{"id":28179,"date":"2026-05-22T20:26:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-22T20:26:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/28179\/"},"modified":"2026-05-22T20:26:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-22T20:26:10","slug":"rafael-nadal-appears-at-premiere-of-netflix-rafa-series-in-madrid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/28179\/","title":{"rendered":"Rafael Nadal Appears At Premiere Of Netflix ‘Rafa’ Series In Madrid"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tTennis champion Rafael Nadal<\/a> is holding court about his upcoming Netflix<\/a> documentary series.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe 22-time Grand Slam winner appeared at the world premiere of Rafa<\/a> in Madrid Wednesday night, where he was joined by his dad Sebasti\u00e1n Nadal, his mom Ana Maria Parera, his uncle Toni Nadal (who coached him for years), Carlos Moy\u00e1 (who coached Rafa for the last years of his career), plus Seth Meyers, Christiane Amanpour, Ana Patricia Bot\u00edn, Carolina Adriana Herrera, and many other luminaries.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe 4-part series, which premieres on Netflix on May 29, is directed by Oscar-nominated filmmaker Zach Heinzerling<\/a> (Cutie and the Boxer, Stolen Youth: Inside the Cult at Sarah Lawrence). Seth Meyers, by the way, is Heinzerling\u2019s brother-in-law, which helps explains his presence far from his home-base of New York.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Rafael<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tRafael Nadal is interviewed on the arrival line for the world premiere of \u2018Rafa\u2019 in Madrid.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tNetflix\/courtesy of Sharon Lopez<\/p>\n

\n\tBefore the Madrid premiere, Nadal spoke with Deadline about the project, admitting he had resisted previous overtures about a documentary.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI refused to do it plenty of times in my tennis career,\u201d Rafa explained. \u201cI decided to do it at this particular moment because, probably, I found the right people to do it. People that I trust convinced me to make that happen and because from my point of view this was the last opportunity to do it or don\u2019t do it, because they started filming 2024. That was the last stage of my career and I said, \u2018Okay, let\u2019s try.\u2019 I was refusing all of this, not because of me, but especially for not bothering the people who are next to me, family, teammates, everyone.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAlong with Rafa, his father, his mom, his uncle Toni and others close to him, Nadal\u2019s two great tennis rivals also appear in the series: Roger Federer, winner of 20 Grand Slam titles, and Novak Djokovic, winner of 24 Grand Slams.<\/p>\n

\n\tInjuries caused Nadal to miss competition at 18 Grand Slams, preventing him from adding to his remarkable total of 22. He retired in 2024 at the age of 38. He turns 40 on June 3.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"The<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tThe world premiere of \u2018Rafa\u2019 at the Beti Jai fronton in Madrid.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tNetflix\/courtesy of Nil Ventura<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Rafa premiere was held at the historic Beti Jai fronton sports venue in the Spanish capital.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe evening concluded with an exclusive screening of the first episode of Rafa,\u201d notes a release, \u201cwhich received a long standing ovation from attendees in a premiere filled with emotion and celebration.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tDeadline will provide more coverage of the Rafa series next week ahead of the Netflix debut.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tennis champion Rafael Nadal is holding court about his upcoming Netflix documentary series. The 22-time Grand Slam winner…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":28180,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[82,969,14388,712,14389],"class_list":["post-28179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-madrid","tag-madrid","tag-netflix","tag-rafa","tag-rafael-nadal","tag-zach-heinzerling"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28179"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28179\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}