McEnroe serves as the narrator of Mindy Kaling’s coming-of-age series, the second season of which was recently released on the streaming platform.
“That’s why people think of me first,” he said.
The seven-time Grand Slam singles winner – renowned for his mid-match antics – is still most widely recognized for his 1981 moment at the 1981 Wimbledon Championships after disagreeing with a line call from McEnroe Came on during the first round. Despite the outrage, he won the tournament.
He told CNN that people yell at him almost every day.
“They tell me before I have a chance to say it to them,” he said. “It’s pathetic in a way, and exhilarating in a way that people remember.”
“There were times during the last decades that people would say, ‘I recognize your voice,'” he said of the turn of his career. “It’s always something I thought about doing, I didn’t know if it would ever end.”
Kaling cast McEnroe, 62, at a red carpet event after she unceremoniously revealed the role, and the unexpected career turn proved popular among fans of the show.
McEnroe agreed, expecting the role to be a cameo. “I didn’t realize that I would become the uncle of this young Indian-American teenage girl,” he said.
Kalinga’s semi-autobiographical show focuses on Devi, a teenager still grappling with the sudden death of her father, as she heads to high school.
McEnroe did not participate in the set of the series and recorded his Voice-over for a second series in a studio during the pandemic. But he said he feels like “a real part of the series”: “I can definitely relate to the feeling that you don’t really fit in.”
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