How can you thrive while balancing multiple identities, especially as a young Black woman in the public eye? Can you gain acceptance as a basketball star and a model?
Sky star Angel Reese is exploring these questions during her second WNBA offseason, and the second season of her podcast, “Unapologetically Angel.”
It’s natural for someone whose basketball and fashion careers are both taking off. Reese is making her USA Basketball Women’s National Team training camp debut this weekend — one of 10 newcomers — and is already on pace to become the best rebounder in WNBA history.
But as doors open in basketball, they’re opening just as quickly in fashion and business. This fall she became the first athlete to model in the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show. She was also named to SportsPro’s 2025 most marketable athletes — the fifth basketball player on the list behind Steph Curry, Caitlin Clark, LeBron James and Giannis Antetokounmpo.
Many celebrate her success. Others react with a familiar hostility.
“When I got announced for Victoria’s Secret, they was mad,” Reese told one podcast guest. “Like, what are y’all mad for?”
Reese has an inkling, having dealt with the racist undertones of critics since taunting Caitlin Clark in the NCAA title game. Now that she’s succeeding in multiple lanes, for some, her visibility as a young Black woman grows more threatening.
Her podcast reflects the challenge of navigating those dynamics. She hosts Black artists, athletes and public figures who’ve juggled multiple pursuits and have reflected on what happens when the world tries to define you first.
“Sometimes people try to box you in with whatever you were introduced as,” artist Victoria Monét said. “Like if you introduce yourself as a basketball player and they’re like, ‘No, you can’t do anything else.’”
Monét, whose professional talents span singing, songwriting and dance, thinks critics are often project their insecurities about their own limits. Her advice for Reese?
“Just do whatever makes you happy, and layer it if you want to and can handle that work ethic. I know that, looking at you, you can.”
The advice resonated with Reese.
“I’ve gotten a knock for like: She should be just a model. She should only be a basketball player. She should stop podcasting. She should be this.”
But Reese is holding firm. “I can do anything I put my mind to.”
Reese is unapologetic but not made of stone
The musician Wale told Reese he wishes he could be more like her: defiant and unbothered by criticism.
“I was telling my man, like, ‘Yo, I just like how she don’t care,’” Wale, a fellow DMV native, told Reese on her podcast. “I wish I could do that. I be caring, man. I be caring.”
Reese is genuinely unapologetic, but nobody is made of stone. She’s starting to show that she knows that too.
On her podcast, she often gives guests, usually Black female celebrities, space to talk about the impact of racist or otherwise hateful messages.
This past WNBA season she donated the proceeds of her “Mebounds” merchandise — a response to online trolling of her missed layups — to victims of cyberbullying. She cited former LSU football star Kyren Lacy’s death by suicide as a reminder of how serious online abuse can be.
“We take social media lightly,” Reese told the Sun-Times back in July. “And people always say: Block the noise, block this, block that. But it’s not that easy.”
Reese has typically been more comfortable advocating for others rather than centering her own wounds.
But lately, she’s sharing more glimpses of how criticism reaches her too. She opened up to sports journalist Taylor Rooks about how her experiences have affected her relationship to the media.
“Even before the game, I’m terrified of what the media is about to ask,” Reese said. “It could be the nicest question, but it’s gonna get flipped or put into a different light. Like, you could literally post ‘The sky was blue’ and it will say — ‘Angel said that it’s too dark.’”
As a veteran in the sports media world and observer of Reese’s career, Rooks replied:
“There’s probably been times — not to put words in your mouth — but where it sort of changed how you were viewing yourself. There’s a level of trauma that comes from all of these people having things to say about you that are incorrect but that is shaping a narrative about you.”
Rooks’ advice?
“You have to try doubly hard to make sure you don’t believe the projections that are put on you.”
That’s one tall order for Reese. She’s ascending in basketball and fashion, which means dealing with a mess of double standards, deepfakes and clickbait headlines. Podcasting appears to be a useful bridge for Reese, a place to fortify herself and find mirrors along the way.
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