How ‘Under Pressure’ Docuseries Director Came Up with the Title: ‘Winning Is in the DNA’ | Exclusive Video

The title for Rebecca Gitlitz’s docuseries “Under Pressure: The U.S. Women’s World Cup Team” came about after she happened to glance at a document of transcripts in which “pressure” came up at least 150 times.

The four-episode series, now streaming on Netflix, captures many different angles of the United States Women’s National Soccer Team’s (USWNT) most recent attempt at a World Cup title from this past year. Since the FIFA Women’s tournament’s inception in 1991, the USWNT has won four times, reflected in the four stars on their uniforms above the USA crest. The 2023 World Cup would have marked a three-peat for the USWNT since they won in the previous consecutive two tournaments in 2015 and 2019.

“They were under pressure from the beginning, they were under pressure in the middle. They’re under pressure now,” Gitlitz told TheWrap. “They’re under pressure when they win by 12 against Vietnam in 2019, they’re under pressure when they win by three this year. There’s no lack of things coming at them all of the time.”

“One of the pressures that I wanted to showcase in this was the internal pressure that they have from other generations of U.S. women’s national team members. Winning is in the DNA,” Gitlitz continued. “When you sign on to be a women’s national team player you are expected to win and I think that that is the pressure that they feel more than anything else all of the time.”

Gitlitz and her team went through the Players Association to ask all 23 players on the roster if they would like to conduct interviews during the tournament for the docuseries. Gitlitz understood that certain players wanted to completely focus on the tournament and winning while others might not feel comfortable in front of the cameras, and thus, not every player gave interviews, but viewers get to hear from Megan Rapineo, Alex Morgan, Lindsey Horan, Lynn Williams, Kristie Mewis, Sofia Herta, Savannah Demelo and Alyssa Thompson.

“Some players you know had different reasons they wanted to tell their stories. Lynn Williams has been struggling for a spot on this team for 10 years, and her experience was very different than Alyssa Thompson, who we didn’t even know was going to make the team,” Gitlitz said. “I wanted to focus on these three different groups of pressure that are represented. [For] this young [group] Sophia Smith, Alyssa Thompson, the pressure will be yours because you’re next, this middle group of ‘Are we or are we not [on the team?]’ Sofia Huerta to Lynn Williams, Kristie Mewis, and then for the stars like Alex Morgan, Lindsay Moran, this is a different animal. I wanted to tell these three parallel paths through the eyes of the players. I feel great about the players that did share with us.”

At the final send-off match in San Jose, California, Gitlitz got a 15-minute heads-up before Megan Rapinoe announced her plan for retirement at the end of the 2023 NWSL season.

“Megan Rapinoe is a character that has been in our lives for a very long time. We should all be grateful for her contributions not just on the soccer field and not just in the world of equal pay. I have a level of respect for Megan that I don’t have for many other people, I think that she has changed our world for the better,” Gitlitz said. “I think for Megan, this was an interesting run. And so while she did interview with us, it wasn’t her time. There were lots of other players, and we would never do a film about the women’s national team without focusing on Megan. I think what we got with her was valuable and amazing, but the Women’s National Team has 23 players.

Retired professional USWNT member Carli Lloyd commentated on the United States’ four World Cup matches via Fox Sports, and she did not hold back her honest opinion and criticism of the team’s lackluster performance in the group stage. She also agreed to appear in the docuseries.

“Obviously after Portugal, [Carli] said all those things, and we sat around for a long time thinking about ‘Is it part of the story? Is it a distraction for the players?’ Certain people said certain things specifically after the World Cup where we were like, ‘We will not give this airtime.’ But with Carly, it felt like lots of people were saying it, she just hit a nerve. So right before Sweden, we were switching over teams. It was a Friday morning and I remember I was like ‘You know what, I think that we want Carli.’ And I emailed her cold. I’ve been in the sports business for a long time so I had her info, and I emailed her and I said ‘I just really would love for you to be in this.’ She sent me to her agent, and by 11 p.m. we had had a yes from Carli, which was amazing because they were playing Sweden the very next day,” Gitlitz said. “So Marie [Margolius], our producer had literally just landed in Melbourne, which is where their next game was, and I said ‘You have to go back to Sydney. And she was like, ‘Well, I’ve been flying for like 30 hours. Okay.’ So she got to Australia, had a coffee, got back on a plane, went back to Sydney where she had just done a layover and met up with Carli. That stuff before the Sweden game is some of the most dynamic footage that we have because it’s real. There were these two dueling storylines going into Sweden there was this sort of Carlo camp of ‘This is a disaster.’And there was this US Women’s National Team camp of like we are going to get it together. And what I loved about Carly was she also believed they were going to get it together, it wasn’t just negativity. It was this same DNA point of ‘We have winning in our bones.’”

“I thought Carli added a really interesting dimension to the story that you know, the minute we got it back I was like ‘I think this is the open to the show.’ Watching her and Alexi Lalas watch the [penalty kicks] shoot out [versus Sweden] was all of us,” Gitlitz added.

Over 50 production companies had reached out to shoot their shot at documenting the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup. Key to Gitlitz’s vision was the idea to capture “multi-faceted athletes” versus “a documentary about women’s sports.” Filming didn’t start until April 2023, and Gitlitz wanted the series to be beautiful and “gorgeously gritty” like prestige television or film, but more like “Chef’s Table” than “Hard Knocks.”

“The interesting thing about an event that you’ve already seen is that to engage someone, you need to show it in a completely different light,” she said. “We shot the World Cup in a completely different way than you would have seen in broadcasts — really showing the faces, really showing the physicality, really showing the expressions and the frustration.”

At the busiest point of filming, 12 edits were going at one time cutting all four episodes simultaneously. Because the games were around the world with the World Cup hosted by New Zealand and Australia, producers and crews were on the ground at the matches. Producer Marie Margolius (CK) was also on the ground while Gitlitz ran command from the states. She shot two cameras, U.S. Soccer had three and FIFA had 32, to round up to nearly 40 cameras on which hours of footage were caught. The 30 minutes of the final episode left room for Gitlitz to explore after the devastating early end to the USWNT’s run when they lost to Sweden in penalty kicks.

“I really struggled with what to do for a couple of days, and then I felt like this was an opportunity to understand where this team is and where it’s going and where it’s been. The fourth episode is an amalgamation of those three things,” she said. “You need to understand all of them to understand the complexities of this story of this team. I think Meghan Rapinoe had this amazing line. She was like ‘If we won all the time, it would be boring. I wanted to be able to show people that we’re more than equal pay. This team is bigger than just equal pay and winning championships.”

“This is the story of my lifetime. I have been waiting for a women’s sports story that can break through the zeitgeist and become mainstream for my whole life, and this soccer team is it,” Gitlitz added. “The impetus for telling this story was [that] I am so inspired by powerful women and the dreamers that pushed me, and this team is that. I want people to understand how powerful and culturally relevant these women are and not just in the political space or in equal pay or in anything like that. What they have been able to achieve has never been done.”

All four episodes of “Under Pressure: The U.S. Women’s World Cup Team” are now streaming on Netflix.

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