Midge Purce Talks 'The Offseason' Docuseries, NWSL and Reality TV

The NJ/NY Gotham FC star opens up about her production partnership with Alexis Ohanian and their new reality series depicting NWSL players in the lead up to their season.

Purce’s docuseries, “The Offseason,” premieres on X on Friday. / Vincent Carchietta-Imagn Images

The Offseason is finally here, and you’ve never seen the National Women’s Soccer League quite like this. The docuseries, premiering Friday on X, follows 11 NWSL players to Miami as the group prepares for their upcoming season. Co-created by entrepreneur and investor Alexis Ohanian (husband of Serena Williams) and NJ/NY Gotham FC star Midge Purce, The Offseason is produced by Box to Box Films (responsible for Drive to Survive and Break Point) and 32 Flavors (the production company for Vanderpump Rules and The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills). Cameras follow as the cast—including Purce, Kansas City’s Lo’eau LaBonta and Houston Dash’s Maria Sanchez—as they navigate new contracts, injuries and preseason pressure.

Purce spoke with Sports Illustrated ahead of the show’s premiere, opening up about her behind-the-scenes work, why she felt this was an important project to make, and what fans can expect from the series.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Sports Illustrated: How did this [show] come to be?

Midge Purce: If you know anything about Alexis Ohanian and how he approaches his new ventures and spaces that he doesn’t know from an expert level, he always asks someone to explain things to him. At the time, I was consulting, explaining to him some things about the soccer world and just helping him understand so he could pursue something else.

In those conversations, I had just entered the offseason and during one of those conversations I was venting, in the pre-call, about how there is not a really fantastic high-level offseason environment for anyone. And it’s not just female soccer players, but it’s my friends who play in the MLS, it’s even NFL players. They have to go and they have to find things and they have to set it up themselves and you have to get this gym membership and then go find this trainer. There is nothing where everything is together. His response, which was very jarring to me, was why don’t you just go make one. And that’s kind of what The Offseason was born out of.

It was born to create a high-level training environment. And that, I’ve always felt that the NWSL players in our league were so interesting and that an issue and a huge discrepancy between the popularity of the national team and the popularity of really solid, talented, NWSL players was the storytelling. The national team has this story of the best female athletes in the world, generations of winning. If you’re on this team you’re a top athlete in the world automatically, like you get that headline. But there hasn’t been really elite storytelling of individuals in our league and I know firsthand that these stories are absolutely incredible. So the idea was can we use this to tell peoples’ stories so that you’re not just looking forward to seeing Megan Rapinoe, you want to see Kelli Hubly for the Portland Thorns? The idea of doing a reality docuseries, I love reality television, so I’ve actually said that this is something that would be successful for years. But it wasn’t until these conversations with Alexis, that this format and this idea of doing it in the offseason and covering parts of our lives as professional athletes, that are never seen and completely misunderstood, actually became a reality. 

SI: What was your thought process behind casting, how did you go about that?

MP: The first year I just invited my friends, like anyone I could get to come down. It was really difficult. I asked a lot of people. And they’re like, no. It’s funny because there ended up being a copycat house the first year. I asked some people to come, they said no and then they got their own house. But I understood it was because they didn’t want to be filmed and they didn’t want to be part of a television show. But what that made me realize, I was like, Oh this idea is really good. 

I called my friends. I was like who are my friends who are really, really good at soccer, people who I rate, and people who truthfully won’t bring down my training, who will elevate my own training. Because at the same time, this is a huge business venture, it’s still my offseason and I am still trying to make national team camps, I’m still trying to prepare for the season. So I took the best of my friends who are really good, and they all just happened to have personalities and stories that you would want to hear. 

SI: Seeing who is involved in the production side of this, when you were conceptualizing this, what tone did you have in mind? 

MP: The thing I always said, when we were talking to production companies, I said the first and foremost highest priority I have is that people walk away from this show and they go: Every single one of these players is really good at soccer. They just need to respect the athlete and the sport and the quality of the talents that they have and the skill—that’s my priority. And you can’t really do that from a completely reality television lens. 

That’s why the docuseries part made sense. It also made sense because the drama that you see in the show isn’t the same as the drama you’d see on a reality television show where it’s just these interpersonal relationships that are having meltdowns. The drama is like sports drama, which we've never seen before. It’s like Oh my gosh, you just got traded, what are you going to do? It’s Oh my goodness, you got injured in the offseason, you’re about to go into preseason, what’re you going to say? It’s real sports drama so it made sense that we needed to have a docuseries approach to give it enough respect. But then at the same time, again, I love reality television. The idea of having fun with it and really peeling back this professional lens and allowing you to see players and people in ways they’ve never been presented, that was was just so attractive to me. 

SI: What are some of your favorite reality television shows?

MP: I'm not proud to say Bad Girls Club, when I was younger. I’m an OG reality TV viewer. I do really enjoy the Real Housewives franchise. I watched Vanderpump [Rules]. Scandoval was one of my Super Bowls. I’ll watch almost anything reality. 

SI: Did you have discussions or have a say about how you all were going to be portrayed?

MP: I had tons of discussions. And I am not nervous and I wasn’t nervous because I actually didn’t give it to someone else to do. I show ran when we were in the house. I fired a bunch of people who didn’t understand the direction of the show when I said this is not the type of television that we are creating. We don’t need to manufacture drama, our lives have enough drama. And in post, I fired people who didn’t understand and continually made cuts to make sure that these women were represented appropriately. 

It was a really difficult concept, I think, for people to get on board with because it is so different and it is new. I don’t have the same role that I think is traditional in television. I’m on with the editors, and I’m storyboarding, and I’m making sure that the way that my friends are represented is not only accurate, but it helps grow the sport. And it does it in a way that is right for women’s sports and for my friends.

Purce has scored four goals in her 30 appearances with the USWNT. / Kiyoshi Mio-Imagn Images

SI: Have you always been this confident as a leader and creator? Has that happened as you’ve gotten older or more throughout your career, or have you always had that in you?

MP: I don’t really look at myself as a creator to be quite honest. As much as I like to write, and I would actually describe myself as creative, I haven’t really looked at myself as a creator. 

I do think that the way that I entered the field, I think would probably be the most obvious connection between the way I approach all my teams. The first thing that I changed was I had an all-set meeting. Not just the editors, not just the story producers, but cameramen, people who are runners, everyone. I was like this is our team, guys. We’re in this together. We are creating a show. Every single person here is creating a show, not just people who are writing things down and have headsets. This is all of us in this together and you guys are part of something that is special to me and I hope it becomes special to you in the making. That, to me, would probably be the only point of crossover in my leadership skills.

SI: Being in the NWSL and on the USWNT, there are people following you with cameras a lot. Did it take time to get used to being on camera again?

MP: It was not easy at all. I got caught on the hot mic a couple of times. I would forget that I am on the mic. I would forget that there were cameras there all the time. It was really difficult to get used to. I would get frustrated. Everyone got frustrated and I would have to be like, guys we signed up for this, it’s O.K. It was a completely new experience for sure. 

SI: Being a reality television fan, and having this experience, do you watch it differently now?  

MP: Completely. What changed it was being so in on [post-production]. I remember I was like, man I wish she said this instead of that. And it was like a two-word difference, semantics, and it completely changed the effect and the power of her statement. And my editor was like, I can make her say that. And they fixed it and it was seamless and I was jaw-dropped. I couldn’t believe it. There are so many little tricks and different things, how they cut away. 

I was actually just watching Summer House … and I kept pausing it, and I was like, she didn’t say that, they cut away from her! I definitely watch it differently but I am still enjoying it just as much. 

SI: Doing this show, did you learn anything about yourself or as a soccer player?

MP: One thousand percent. Watching the raw footage back, I learned a ton about myself. I don’t know if I want to therapize myself in Sports Illustrated. A light-hearted one is I've always known I am not one to control my facial expressions but it’s actually a poor, poor character trait, I’m learning and I could be a lot better with how I present when I’m not speaking and when other people are speaking, whether I agree with them or not.

And then mostly it was realizing that a lot of these people are my close friends and people I play with all the time. And then getting into interviews, and learning things about them that I’ve never known myself was really refreshing. And it was such a good reminder that you really have no idea what people have gone through and what’s gotten them here and what makes up some reactions that they have or how they navigate the world. And seeing that with people who I am already extremely close to and trust so much, I had immense respect for them. I definitely learned a lot, it’s an experience I couldn’t be more grateful for. 

SI: If you could pick one thing the audience takes away from this season, what would you want that to be? 

MP: I think the show will be successful if people have a reframe of what it means to be a professional athlete. I think seeing the mental and the emotional side peeled back of what people are going through during a time when cameras are never rolling. Not just on women, but on men. I don’t know what people do in the offseason for men’s sports. It’s such a novel concept. If we can even just reframe how people look and react to athletes that would be a win for me.