Serena Williams is one of the cover subjects for Time Magazine’s Most Influential People issue. Serena is massively influential and she has been for 25-plus years. After her retirement from tennis in 2022, Serena has welcomed her second daughter (Adira) and gone fully into the business world. She started Serena Ventures when she was still playing, but her venture capital firm has grown by leaps and bounds in the past five years. She’s a huge investor in sports teams, women-owned businesses and businesses which help marginalized communities. That’s a huge part of Serena’s Time interview, but of course she’s also gossiping too. She name-checks the Duchess of Sussex, she talks about C-walking at the Super Bowl during Kendrick Lamar’s Halftime Show, and significantly for tennis fans, she goes on the record about Jannik Sinner’s doping suspension. Some highlights from Time:
Whether she misses tennis: “I miss it a lot, with all my heart. I miss it because I’m healthy.” In other words, her body feels good enough that she’s confident, even at 43, she could still pile up some wins on tour. “If I couldn’t walk, or if I was so out of it, I wouldn’t miss it as much,” Williams says. I wonder if she’s healthy because she stopped playing. “I think I’m healthy because I didn’t overplay.”
Retirement was worth it: “I just can’t peel myself away from these children. Another reason I had to transition was because I wanted to have more kids. And I look at Adira and I’m like, ‘Was it worth it?’ I literally thought about it the other day. I was like, ‘Yeah, it was definitely worth it.’”
Motherhood: “I’m a wonderful mom. I think we, as women, don’t give ourselves credit, but I’m a great mom. I really am. I do everything. I’m freaking the room mom at Olympia’s school this year.”
She loves Caitlin Clark: “I felt like she’s always herself, she stayed out of it, just muted the noise. She has this maturity that I didn’t have.”
Kendrick Lamar contacted her just weeks before the Super Bowl: “We’ve been trying to do something together for ages,” she says. Lamar had watched Williams do the crip walk…on the supposedly sacrosanct Wimbledon surface after winning the gold medal at the 2012 London Olympics….Lamar, however, appreciated that Williams represented hip-hop culture on the world stage and wanted her to do it again. “I’m like, ‘Wait, what, you’re asking me?’ I’m not Taylor Swift, let’s be honest. I would have a better chance to be quarterback at the Super Bowl than dance.”
Why she chose to c-walk at the Super Bowl: Williams strategized with her team: would the negativity her appearance could spark be worth the thrill of performing at halftime? The opportunity to amplify her hometown to the globe—again—was too good to pass up. “Who would have thought that a tennis player from Compton would be regarded as one of the best tennis players of all time? It was just putting an exclamation on it.”
Does she regret the dance now? Post-Super Bowl, the fallout commenced. The FCC received some 125 complaints about Lamar’s performance, with one even singling out Williams for promoting “gang affiliation.” Many took her crip walk as a direct shot at Drake. “I don’t know if I regret it or not,” she says now of her decision to dance. “I don’t know the answer to that.” So was Williams throwing shade at Drake? “Absolutely not,” she says. “I would never do that. And that was sad, that anyone would ever think that. I respect how they could. Obviously I can see how someone would think that. But absolutely not. I have never had negative feelings towards him. We’ve known him for so many years.”
On Jannik Sinner’s two failed dope tests & three-month doping suspension: “Fantastic personality. I love the guy, I love this game. He’s great for the sport.” She admits, however, that she was surprised by the three-month suspension he was given for testing positive for a performance-enhancing substance a year ago…Williams wants to be crystal-clear: she wishes Sinner no ill will. “I’ve been put down so much, I don’t want to bring anyone down. Men’s tennis needs him.” But, she says, “if I did that, I would have gotten 20 years. Let’s be honest. I would have gotten Grand Slams taken away from me.” Williams says she was always extra careful about what went into her body, taking nothing stronger than Advil for fear of ingesting something that could get her in trouble. A performance-enhancing-drugs scandal would have landed her “in jail,” she says, with a laugh. “You would have heard about it in another multiverse.”
Sinner’s case made her think of Pova: She also wonders what her contemporary and occasional rival, Maria Sharapova, is thinking. Sharapova got a two-year doping ban back in 2016 (on appeal it was reduced to 15 months), despite the fact a tennis governing body determined that her offense was, like Sinner’s, unintentional. “Just weirdly and oddly, I can’t help but think about Maria all this time,” says Williams. “I can’t help but feel for her.”
Serena calls Meghan to talk about their gardens: “We get so much honey it’s insane,” she says. Williams dehydrates the farm’s Moringa leaves, which are packed with antioxidants, to make tea. She is in frequent touch with her friend Meghan Markle, who has a colossal garden at her California home. “I’m always like, ‘Girl, what are you doing today?’” says Williams. “So we’re trading recipes.”
I’m honestly surprised by how well Serena threaded the needle of the Sinner case. Sinner’s positive doping tests, the bizarre cover-up by the ATP and the weirdly-handled “settlement” with WADA have all left a bad taste in the mouths of many tennis fans and many tennis players. The way Sinner’s case was handled was not normal, and it’s hard to argue that Sinner and Iga Swiatek (another top player who tested positive for a banned substance last year) didn’t get special treatment for being white Europeans. Serena’s absolutely right that if she had ever failed two doping tests, the consequences would have been A LOT different. The reference to Sharapova was shady as f–k though. LMAO. As for what she says about Drake… “I have never had negative feelings towards him. We’ve known him for so many years.” LOL. She honestly loves it when men are fighting over her or about her.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, cover courtesy of Time.
