7 Ways Serena Williams Made Us Love Her Even More
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After announcing her impending retirement from tennis, Serena Williams is officially playing in what will presumably be her final U.S. Open. This year will be Williams’s 21st time playing in the tournament—she’s won the singles championship six times. “I don't know if I will be ready to win New York,” Williams writes of the possibility of grabbing a seventh title in the Vogue essay where she announced her retirement. “But I’m going to try.”
In celebration of Williams’s iconic career—and to cheer her on as she heads into the U.S. Open—we’re rounding up her most relatable and surprising moments. That includes a few special ones we found in the archives of The Oprah Winfrey Show. Let’s just say she’s a lady of many skills and talents beyond the world of sports: William even knows how to give a professional-grade pedicure.
Beyond that, though, is Williams’s decades-long dedication to being strong, honest, and empowering. She has simultaneously raised the bar for women everywhere and made it easier for us to demand equal treatment. Below, read some of the moments where Serena Williams made us feel seen.
For Williams, the struggle between balancing career and family is real—and relatable.
In her Vogue essay, Williams is straightforward about the difficulty of being a working mom. “I never wanted to have to choose between tennis and a family,” she writes. But she loves being a hands-on mom. Williams is fortunate enough, like many celebrities, to have lots of help in child-rearing, but she still struggles with the balancing act of raising a family and pursuing her career. “In five years, Olympia has only spent one 24-hour period away from me,” she writes. “I want to teach her how to tie her shoes, how to read, where babies come from, and about God. Just like my mom taught me.”
Even with the help she receives, Williams is keen on not missing those moments. She’s also honest about the realities of growing another human. “I definitely don’t want to be pregnant again as an athlete,” she writes. Williams revealed that she was actually two months pregnant with Olympia when she won her last Grand Slam title in 2017. And playing through that time was hard: “I went from a C-section to a second pulmonary embolism to a Grand Slam final. I played while breastfeeding. I played through postpartum depression.”
Williams has talked openly about the sexism and double standards she faces as a female tennis player.
Williams drew major attention at the 2018 U.S. Open when she received three violations and ultimately lost the match to her opponent, Naomi Osaka (who thus won her first Grand Slam title). After processing her experience, Williams wrote about it in a 2019 essay for Harper’s Bazaar. “So often, in situations similar to mine, when men fight back against the referees, they’re met with a smile or even a laugh from the umpire,” she says, referring to the fact that, in the 2018 match, she smashed her racket and argued with the ref after he falsely accused her of cheating. “I’m not asking to avoid being penalized,” she writes. “I am asking to be treated the same way as everyone else.”
The double standard is something Williams has talked about since. “When guys are saying, ‘Come on’ and pumping their fists, it’s ‘pretty exciting’—but for me, it’s ‘aggressive,’’ Williams tells Meghan Markle in the first episode of Archetypes, Markle’s new podcast.
In her retirement announcement, Williams also notes the double standard as it applies to having children. “If I were a guy, I wouldn’t be writing this because I’d be out there playing and winning while my wife was doing the physical labor of expanding our family,” she writes.
After losing to Osaka, she continued to support her fellow female athlete.
During that 2018 U.S. Open match, the crowd shouted and booed because Williams was being treated unfairly. Unfortunately for Osaka, that meant hearing boos when she was receiving her first Grand Slam title. Even through Williams’s frustration with the experience, she was gracious to Osaka and offered apologies after the fact. “In the end, my opponent simply played better than me,” Williams writes in her essay. “I am, was, and will always be happy for you and supportive of you,” she writes in an apology to Osaka. “I would never, ever want the light to shine away from another female, specifically another Black female athlete.”
Williams has since shown more support for Osaka. When Osaka withdrew from the 2019 French Open for mental health reasons, Williams told reporters: “I wish I could give her a hug because I know what it’s like. I’ve been in those positions.”
After her harrowing near-death birth experience, Williams has been an inspiration for speaking up for yourself.
In a 2022 essay from the collection Arrival Stories, Williams detailed how she nearly died while giving birth. Having learned in 2010 that she has a high risk for blood clots, Williams was understandably nervous about them returning. She had already given birth through C-section when she asked the nurse about starting her heparin drip (a drug that reduces the risk of blood clots). Unfortunately, the nurse didn’t take notice. Meanwhile, Williams was paralyzed: “I was in excruciating pain. I couldn’t move at all—not my legs, not my back, nothing,” she writes in her essay. “No one was really listening to what I was saying.”
Williams then began to violently cough, which burst her C-section stitches. What ensued was a series of surgeries: Turns out, Williams had an embolism in an artery and a hematoma in her abdomen. Eventually, Williams told the nurse that she needed a CAT scan of her lungs, knowing that she could have a dangerous blood clot. Once again, the nurse did not listen. “She said, ‘I think all this medicine is making you talk crazy.’ I said,
‘No, I’m telling you what I need: I need the scan immediately,’” Williams writes. The nurse continued to say Williams just needed rest. “But I persisted,” Williams writes, and eventually, she got the CAT scan. “Lo and behold, I had a blood clot in my lungs, and they needed to insert a filter into my veins to break up the clot before it reached my heart,” she writes.
Luckily, Williams finally got the surgery she needed and recovered from the near-death experience. Now she uses the ordeal to promote advocating for oneself. “Being heard and appropriately treated was the difference between life or death for me,” she writes. “In the U.S., Black women are nearly three times more likely to die during or after childbirth than their white counterparts.... I know those statistics would be different if the medical establishment listened to every Black woman’s experience.”
Williams experiences mom guilt just like every other parent does.
Williams also revealed to Markle that she once stayed up the entire night before a match because Olympia had broken her wrist. “She fell out of her high chair...and she was on my watch. And I was just, basically, devastated,” Williams says. “I literally couldn’t think. I felt so guilty.” Taking Olympia to the hospital and caring for her through the night meant Williams slept about 30 minutes before heading into her match. “I remember holding her the whole night and just rocking her to sleep,” she tells Markle. “I just didn't let her out of my sight at that point because I’m already hard on myself, and I’m a little bit of a perfectionist. But I was so mad at myself for even allowing that to happen.”
But, Williams being the GOAT and all, she ended up winning (read: the 2018 French Open—in her iconic black catsuit). Yet the ordeal forced her to think about the burden moms carry. “I was so emotionally spent.... Moms do a lot,” Williams tells Markle.
She has fun with fashion—and it makes her feel confident and empowered.
Williams has spoken several times about her desire to look nice, especially on the tennis court. She even told Oprah about it way back in ’02, when Serena and Venus paid a visit to The Oprah Winfrey Show. In the two decades since, Williams has continued to rock her sporty style—and has cultivated quite the red carpet game, too. It’s not something superficial, though: “If you don’t look good, you won’t play well,” Williams tells Oprah on TOWS.
Williams has many obvious talents (and some surprising secret hobbies).
In 2010, Williams paid another visit to TOWS and surprised Oprah by—wait for it—giving her a pedicure. And a professional-grade one, at that. Oprah’s shock was real: “I can’t believe Serena Williams is actually filing my big toe,” she says in the video. During the spa session, Williams revealed to Lady O that she actually used to want to do nails as a career. In fact, Williams consistently told her sister Venus that she’d go to school to train as a nail technician. Better yet—Williams actually did attend class, and her fellow students kept telling her that she looked like Serena Williams.
After giving Oprah the pedicure, Lady O asked the question that was on everybody's mind: How much longer would Williams play tennis? Williams, naturally, had a funny response at first—but then went on to say that she’d like to play the sport as long as she can.
Even though Williams’s decision to retire is a sad one, her impact on tennis, women in sports, and women’s empowerment is monumental. “I’d like to think that thanks to opportunities afforded to me, women athletes feel that they can be themselves on the court,” Williams writes in her retirement essay. “They can play with aggression and pump their fists. They can be strong yet beautiful. They can wear what they want and say what they want and kick butt and be proud of it all.”
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