ESPN Makes Strong Bid for Emmy Nominations with Michael Jordan, Lance Armstrong Documentaries

The Last Dance and LANCE were moved up on ESPN schedule to feed sports-starved fans

The ESPN series 30 for 30 has become a major player in the documentary space, earning an Academy Award for the 2016 film O.J.: Made in America and an Emmy nomination last year as Outstanding Nonfiction Series.

​It's a strong contender for Emmy recognition again this year on the strength of acclaimed documentaries about two of the most celebrated athletes of all time, Michael Jordan and Lance Armstrong. The Last Dance, directed by Jason Hehir, looks at the Chicago Bulls' final run at an NBA championship with Jordan as the team's centerpiece; LANCE, directed by Marina Zenovich, goes deep with the disgraced cyclist seven years after he finally publicly admitted to taking performance enhancing drugs.

 I'm a sports fan myself, and I know that I was starved for content.

--Jason Hehir, director of The Last Dance

The Last Dance was supposed to begin airing in June, which would have made it eligible for Emmy consideration next year. But ESPN, recognizing sports fans would respond favorably to some new content in the absence of live sports programming, wisely moved up the airdate to April. The 10-part series became a huge ratings hit.

"I'm a sports fan myself, and I know that I was starved for content," Hehir tells Nonfictionfilm.com. "There was a dearth of content out there, not just in games, but any new content in the sports universe." 

​He attributes the series' success to several factors, in addition to the fix for sports lovers. 

"Michael's name... that resonates with people on the other side of the planet. It's not just on both coasts and in the Midwest and in the South here in the States, it's all over the world," he notes. "And also I think that we were blessed with such a rich array of characters whose stories we told. It's a basketball story, of course, but we tried to make it about a family, a dysfunctional family, that came together to achieve extraordinary things."

The series also provided a welcome escape from COVID headlines.

"I think that in such a scary time, nostalgia is safe, it's comfortable, it's a warm place to go back to," Hehir observes. "And this documentary is really a celebration of not just the Bulls and the Jordan era, but of nostalgia, and we tried to imbue this as much as we could with '80s and '90s nostalgia, right from watching the fashion that these guys wore off the court to listening to the music that they were listening to... Nostalgia is a warm, safe place, and [The Last Dance] certainly checked the box."

Michael Jordan with his teammate Scottie Pippen. Photo courtesy ESPN

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Related: 
>Ken Burns cries foul on ESPN docuseries The Last Dance
>Director Marina Zenovich compares Lance Armstrong to a shark--"but in a good way"

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The two-part documentary LANCE, meanwhile, was supposed to get a theatrical release this fall, then air on ESPN at some point afterwards. But the cable network moved it up to premiere May 25, for the same reason it moved up The Last Dance.

"It's always great to have your film in a theater," Zenovich confesses. "I mean, I'm old school so what can I say? You just had to go with it... I've been doing this long enough that I know that you put it out there and you have no control over what happens."

​Zenovich spent two years off and on with Armstrong, sitting down with him for multiple interviews over many hours. 

"I was just interested in seeing the man and what he was doing and how he was coming to terms with what he had done," Zenovich tells Nonfictionfilm.com. "What was rewarding was just having the opportunity to dig into what had happened, and how he felt, and how it affected his family and all of that. That's what excited me."

Zenovich says there were no pre-conditions on the interviews. Armstrong put up a steely front, admitting to doping but not offering any kind of apology. But the director credits him with being willing to submit to what she called an interrogation.

"At a certain point he wanted me to talk to his therapist... He was willing to let her be interviewed and I thought I had won the lottery," Zenovich recalls. "She ended up not wanting to talk [on camera] but she helped me a lot in terms of trying to understand him. And who had a better understanding of him than her?"

Lance Armstrong, interviewed in Marina Zenovich's documentary "LANCE." Photo courtesy ESPN

Armstrong began his streak of seven consecutive Tour de France titles the year after Jordan's final NBA title with the Bulls. Their eras did not quite overlap, in that sense, but they had something very much in common: an absolutely indomitable drive to win.

In The Last Dance, Jordan is described as "the ultimate sports alpha male," and he talks in the series about wanting to win "at all costs." That seems to have been Armstrong's motto too, but the cyclist was willing to veer outside the rules of his sport to do it, while Jordan triumphed through sheer will and effort.

"They're not normal humans and they are incredibly strong and ferocious and willful and amazing athletes," Zenovich says of Jordan and Armstrong. "I think you have to be that way to succeed. It's that cutthroat and competitive and you do what you have to do."

In The Last Dance, the origins of Jordan's near-mania to win are traced to a sense of competing with his older brother Larry--who was also a gifted basketball player--for his father's love and approval. Armstrong's drive seems to have come in part from an abusive step-father, Terry Armstrong, who proudly claims he "drove [Lance] like an animal... Lance would not be the champion he is today without me.” 

"With Lance I think... it's a combination of his upbringing and a combination of his mother who had him young and I think was growing up with him," Zenovich says. "I mean, she was what, 16, 17 years old [when she had Lance]. The combination of not knowing who his real father was and then being adopted by his stepfather who was really pushing him."

Jordan's got six NBA championship rings; Armstrong was stripped of his seven Tour titles. In a way, both men could bring victory to ESPN, in the form of Emmy trophies.

​Emmy nomination voting continues through July 13. Nominations will be announced on July 28.

Director Marina Zenovich at the world premiere of LANCE at the Sundance Film Festival in January. Photo by Matt Carey