Unmatched
With
Serena Williams
With 23 Grand Slam singles titles and four Olympic gold medals, SERENA WILLIAMS is undoubtedly one of the greatest athletes of all time. Here, she talks to ALICE CASELY-HAYFORD about the joys of motherhood, launching a new podcast with her sister, Venus, and being the least serious person she knows
When I first meet Serena Williams, she is apologizing profusely, visibly mortified for her lateness to our interview and cover shoot. The 23-time Grand Slam winner and tennis supernova is clutching her stomach and a ginger tea. Considering she is one of the most powerful, accomplished women on earth, well, she looks a little worse for wear. Williams has been sick all night with a bug but has rallied and arrived on set despite feeling awful.
“I’m just never late. I’m so embarrassed. I’m always [punctual] because I’m a tennis player. If we’re late, we’re disqualified.” She can barely make eye contact as I hand her some more tea before she’s hurried into glam. “Thank you for understanding.”
Williams emerges a little while later with full hair and makeup. Transformed and in the zone, the self-possession, determination and laser focus that has enabled her to have the most legendary career is instantly manifest. And my goodness, does she look good. She politely asks if we can play some Tina Turner. She steps on set, as focused as if she was starting a match, and the magic begins.
When we sit down later, after the shoot has wrapped, I ask how she turned it on while feeling so unwell. “I just kept thinking, you’ve been sick at Grand Slams, and you had to play. Just channel that scene.”
Despite her condition, she is calm and poised. Now back in her own clothes – a gray cashmere cardigan and sweatpants – she is arrestingly beautiful and statuesque. But what strikes me most is her warmth and humor. She is charming and funny in a way that most wouldn’t expect, given her commanding demeanor on court. A few months ago, Williams launched a podcast with her older sister, Venus, and this less visible side was immediately present in the intimate, engaging and often hilarious conversations the sisters share on the Stockton Street podcast, named after the place where they grew up in Compton, California.
“We felt like it was really important for us to get some things out there and just start talking… We’ve been wanting to do this for years, but we never had the time,” Williams explains.
“I am the most non-serious person I know,” she continues. “I’m the person that’s always making the jokes. Dealing with the stuff that I’ve had to deal with, if I’m uncomfortable, I’ll say something funny.”
It is understandable given the profound level of scrutiny Williams has faced in her career that she developed mechanisms to survive. “In tennis you can’t really be yourself, which sounds weird, but you have to keep a veil up. You can’t be too vulnerable. In a way I need[ed] to be seen as this person that’s always going to take my opponent out.”
“I always ENCOURAGE people to stay curious because it HELPS you CONTINUE to grow”
Having retired from tennis in 2022, the 44-year-old titan is now exploring podcasting alongside a multitude of other offshoots. It has been a joy for the world-famous sisters and sometimes former competitors to step into a new chapter together. “It’s cool for [everyone] to see how we truly are when we’re not chasing down tennis balls and winning championships,” Williams tells me.
“Whether you feel it or not, there is competition. It’s innate, it’s subconscious… So, I think it’s good to open up. On the podcast, I’ve learned so many things about [Venus]. She said [in an episode] that she was a robot. I was like, I never knew that. And she gets to learn my personality. I’m a feeler. I feel everything. So, it’s really kind of the evolution of our relationship, learning things that we subconsciously hid.”
As we’ve already touched on tennis, I broach the subject of missing the sport. “Not as much as this time last year,” she says honestly. She pauses before adding: “No matter how prepared you are to retire, and particularly from doing something every day at such a high level, it’s hard. I really prepped myself the best way I could, but it’s something that’s still a little difficult.”
Williams is keeping herself busy. She has Serena Ventures, a venture capital (VC) firm focused on early-stage businesses, with the motto ‘play to win’. “Fifteen years ago, I started asking questions,” she explains on the conception of the company. “I always encourage people to stay curious because it helps you continue to grow. So my question was, why didn’t I invest in some of these companies popping up? I learned that less than 2% of all VC money went to women. That’s just shocking. Trillions of dollars, right? And none of it is going to women. Insane.”
“I want to be around my FAMILY. I’m cooking every night that I’m HOME. I’m home 29 NIGHTS a month”
So, Serena Ventures was born. “I do think my platform can help other people,” she says emphatically. “We don’t only invest in women, but people of color, and women of color are just fractions of fractions, not even 1%, so, we invest in underrepresented founders. We truly are diverse. I like to say we invest in great companies and great founders. That’s how we like to do it.”
Over the past 15 years, Williams has invested her own money into over 120 companies, 14 of them valued at $1 billion or more. Serena Ventures has raised over $100 million of outside capital to invest in more than 30 companies in the past five years. Another strand of her career is the projects she is executively producing. She worked on the 2021 film King Richard, a biopic about her coach and father, as well as last year’s eight-part docuseries In the Arena. Now, she is working on the TV adaptation of Taylor Jenkin Reid’s novel, Carrie Soto Is Back, about a tennis player who comes out of retirement.
The billion-dollar question then is how Williams manages to invest her time, energy and money into these companies and projects while still managing to be the dedicated mother that she clearly is. One quick scroll of her Instagram shows how much she dotes on her two daughters, Olympia, aged eight, and Adira, aged two, who she shares with her husband, Alexis Ohanian.
“With Olympia, I didn’t leave her until she was five! That may have been a little extreme. And it’s not recommended!” she laughs. “But I’ve just always wanted to be a mom.”
She recognizes that starting out as young as she did has allowed her to enter a new era of her life now. “I feel fortunate that I’ve had a career and that I don’t have to do what most people do. I’m very lucky. I put in the hard work, like we all are doing, but I did it a little bit earlier. So, I think that’s really working in my favor. And [now I can] just put my kids first.”
Unsurprisingly, coming from a close-knit household, as the youngest of five sisters, she is incredibly family orientated. “I want to be around my family. I’m cooking every night that I’m home. I’m home 29 nights a month… Sometimes I’ll fly to New York, do what I need to do, fly back and be home in time for dinner.”
A few days prior to our interview, Williams was honored at the Baby2Baby Gala, attended by her closest friends including Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, Ciara and Alicia Keys – a rare night away from her kids’ bedtime.
“I’m not going to let anyone BRING me down,” she says stoically. “I put enough STRESS on myself. The last thing I’m going to ALLOW is someone else to do that”
“I do not like attention on me,” she shares. “I guess in tennis, I just did the best I could do, but I’m not the kind of person that needs to be in the center, in the front… It felt really good to be honored, but I was like, I’m never doing this again. Everyone’s like, congrats and good job. And I’m like, can we just not talk about me right now?”
Throughout all her successes over a prolific 27 year-career, Williams has faced celebration and condemnation in equal measure. One topic that was constantly critiqued was her physique. “It was hard because when I was playing in the beginning – the first 15 years – my body was different. I had big boobs; I had a big butt. Every athlete was like super flat, super thin and beautiful, but in a different way. And I didn’t understand as an athlete how to deal with that.”
“It does affect you mentally. Absolutely,” she continues. “You think you’re large for your whole life and you look [back] and you’re like, I was fit. Yeah, I had big muscles. I didn’t look like these other girls but not everyone looks the same.”
“When I was 17, when I won the Open for the first time, I took a decision there. I was so young, but I said I’m never going to read anything about me. At the Open, there was so much positivity, and I thought, I don’t want my head to get too big. I wanted to stay humble. I also thought if it’s negative, I don’t want to read it. I never really read an article after that.”
That teenage resolve and resilience set her up throughout life. “Growing up and being Black in tennis, it’s just like, well, that comes with negativity….,” she asserts. “You have something mean to say, get in line. You got to go way back. It’s going to take you a few days to get there. Join the crowd,” she says half-jokingly. “I don’t hear the noise. Everyone is entitled to their opinion. How am I going to sit here and change someone’s thought? If [you] don’t like me, you don’t have to.”
She is grateful that things are better for the young Black female players at the top of their game today, from Coco Gauff to Naomi Osaka. “It’s changed. No one’s calling these girls the [things] I was called. People would say we were like men and all this other stuff.”
“I’m not going to let anyone bring me down,” she says stoically. “I put enough stress on myself. The last thing I’m going to allow is someone else to do that. But I’m so happy that girls nowadays don’t have to go through it as much. I mean, I think internet trolls are different. So, you have that to deal with…”
As Williams prepares to get back to her daughters at the family home a few minutes away, the conversation turns to style. Another hot topic throughout her tennis career has been her bold outfit choices, but her love of fashion goes back further. “I got into fashion because of Venus. Hold on a second,” she says, interrupting herself. “I need to write that down because I want to talk about this in our podcast.”
I want to LEAVE behind anxiety, DOUBT and second-guessing myself… I’m discovering ME again”
“I’d finished high school. [In between tennis seasons], I would just watch TV all day. One day Venus was like, I’m not gonna let you sit here and watch TV every day for the rest of your life. So, I signed up for fashion school, I went, and I fell in love with it.
“It was perfect because I’d already designed a lot of things at Puma at the time. And then I would begin designing things with Nike. It was really good to understand how fabric worked. I used to sew when I was little. My mom used to make our outfits, so I knew how to sew.
“Just the other day, I broke a Gucci outfit, and I was like, I’m sewing this back up. I sewed it while I was watching the girls play Barbie.”
With 2026 dawning, my final question is what Williams will take into the new year. “I want to leave behind anxiety, doubt and second-guessing myself,” she says. For someone who has successfully navigated and blocked external noise, it is reassuring to hear that even the GOAT has the same anxieties and self-doubt as the rest of us. And her mantra to live by gets my vote: “I want to bring in more clarity, confidence that I made the right decisions and that you don’t always have to live only for your children. I’m discovering me again.”