Ajla Tomljanovic warns Break Point cast: think twice about putting relationships on camera

ACADEMY LIFE: Tomljanovic talks training with Chris Evert.

NEW YORK—Ajla Tomljanovic is back on tour and ready for her close-up.

“It’s New York,” exclaims the Aussie, who has spent seven months rehabbing an injured knee. The 2023 US Open will be her first tournament of the season.

Then, as if testing a Real Housewives... tagline, she adds, “Special things can happen here.”

Towering over the style-striving guests at Wilson Columbus Circle for mentor Chris Evert’s latest tennis bracelet drop, Tomljanovic is effortlessly chic in an all-black ensemble and matching heels as she films a conversation with friend and co-star Maria Sakkari. The scene will likely air on Break Point, which has been gathering content for a second season since even before its first premiered in January.

Rumors abound regarding the current cast, to the point where there’s a sense that everyone on tour—even yours truly—has taken a turn with the omnipresent Netflix crew. But for the myriad ATP and WTA personalities on offer, precious few feel ready-made for reality TV quite like Ajla.

The breakout star of season one, which debuted its final five episodes in time for this summer’s Wimbledon Championships, Tomljanovic stole the show with a six-month glow-up that culminated with a 2022 US Open win over Serena Williams—one that sent the 23-time Grand Slam champion into retirement.

The thing about the tennis world is that you move on so quickly. So, to watch it today, it makes you realize what a great time it was and how well I did. Looking from the outside, I can see the relationship with my dad and my team, which I’ve never gotten a chance to see on TV. It makes me feel like, ‘Ok, we have a good thing going on.’ Ajla Tomljanovic

“I’m definitely watching the season and thinking, ‘Wow, that’s a lot of me,’” she sheepishly told me back in June. “But I think the Serena match is one of the reasons for that. When the Greatest of All Time retires, people are going to want to see that moment.

“I’m glad there was some of Wimbledon because, for me personally, Wimbledon was the breakthrough moment where everything started falling together.”

Before things fell together, they nearly fell apart. Tomljanovic kicked off the series in an ostensibly happy relationship with fellow player Matteo Berrettini and at a crossroads on the tennis court, having bowed out of the Australian Open’s first round in straight sets.

“I did want to take a break after Melbourne,” she admitted. “I just felt like I had a lot on my plate, and adding cameras to it just didn’t seem like a priority at the time. I didn’t know what was going to happen, so I was assuming the worst. I may have told my agent that we should pump the breaks on this.

“Luckily, at the time I wanted to stop, they weren’t filming me much anyway. But around Madrid and Paris they asked to film again, and I was in a completely different space. That’s when I wanted to film. I felt like something good could come out of this.”

By then, Tomljanovic had split with Berrettini, who infamously discouraged her from conducting a Tennis Channel interview in their shared hotel room for fear of disrupting his sleep.

“I’m still in the tournament,” he quipped as cameras rolled.

The disagreement quite literally sent Tomljanovic into the bushes, and fans resurfaced the footage on X (formerly known as Twitter) within days of that episode’s debut.

“The internet never disappoints,” the millennial Tomljanovic laughed.

“I knew there was a video but I was never going to put it to light. I honestly didn’t think anyone would pick up on that scene, so it was hilarious when they found it. To be fair, the lighting outside was much better than the room, anyway, so I don’t want anyone to feel bad.”

To fans who felt cheated by the off-air breakup, Tomljanovic assures that viewers didn’t miss much.

“Even if they had filmed it, I promise it wasn’t that dramatic,” she said, though she would caution other players against putting their relationships up for public consumption.

“I’m not saying, ‘Don’t do it,’” she clarified, winking at a possible season-two Tsitsidosa storyline between Paula Badosa and Stefanos Tsitsipas. “But from my experience, I would maybe think twice.”

Even without Berrettini, Tomljanovic’s episodes still boast the strongest supporting cast. As a seasoned commentator, Evert could contextualize her struggles and vouch for her potential, both in scene and in confessionals. As a former champion and household name, she could effectively signal, even to the most casual viewer, that this is a player worth watching.

“Everyone knows Chris Evert. She’s such a legend, but to me, she’s just Chrissie,” said Tomljanovic, who thinks of her as a “second mom.”

“She was the person who, when I was 14, she was taking me to yoga on weekends. When I was 16 and 17, I was talking to her about boys. Now that I’m an adult, we’ve created this bond that is so nice. The fact that she can help with my tennis is almost a huge bonus for me.”

If Evert lent gravitas to Tomljanovic’s story, her father brought levity—and with that, a stark departure from a typical portrayal of the disciplinarian tennis parent.

“All of the messages I’ve gotten have been about my dad,” said Tomljanovic, who brought a smiling and selfie-snapping Ratko Tomljanovic to Wilson Columbus Circle. “But we knew that would happen when we were filming, with all stuff he was saying. My mom may have tried to tell him to tone it down and not be so much, but it didn’t happen, which is great because you really got to see a full picture.

“He really is that bright light in my career. He knows I’m a serious person and that I can get even more serious when I’m trying to achieve something. I can get down on myself, and I won’t see the glass half full. He has been the guy to be so positive all the time.”

Tomljanovic needed that positivity as she quickly became a victim of the so-called Netflix curse, which saw most of the first season’s cast struggling with injuries and inconsistency just as the show hit streamers at the start of 2023. At a time when she might have been filming a second season or reaping the benefits from the compelling story told in the first, she has been sidelined all season after undergoing knee surgery.

People don’t always relate to winners. I think you can often find yourself relating to when someone loses because there are fewer winners in the world, in general. So, it can be kind of cool to see the heartbreaks alongside the success stories. Ajla Tomljanovic

“Of course, this didn’t feel like great timing,” she told me while still on the fence about a Wimbledon comeback. “But that’s kind of in the background. My main thing is just not being able to do what I love, which is playing tennis. All this hype and everything that would have come with Break Point, things in Australia, those would have been amazing extras.”

Fastforward to New York and she looks fit and ready for a late-season surge, though she anticipates the inevitable mental strain of testing a newly-healed knee.

“It’s kind of like riding a bike, coming back to this environment,” she says, eyeing the Netflix crew as they slip by with their equipment. “Nothing really changes, but it does feel a bit different this year. I’m probably about as prepared as I could be, which is acceptable and ok since I’m coming off of a really tough injury. The knee is good. It’s in a good way. It just needs some time to get to 100%, and that will probably get there through the matches I play.”

Tomljanovic is soon headed back down the stairs to find her father, plotting to tell a comeback story as bingeable as the last.