Here's Why Sue Bird and Megan Rapinoe Have No Qualms About Mixing Business With Pleasure

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Some couples Netflix and chill, some talk about ways they can completely rewrite the rulebook on the way things have always been done.

We'll give you three guesses as to which category Sue Bird and Megan Rapinoe fall into. "I think back on the conversations that Megan and I have had just chilling on the couch, talking about our lives," Bird, who just wrapped a 21-year WNBA career that included four championships, told E! News in an exclusive interview. "And a lot of it ends up being topics about challenging the status quo. And so now we're actively going to be able to do that in a very public way through all of this content."

In other words, our favorite athletic power couple has just entered the content creation game. In partnership with TOGETHXR—the media platform Bird launched with fellow sports super stars Alex Morgan, Simone Manuel and Chloe Kim—the pair are shooting their shot with their new production company, A Touch More.

Badass Female Athletes

The plan is to amplify stories from underrepresented communities, including LGBTQIA+, BIPOC and women, but mostly, noted Bird, "what's not being covered—the stories that are not being told."

Their slate starts with what Rapinoe labeled "a sort of quintessential women's sports story": four-part audio documentary 30 for30: Pink Card, which follows the lives of Iranian women fighting for the right to simply watch soccer.

"Oftentimes, you only see the shining moment or championship or World Cup, but you don't really understand all that it took to get there," explained the two-time FIFA World Cup winner. "Female athletes, I think women in general to be honest, don't really get to just do what they do. You've got to do 20 other things to just get yourself in a position."

Megan Rapinoe, Sue Bird
Raven B. Varona

Noting that the world of women's sports has a habit of just highlighting a select few athletes (including, they acknowledge, themselves), their goal "is not to use the success that we've had to continue to gain success for ourselves or continue to tell our own story," explained Rapinoe, but "rather to do something much different and put eyes on things that we feel are really important or things that we know about, but not necessarily our personal stories."

In other words, don't hold your breath for a Bird-Rapinoe reality series. (Because, yes, we floated the idea that they document their future nuptials.)

"A hard pass," joked Rapinoe. Agreed Bird, "Whatever the hardest pass is, that one."

They had no qualm, however, about teaming up professionally.

Since 2015, when she decided to stop playing overseas ("For a women's basketball player, you play for the WNBA, you go over to Europe—rinse, repeat for years and years and years," Bird explained) the five-time Olympic gold medalist has been testing out various options for her life after the hardwood.

"I was really starting to try new things out, whether it was commentating, I worked in an NBA front office—just really trying to see what I liked, what I didn't like, and go from there," she explained. In the past seven years, her perspective has shifted "and I think having the conversations that Megan and I have when we're just chilling on the couch, you start to get to know yourself better, you start to see what interests you and this became a natural direction."

Doing it alongside her favorite teammate was an easy yes. "I feel like we've both gained so much from the other's perspective and learning from that and being challenged," noted Bird. Plus, they've already had plenty of practice. Said Rapinoe, "I think that all these conversations that we have, they were like little mini business meetings."

That their work will place them in the same zip code more often is just a bonus. After years of living at the mercy of "the schedule gods," Bird joked, and hoping her games at home with the Seattle Storm would line up with when Rapinoe was on the pitch with the city's OL Reign, "It will be good to have time together where we can kind of get more focused on things like this."