Michael Sam last week appeared to dismiss the idea of working with the Oprah Winfrey Network again. The cable channel this week announced a holiday-season documentary on the out-of-work football player followed by an interview with Oprah herself.
On December 27 at 9 p.m. Eastern/Pacific, OWN will air Michael Sam. The documentary project, shelved after the St. Louis Rams expressed reservations about their seventh-round pick looking at opportunities in fields away from the field, explores the celebrity athlete’s ongoings.
“The 90-minute documentary follows the life of Michael Sam, who made history when he became the first openly gay football player drafted into the NFL,” OWN explained in a statement. Whether the filming continued after Sam committed to ceasing his involvement remains unknown. So, too, does the documentarians’ role in staging, rather than merely filming, the famous kiss between Sam and boyfriend Vito Cammisano on the third day of the NFL Draft in May.
The network boasts an exclusive interview conducted by Winfrey of Michael Sam immediately following the documentary.
Sam, cut by the St. Louis Rams after accumulating three sacks in the preseason, hung on with the taxi squad of the Cowboys before Dallas released him, too. “I don’t think it had to do with talent,” he maintained last week in an airport-ambush interview by TMZ of his status on the outside of the NFL looking in. “I’m a football player,” he explained to questions concerning reality television and acting offers. “I’m a football player.”
The network’s namesake’s voice teases the film in the trailer: “Some say, ‘The kiss, the cake–it was all just too much.’ Some say, ‘He wasn’t good enough.’ Others, ‘He should have never come out before the draft.’ What really happened to the young football star who made history?”
If you can somehow wait just two days after Christmas, Oprah will gift us an answer.
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