Ronnie O’Sullivan on his new film The Edge of Everything: ‘It was harrowing to watch back’

Through the door of a sleek London lodge, held open by a concierge; into the dimly-lit foyer, previous an open fireplace and good dinner friends, right into a shiny raise; down a hall lined with summary artwork, round a bend to the very finish the place the final door waits in semi-darkness; by means of to a collection with an extended desk scattered with sandwiches and cream scones – Ronnie O’Sullivan’s favorite meals – the place his agent and publicists mill; to a leather-based couch on the far finish.

This is the place O’Sullivan is holed up, an hour earlier than his film premiere in London’s Leicester Square. He emerges from one other room with a smile, gives a fist bump and sits down. He is wearing a blue jumper, darkish denims and good footwear. Executive producer, David Beckham, is among the many well-known friends coming to rejoice O’Sullivan, journalists are right here to ask questions and followers are sitting in cinemas across the nation to watch the film and a reside Q&A afterwards. And he’s dreading it.

“If I’d have looked at the contract before doing this and it said, you’ve got to do a premiere, I’d have probably said, ‘that’s me out then’,” O’Sullivan says with a wry grin. “When we started, they said there’s going to be a film festival and I was like, ‘I’ve got to go to that?’ They were like, ‘yeah’. I was like, ‘f**k’.

“It’s not my sort of thing really, but I’m trying to learn to embrace it. I’ve not been very good at taking compliments or a pat on the back. If people say, ‘Oh, I’ve always followed your game’, I’m always cringing inside. I’m trying to work on not being like that and letting people be happy for [me].”

This is O’Sullivan in a nutshell, thrown into locations he doesn’t need to be, typically of his personal selecting, and having to cope with it. It is his life story, of two sides butting heads: the introvert with erratic psychological well being and the sporting genius. In his film, you see that contradiction within the eyes of the shy teenager thrown into the limelight, within the celeb who by no means courted fame, within the star who hates crowds, within the snooker participant who despises the “evil” Crucible Theatre.

So it’s a little stunning that O’Sullivan opened himself up so nakedly for this two-year venture, The Edge of Everything. The director, Sam Blair, spent the primary three months incomes his topic’s belief earlier than bringing in a single digicam, though he needn’t have: O’Sullivan felt secure instantly on assembly Blair, a low-key character.

“I said to Sam at the start of it, ‘I’m not going to tell you that you can’t film this and can’t film that’,” O’Sullivan says. “Just assume you can film everything. And if there is a time I don’t want them to film, I’ll let you know, Sam. It’s easier that way otherwise we’ll be driving each other mad. Just assume you’ve got carte blanche. We became really good friends. There’s a lot of trust between me and Sam, so I just thought, OK, go for it. There wasn’t one point where I said, ‘no, you’re not coming in’. I thought, if we’re going to do it, let’s do a proper job.”

The result’s a revelatory documentary. Thousands of phrases have been written concerning the seven-time world champion, however nothing digs underneath his pores and skin and into his thoughts fairly like this. There is a rawness to the footage, which captures O’Sullivan crying, urinating, smoking, burping and swearing. It reveals an intimate hotel-room breakfast with Jimmy White wherein they argue politely over who ought to eat the primary meal to arrive. There are moments when O’Sullivan is conscious of the cameras and others when he appears to have forgotten.

One of probably the most eye-opening elements is his household’s reminiscence of his father’s arrest for homicide. Ronnie O’Sullivan Sr gave his son inspiration, recommendation and self-discipline. Then he stabbed the driving force of gangster Charlie Kray to loss of life in a nightclub struggle, and he was sentenced to 20 years in jail. O’Sullivan was solely 17, and within the film, he cries whereas remembering his dad’s remaining phrases as he was taken down from the dock: “Tell my boy to win.”

“When he went away, I had a really special, close relationship with my dad,” O’Sullivan says now. “We’d been on that march together [towards professional snooker] and for him to not be there, I just thought half of me had been sliced out and taken away. It was just horrible. When he said that, I knew he meant it, that was the thing. It was tough, but I think that’s what drove me on to play because I didn’t want to make him feel bad or be disappointed in me. I was doing it more for my dad at times than I ever was for myself, but is that a bad thing? I’m not sure. I think it kept me playing.”

The film reveals how O’Sullivan Sr would make a younger Ronnie go operating to shed weight. His dad would drive in a automotive behind him, which O’Sullivan describes as “humiliating”. O’Sullivan is a father himself now. He doesn’t see his 27-year-old first daughter, however he does have a detailed relationship with teenage kids Lily and Ronnie Jr after years of battling over custody.

“I wouldn’t want to be that brutal with my kids and I couldn’t be,” he says. “Maybe there’s an inbetween somewhere. Maybe I’m a little bit too easy and slack with them in certain things. It’s hard. Your parents just do the best they can possibly do and that was fine. But there’s certain things you go through as a kid where you think, maybe I don’t want to put my kids through that.”

Blair was cautious to win over O’Sullivan’s father and spent a 12 months getting to know his mom, Maria, earlier than proposing an interview. Even then, their conversations have been held with out cameras, and within the film his mother and father’ voices play excessive of previous residence video and Polaroid footage.

Maria talks within the documentary about how she despatched her son to a event in Thailand to distance him from the information about his father’s arrest for homicide. She says she all the time regretted it and provides: “I don’t think he’s ever forgiven me.” This was information to O’Sullivan, who had no thought his mom had been harbouring guilt for 30 years. He discovered once they watched the film collectively and so they cried.

“When she said that, I was thinking, really? I’d never even given it a second thought,” he says. “I know she was doing it thinking it was the right thing to do. She was holding on to all that for that long. I wish she’d have said something to me.”

At occasions, the film is an uncomfortable watch, since you witness a person endure what seems like a severe mental-health episode. He is sitting in his dressing room throughout the 2022 World Championship remaining, completely stricken by the concept of dropping his huge lead – which, step by step, he’s dropping. As he talks to the individuals round him, his voice hastens. His face twitches. He seems pained. It looks like a attainable panic assault, although O’Sullivan describes it as “stage fright”.

He discovered the entire documentary onerous to watch again, not least his issues with dependancy in his 20s. “It wasn’t a great experience to be honest, it was quite harrowing watching it. It looked a lot worse than it felt, if you know what I mean. Visually you could see I was going through it a lot at times.

“I was on a plane going to China and watched a documentary about people who’ve done documentaries and how it’s affected their lives. They’ve needed counselling and therapy and this and that just to come out of it, because it was a bad experience. So I thought, well at least I’m not the only one who has had that feeling.”

The film helps to perceive why he won’t just like the Crucible. For somebody who calls for perfection of himself and concurrently suffers from crushing self-doubt, performing in a windowless room the place you’ll be able to hear a pin drop shouldn’t be a recipe for a contented or wholesome thoughts. It could be a lonely, mind-numbing place, watching your opponent unpick your lead one ball at a time, and it forces you to dig deep into your psychological reserves.

“I haven’t been prepared to do that for quite a few years in Sheffield,” O’Sullivan admits. “I know it sounds crazy but I just don’t think it’s worth it. If you haven’t won the World Championship then yeah, it’s worth it. But when I got to four, that was enough. I’m quite happy with that. It hasn’t been a total failure. And to get to seven is great. If I was ultra critical and hard on myself then I could possibly have gotten to double figures if I hadn’t lost those earlier years and things would have been different in my private life. But you have to think, do I really need this? Do I really need another World Championship? The answer is, for me, no.”

He places his 2022 victory down to the cameras, which spurred him to ship for his newfound viewers. Could he summon no matter’s wanted – psychological resilience, bodily endurance, the all-out survival abilities – to win yet another world title and surpass Stephen Hendry?

“I’m sure I’ll pitch up and play again. Whether I’ve got another one in me, I don’t know. I don’t think I have, if I’m being brutally honest with you. I don’t think I’ve got another one in me. But I thought that in 2011 and I’ve won a few since then so it’s strange how things can turn out.”

With that, O’Sullivan provides a smile and one other fist bump, and wanders again into the opposite room. He attends the premiere, posing for photographs on the crimson (inexperienced, in reality) carpet. Afterwards, he sits on stage with Beckham and Blair, and the ultimate query asks for his favorite half of the film. He wriggles in his chair. “Maybe the family bits,” he says briskly. Much later, he posts on his Instagram, or at the very least somebody does: “Wow. What a night.”