Diksha Sundriyal
Apple TV+’s ‘Boom! Boom! The World vs. Boris Becker’ is a two-part docuseries that charts the upheavals in the life of the titular German tennis player. Winning Wimbledon at seventeen, Boris quickly climbed the ladder and established himself as one of the most promising tennis players of his time. He won several Grand Slams and seated himself as the No. 1 tennis player in the world. While he had great success on the court, his life outside was full of ups and downs.
One of the things that the docuseries focuses on is Becker’s brief affair with Angela Ermakova, which eventually led to the dissolution of his eight-year-old marriage with Barbara Becker. He went through a turbulent time following the separation, and the affair was talked about in every newspaper and magazine, but Angela has mostly remained in the shadows since then.
Who is Angela Ermakova?
Born to Russian and Nigerian parents, Angela Ermakova is a model who came into the limelight when her affair with Boris Becker was revealed. Born and raised in Soviet Russia, she worked as a translator after she finished school. In her early 20s, Ermakova moved out of the country and went to England, hoping for a career in modeling.
In June 1999, Ermakova had been working as a waitress in the exclusive Nobu restaurant in Park Lane, London, when she met the three-time Wimbledon champion. After suffering a defeat at Wimbledon and retiring from tennis, Becker was out for drinks with his friends and colleagues when he came across her. In the Apple TV+ documentary, he claimed that this was the only time he met Ermakova and didn’t have her contact number, so he didn’t contact her for the next eight months. She contacted him and revealed that she was pregnant with his child.
According to Ermakova, their encounter wasn’t so brief. In an interview in 2003, she’d talked about meeting Becker long before the night of their fling. “I met Boris back in February, a few months before that night. He called me many times afterward. That, too, the day when he lost his last Wimbledon game. He wanted to meet me. On June 30, 1999,” Ermakova said. She further claimed that she hadn’t changed her number, so Becker’s excuse of being unable to contact her doesn’t stand.
Ermakova also said that she didn’t know the tennis star’s then-wife, Barbara Becker, was pregnant at the time. Months later, when she told him about her pregnancy, he initially refused to believe the baby was his. When their child was sixteen months old, Ermakova sought financial support and launched a paternity lawsuit against Becker. When the paternity test confirmed that he was the baby’s father, the court asked him to give $2.8 million to Ermakova.
Angela Ermakova Lives a Quiet Life Today
Angela Ermakova lives in London, England, with her daughter, Anna, whom she raised in privacy, considering the media circus that had followed her and Becker after their affair was made public. 23-year-old Anna is a model and very close to her mother, who often handcrafts pieces for her to wear.
Living a quiet life now, Ermakova revealed that she’d hated Becker in the time surrounding her daughter’s birth, but over time, things calmed down between them, and “now [they’re] civilized.” She said, “I don’t trust him entirely, and I don’t think he trusts me entirely. I call him if I have a question about Anna, otherwise not. I have suffered a great, great deal through Boris.” Ermakova wrote about her experience from meeting Becker to her pregnancy, the birth of her daughter, and its aftermath, along with other details of her life in a book titled ‘In One Breath.’
The former model revealed that while Becker might have denied the connection to his daughter initially, he is now “proud of his daughter and loves her, and he is particularly pleased that she resembles him so much.” Speaking out about his comments in the Apple TV+ documentary, she said he suffers from “verbal diarrhea.” Still, when Ermakova learned about Becker’s sentencing, she hoped things would improve for him. She said: “[I hope]That he manages to convert his sentence into a shorter one. I wish him the strength to face the biggest challenge of his life. To stand like a rock, waiting for the storm to pass and the sun to break through the clouds. To rise again as a stronger man.”
