way to play even if you're not making money, even if you have to travel across the world, even if you have to put up with X, Y, and Z. Women are willing to do it because of how much they love it, and that's both inspiring and sometimes problematic, and that creates stories.
Grant Wahl:
Yeah. I will say, though, that while a lot of your best stories are with non-superstar players, you also did one on Megan Rapinoe that came out during the 2019 women's World Cup when she was at the center of the universe and had a million media covering her every day that floored me when I remember reading it. And it was on her brother, who had been incarcerated, it was just such a meaningful, powerful story that you got. So how do you do that with someone of Rapinoe's stature at that point that no one else had really looked at?
Gwendolyn Oxenham:
Well, I think timing, she did blow up sort of right after. I mean, she had always been a huge star, I'm a huge Pinoe fan, I think she's just a ridiculously inspiring human being. But I worked for the U.S. team where I was helping create their 23 videos ahead of the World Cup, so I did get to talk with players, and while I was talking with her, our brothers came up.
And my brother went to prison, and that sort of prompted a discussion. We just started talking, and then I talked with her brother and actually, her brother was texting me yesterday. So I think I was really lucky to have been able to sit down with Pinoe and then maybe because of my own brother connection it brought it up. I mean, it was a story where I really identified with a lot of it, and I think it was a heartbreaking story.
Grant Wahl:
Any listeners who haven't read that story, it's on ESPN.com. Find it, read it, it's incredible. Back to the podcast series though. Seven episodes, three have come out, the one on Ali Long just came out. What are the topics of some of the other episodes?
Gwendolyn Oxenham:
So our grand finale, the last episode, is called Shapeshifters, Side-hustlers and the New Guard. So we talked to the people of my generation, who you finish playing soccer at 22, maybe you're the best in the world, but there's no pro league to play in. So everyone shape-shifted, and I don't necessarily mean that in a poor-us kind of way. It's really interesting to see how these badasses went on to find new lives and excel in something else entirely, so it's talking to rocket scientists and famous music supervisors and just people who have found new lives, and then we watch how it evolved. So the players who did play, but had to have a side-hustle and these really interesting side-hustles they had. And then the new guard where, I mean, I do think we're in a generation of outright hope, so that sort of evolves.
There's the Brazil episode, obviously having played in Brazil, this country just has my heart. I mean, I'm obsessed with Brazil, and we follow the Santos team that I played for. So while I was there, we shared our field with a horse, but then you watch as the team tries to win the hearts of their city. And this is a story that I don't think is very widely known in following that team, and I won't give away everything that happens, but it's pretty mind-blowing, the Santos story, and talking to all those players, it was really cool to talk with.
Gwendolyn Oxenham:
Mother Load, there's a lot of soccer moms. It seems like that's a very sort of common thing these days, but most national teams do not have mothers on the team, not a single one. So we talk to mothers, and it's also, one thing I don't think people know is that you really face a lot of doubt. So we focus on two mothers, Melissa Barbieri, the Australian goalkeeper who went to three World Cups, captain of the team, and then she has a baby, and there was no maternity policy, she's just done. And she calls every single team in the Australian W league asking if she can come play for them, and everybody tells her no. And it's just the best underdog story ever of her fight to prove that she is still good enough and that she does belong and that having a baby doesn't mean you're over. And Amy Rodriguez has a similar story of being given a baby onesie and told they’re excited about her and then traded immediately, and how she shows that that was a mistake is also pretty awesome.
Gwendolyn Oxenham:
There's also the Nadia Nadim story. Of all the players we interviewed hers is probably the best known, but hearing her tell it in detail, and it's always the same sort of storyline you hear about with Nadia, but my favorite parts of her stories are the universal elements of her finding the game and listening to her talk about being a kid sitting in a refugee camp and there happened to be soccer fields right next to it, and she'd spy on the practices and then go through the bushes looking for balls, it's great. We also talk to her aunt, who's like the Beyoncé of Afghanistan, Aryana Sayeed, and her sister's a boxer, and their sister story is pretty... It'll pull your heartstrings for sure.
So, I mean, all of the stories, Alinco, our very first episode maybe is the one that really moves me the most. Her thought when the scout knocked on her door of her small home in a slum in Nigeria, her father said, I will have you arrested if you don't leave, and she told her dad, I'll die if you don't let me play. Also, it blows my mind that we don't know any of the African stories, what it's like to play football in Africa if you're a women's player.
And the Nigerian pro league has been around longer than almost any of them, and through the Nigerian league they're able to be breadwinners for their family and change the fate of their whole family, and that's a pretty awesome untold story too. So I think I totally left out a couple of episodes, but I really think all of them, they're powerful stories of women who find a way to play.
Grant Wahl:
Yeah, they're such good stories, all of them, and they're different in their own way from each other and just the ones I've listened to so far are phenomenal.
Gwendolyn Oxenham:
Thanks Grant.
Grant Wahl:
I kind of giggle when I hear Hannah Waddingham say your name in a sort of British accent.
Gwendolyn Oxenham:
Oh, I love it. I love it so much.
Grant Wahl:
Gwendolyn Oxen-um!
Gwendolyn Oxenham:
Yes.
Grant Wahl:
Have you had a chance to communicate with her much during this process?
Gwendolyn Oxenham:
She's been as awesome and just wonderful as you hoped she would be as you watched the show, she's a magical human being. She's just so alive. She's so alive and cares about all of these stories and well, she asked me how... She's like, this is how I would pronounce your last name in British, it's a very British name, do you want me to do it the American way? I'm like, no, no, no, no, you do your thing with it, and I've never heard my last name sound so good. Normally Oxenham, it's like so much meat, I've got oxen and then ham. And when she says it, I'm like, I have a great last name. But yeah, she's been wonderful, her daughter plays, and it's been really cool to see her care about women's stories.
Grant Wahl:
I want to ask also about this book that you've written some essays for that's coming out soon on the U.S. women's national team, and it's called Pride of a Nation. Coffee table book. I'm excited for this. What does your part involve?
Gwendolyn Oxenham:
So it's a sea of incredible photographs, and then I write the essay for each generation. I mean, I think you're all over that book, pulled quotes about all of the journalism over the team, all of the journalism from the coverage of the team over the years, they pull sort of the best bits. But then I write the essay for each generation. One part that was really awesome to me was getting to write about the 1980s group who you never hear about, and so talking with those badasses was super eye opening and fun.
And then just seeing how it all linked up, writing an essay for each generation and hearing one generation talk about the generation before, their very specific anecdotes about each other. Seeing it all come together and how much has changed and how much they changed just through their will both on and off the field, it was moving. I felt like a little kid in awe all over again.
Grant Wahl:
You also have a really good story on Naomi Girma that I mentioned in the introduction that you've written for Sports Illustrated. How did that come together, and what stood out to you about Naomi Girma as you reported and wrote about her?
Gwendolyn Oxenham:
Yeah, well, for Hustle Rule we got to talk to a lot of the young new players, and I really, really liked her story. I liked all of their stories, but it just really struck me that on the U.S. women's side we didn't really have many first-generation stories and players who've been on the team. And I guess her stories of being at the YMCA after-school program, and then having her friend say, my grandpa will take us to practice, she was like, I might not have ever played club soccer if it weren't for that, and just her grassroots sort of story of playing with friends.
I live in California, and the club soccer can feel very intense where sort of the joy in the game sometimes feels like it's taking a backseat to this idea of winning and being the best. And I really love to meet, I mean, I made a movie about pickup soccer, so I think it's pretty clear where my allegiance to the game lies. I mean, I love the idea of friendship and fun being the focus of the game, and her emphasis on community and the people around her. I just wanted to see what she meant, because she said that so much, like none of my success would be possible without the community around me. And so I just dove into what that actually meant, and hearing her stories, she's a ridiculously inspiring human being.
Grant Wahl:
You mentioned Pelada, which is actually, I think the first way I became aware of you. And can you explain to our listeners what that movie, that book is, and where can you find the film these days?
Gwendolyn Oxenham:
It's free now online. So we made Pelada, a documentary about pickup soccer around the world. We went to 25 countries, my now husband, then boyfriend and I were the two players. Our story's probably the least good in the whole thing, but we were the connective thread that hold really other interesting stories together. And it really made you feel good about both all the people in the world and just, wherever you go in the world at 5 PM, there are people who are meeting at the field, whether you're a prisoner in Bolivia, a moonshiner in Kenya or an 80 year old in Brazil beating the hell out of each other. So I love Pelada, and we made it when we were like 22 years old, and there were four of us who just had cameras and backpacks and we just took off.
I don't know if it'd be possible to make today the way we did it, and I can't even tell you how cheaply we did it. I mean, we slept on the floor of someone's home in nearly every country. And we were on Netflix for a while, and then they took us off, and so the movie kind of died for a while where you couldn't access it. And so we just threw it up on Copa90 for free. So the whole thing is, if you go to YouTube and go to Copa90, you can see it, and it's beautiful seeing everyone around the world care about the same thing.
Grant Wahl:
Are you still playing ever?
Gwendolyn Oxenham:
Oh my God, all the time, I'm such a die hard. I'm a die hard. I love it. I mean, and I don't like going running or going to yoga, I want to play. And I used to sort of make fun of... Some of these adult league people take it really seriously, and I'd be like, oh gosh, come on, it doesn't matter, it's adult league, but I think I've shifted. I think I'm now that ridiculous human who really wants to win at adult league.
But it's also fun to have our kids on the sideline, and there's a woman on my team, Jen, I really think she should have been on the national team, she's 10 years older than me, way better, and she has teenage kids who now play with us, and it's just so cool to have more than one generation playing in the game. And she raised her boys on the game, and one of these days I'm going to write a piece about the new soccer moms and what it looks like to have a mother who's a player and how that shifts everything.
Grant Wahl:
I was going to ask just to wrap up, what sort of things do you want to do moving forward?
Gwendolyn Oxenham:
Oh, well, I mean, I love getting to do the deep-dives, writing profiles is my favorite. I also have a fiction book that I'm 150 pages into and super passionate about and have had to put down for the past year, and I just daydream about when I get to pick it back up and finish it. I always meant to be a fiction writer. And of course the game, I love writing about that too, but I have to finish this fiction book, and I love it, it's so fun to write. So we'll see, who knows? Maybe it'll always stay in the drawer, maybe it'll come to life one day.
Grant Wahl:
Knowing you, it will. Gwendolyn Oxenham's new project is the podcast series Hustle Rule: The Untold Stories of Women's Soccer, which is hosted by Hannah Waddingham from Ted Lasso. It's everywhere you can find podcasts, so you most definitely should check it out. Gwendolyn, thanks so much for coming on the show.
Gwendolyn Oxenham:
Thank you, Grant. I appreciate it.
