How ESPN's docuseries 'The Last Dance' got Michael Jordan to open up about his life and career like never before

• Director Jason Hehir spoke to Insider about making the 10-part ESPN docuseries, "The Last Dance."
• The documentary looks at the 1998 title run of the Chicago Bulls, which marked the end of the Michael Jordan-led dynasty.
• "The Last Dance" also gives an honest look at Michael Jordan's career, with the legend giving the most revealing interviews he's ever done.
• Hehir explains how he got Jordan to open up.
• "The Last Dance" premieres on ESPN on Sunday.
• Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.

Though "The Last Dance" is being touted as a deep-dive into the quest by the 1998 Chicago Bulls to win their sixth NBA Championship in eight seasons, in actuality it's something even more fascinating. A career retrospective of Michael Jordan featuring recent interviews by the legend where he opens up like never before.

Regardless if it's the career highlights or the less-flattering things that showed he is actually human, Jordan addresses it all with deep and introspective answers.

"From the moment I first met him, nothing was off-limits," "The Last Dance" director Jason Hehir told Insider of his interactions with Jordan. "I was pleasantly surprised."

But to get to that point where Hehir would be face-to-face with Air Jordan was a process that took years to pull off.

Why it took almost 20 years for the Bulls' 1998 championship run footage to finally see the light of day

In the 1997-1998 NBA seasons, with the Chicago Bulls looking to pull off a second three-peat of titles in the span of eight seasons, many felt the season could be Jordan's last. Coach Phil Jackson was on the last year of his contract and Jordan vowed that if Jackson didn't come back to the Bulls, neither would he. Jackson even dubbed the season, "The Last Dance."

Feeling an end of an era was on the horizon, the NBA decided to chronicle the Bulls' entire season. A documentary crew, hired by NBA Entertainment, was given unprecedented access to the team. The locker rooms, hotels, chartered flights, wherever the Bulls (especially Jordan) went, the cameras would be there. But after the Bulls raised the 1998 NBA Finals trophy the footage was packed up and put in a vault. For 18 years.

Finally, hope for the footage to see the light of day came when Hehir received a phone call from executive producer Michael Tollin in the summer of 2016.

"He told me about this trove of hundreds of hours of footage that the NBA had shot that no one had ever seen and if I would be interested in taking it on," Hehir recalled. "And I said, 'Absolutely.'"

But why did it take close to 20 years for steps to be taken for the footage to finally be made into something the public could see?

Hehir admits he wasn't given all the details, but does believe the recent popularity of the long-form documentary format helped. Another reason for the long delay is a lot of key people had to sign off on it.

The documentary crew following the Bulls was overseen by Adam Silver, then the head of NBA Entertainment and now the commissioner of the NBA. Following the team also had to get the blessing from Jordan and the Bulls. So to finally dive into the footage and make something out of it, a collective agreement had to come between those people, the team, and the league.

It took so long for everyone to get on the same page that Hehir went and made a whole other feature-length documentary while waiting: the acclaimed "Andre the Giant" for HBO.

Finally, in January 2018, almost two years after Hehir agreed to do the project, "The Last Dance" officially began production with ESPN planning to air it as an 8 episode docuseries (it eventually became 10 episodes).

But how it would be made changed drastically from its original idea of just showing off the footage shot in 1998. Hehir had bigger plans.

Hehir said a key conversation led to Jordan opening up like never before

"They came to me and asked if I thought we needed to shoot original interviews or just go wall-to-wall with the verite footage from 1998 for eight episodes," Hehir said. "I said we absolutely have to shoot original interviews from all parties with their perspectives of over 20 years."

That led to an incredible 106 interviews being conducted for the project. Most of the players who were on the 1998 Bulls were interviewed, their coach Phil Jackson, and rivals like Isiah Thomas, Charles Barkley, and Reggie Miller. Then there are unlikely appearances from the likes of Barack Obama and Justin Timberlake.

But the feather in the cap was getting candid interviews with Jordan.

Over 10 episodes the 1998 Bulls is a main focus, but an equally important spotlight is on the incredible career of Jordan: his rise into the NBA, his landmark shoe deal with Nike (he really wanted to sign with Adidas), finally beating the "Bad Boys" Detroit Pistons to give the Bulls its first NBA title, and playing on the Dream Team.

At times "The Last Dance" feels like a more honest version of the iconic doc highlighting the early Jordan years, "Come Fly With Me." That's because, along with spotlighting all the accolades, Hehir did not shy away from talking to Jordan about the things he was sensitive to discuss as a player during his career. Like his tough-guy persona with his teammates, his insatiable gambling habit (which, as the docuseries touches on, some believe is what led to his father's murder in 1993), his baffling attempt to play pro baseball, and the knock on him that despite his global appeal he was not a vocal advocate for issues surrounding the black community.

Hehir had a lingering feeling Jordan wouldn't be open to discuss the more controversial topics. Then the two had a key exchange at the start of the first interview that set the tone for their entire time together:

Hehir said he thought to himself yeah right, but it turned out Jordan was true to his word.

The director said it only took until the second interview for Jordan to talk in great detail about his gambling, and even went back to talk about it in their third meeting to drive home his feelings. That same candor also came out when Jordan discussed the perception that he wasn't vocal enough in supporting the black community during his playing years.

The result is a powerful documentary that's nostalgic for sports fans who lived through the 1990s and a first-ever gloves off dissection of one of the greatest sports athletes of all time.

Almost a year after filming the interviews, now hard at work putting the final edits on the docuseries (which originally was to air during the NBA Finals in June but was moved up to April 19 due to the coronavirus pandemic eliminating all sporting events for the foreseeable future), Hehir still marvels over how open Jordan was.

"His candor, I can't say enough about it," the director said. "It was the difference between this being a run of the mill documentary about basketball and something that I hope people will think is an incisive look inside the mind of a guy who is considered a statue."