“I’m literally in the car line,” Serena Williams tells me, “waiting for my kid.”
The 43-year-old tennis legend is north of West Palm Beach—in Jupiter, Florida—behind the wheel of an SUV. Near barefaced, with hair cascading over one shoulder, Williams seems relaxed but also ready (like so many parents around the world) for the queue to move. I tell her she looks great, and Williams responds with a low wave that signals, Girl, please. But thank you. “I have my red-carpet looks, obviously,” she says. “And I have my magazine looks. But my look needs to be toned-down and natural when I’m running around, doing all my errands and living my regular life.”
The fact that Williams has a “regular life” can be hard to believe. Especially since it can seem like yesterday that she was a kid herself—on her way to the courts at East Rancho Dominguez Park in Compton, the majority-minority Southern California city made larger in the cultural imagination by foundational rap group N.W.A, Kendrick Lamar, actor Niecy Nash and WNBA all-star Lisa Leslie. “It’s this tiny city in the middle of Los Angeles,” says Williams. “But there’s something about Compton.” Serena, the ultimate cosmopolitan and the queen of the global tennis circuit, has always represented her beloved hometown, and the United States, with grace and ferocity. She’s been retired from professional tennis, though, since September 2022. And while she is deeply engaged in her roles as entrepreneur, investor, mother and wife, life is complex. Even from the school pick-up line.
Her Perfect Match
“Wait a minute,” says Williams with an easy smile. She’s recalling a thought she had at the recent U.S. Open, while enjoying matches from the stands: “Should I still be out there?”
She was “out there”—serving top-to-toe Gucci, dancing in her seat and being feted, appropriately, as the belle of the ball. But the day was not without bittersweet moments. “Seeing these players play, you’re like, Gosh, I could play too. And, That was once me. Then I’ll look at Beyoncé, or I’ll look at Usher, and I’m like, We’re all the same age—they’re actually a little bit older than me. And they still have their careers.” It’s true that retirement is usually associated with one’s sixties or seventies—but when professional athletes step away, they’re often in their twenties or thirties. It’s destabilizing. There’s grief for a former lifestyle and identity. As Williams says, “It’s mind-blowing.”
But these kinds of feelings, for the star, are fleeting wisps of nostalgia—“about walking out there,” she says, “and hearing everyone so excited to see me and my opponent play.” But nostalgia, as the saying goes, files rough edges off the good old days. “I miss tennis,” Williams says, feigning exhaustion. “No, no, I really, really, really miss it.” But what she likely doesn’t miss is getting hooked up to cables that launch her like a fighter jet, so she can refine her acceleration and deceleration. She may not miss all the bike sprints, or the shot-putting of medicine balls. These days she can play tennis for fun, maybe bless an up-and-comer with a practice set.
“No, no, I really, really, really miss it.”
Serena Wiliams
Serena also finds a lot of contentment and joy in her life with her husband, cofounder and investor Alexis Ohanian, Sr. (Reddit, Angel City FC). They’ve been married since 2017, and if social media posts have meaning at all, the couple is always having a good time with daughters Olympia, 7, and Adira, 1. Williams even published a children’s book in 2022, The Adventures of Qai Qai, that encourages little girls to believe in themselves.
“As a mom,” she says, “I like to be hands-on.” But Williams is like that about almost everything. Mid-renovation on her waterfront Jupiter home, where she schedules work meetings around baby Adira’s sleep schedule, she is currently knee-deep in carpet samples. She takes breaks to sing karaoke with Olympia, and they engage in fierce lightsaber battles. The mother-daughter bond feels tight, yet easy—ebullient, even. The duo often strike fun poses in matching outfits on red carpets; and, with twin-flame energy, they were seen gazing in rapt attention as Simone Biles led the USA Gymnastics Women’s Senior National Team to victory in Paris.
But with regard to tennis, Williams refuses to push Olympia toward being exactly like herself or her Aunt Venus. “Olympia’s really good at it,” she says. “She’s natural, and I wasn’t natural. I look at Olympia, and Venus looks at her, and it’s like, this girl has more athlete in her than the both of us combined.”
Williams has taken advice, particularly from retired tennis pro and ESPN analyst Mary Joe Fernández, just to keep her daughter in the sport for fun, with competition being very secondary to play. Yet there’s another important piece. “I think about my confidence,” Williams says, “and where it comes from. And I’m like, Yeah, it came from being an athlete, being active. You had to really believe in yourself. Because no one else believed in me. No one else was rooting for me—not in the beginning. It was super important for me to have that confidence in myself, or I would’ve never been able to win.”
Boss Lady Things
That confidence still infuses her life off the court and informs culture-shaking moments—like when she and her sister joined another tennis history–maker, Billie Jean King, in the quest for equal pay for male and female tennis players. “Venus and I were able to get equal pay at the Grand Slams, which was huge,” says Williams. “Sitting in those rooms with the people at Wimbledon, and sitting in those board meetings, it was super important.”
That kind of faith in herself contributed to the establishment, in 2014, of Serena Ventures, a fund designed to champion women and underrepresented founders. Williams has invested in over 85 companies, including 14 “unicorns” (companies valued at $1 billion or more). And her familiarity with victory is perhaps one of the reasons why the name of her new beauty line is WYN BEAUTY.
The brand launched last April—and with it, Williams joined sports personalities like LeBron James, Dwayne Johnson and Michael Strahan, who also recently launched grooming lines. Rugby (and TikTok) star Ilona Maher, along with swimmer Ann Ragan Kearns, launched Medalist skin care; and Naomi Osaka launched Kinlò. Williams had previously founded the body care brand Will Perform, which includes products such as an Epsom salt bath soak and a recovery lotion. WYN BEAUTY is a skin-focused makeup brand; it features an impressive range of products, from mascaras to lipsticks, plus a skin-enhancing tint in 36 shades. And the packaging? It’s the hot yellow-green of tennis balls.
Like the other athletes’ lines, WYN is built for active lifestyles. The products work for athletes who are always moving and perspiring, but WYN is also meant for parents running after toddlers or prepping for half-marathons. “I love to invest in things that affect the everyday lives of people,” says Williams. “That’s me. When I pick Olympia up, or I’m at her school or volunteering—which I do all the way—I want to be able to do that and still look good.”
The Blazing of Trails
Serena Jameka Williams has been aglow with authenticity since she started sending those soul-shattering serves. Brimming with charisma, she walked like a girl who loved home but knew she was going places. She and Venus conveyed a simple fact: Black people belong in tennis. “We had to pave the way, a lot,” Williams says. “We were proud to do it, and I’d do it again in a heartbeat.” Even over Zoom, I can see Serena’s relaxed jaw, her shoulders slack and at ease. “Without being vain,” she says, “I think that things would be a little bit different without all the doors that we opened. I’m proud to be a pioneer. I want to lean into that.”
“We were proud to do it, and I’d do it again in a heartbeat.”
Serena Williams
Williams can obviously lean into whatever she wants to, when she wants to. The pioneer space—including Ora Washington, Richard Hudlin, Nathaniel Jackson, Althea Gibson and Arthur Ashe, as well as leadership in early HBCU tennis programs and Black tennis clubs—is forever revered. Among other tennis greats, Katrina Adams was the first Black person and first former player to lead the United States Tennis Association (2015-18); there were Leslie Allen, Zina Garrison, Malivai Washington and more. Today, aside from Coco Gauff and Naomi Osaka, there’s Taylor Townsend, Madison Keys, Sloane Stephens, Frances Tiafoe and others.
Mirroring the surge of Black quarterbacks at the college level and in the National Football League, tennis is way more colorful than it used to be. “There are a lot of people in the pipeline, too,” says Williams. “It gives me chills to think about it. We’re in a good place—but obviously more needs to be done.” It’s an exciting time for sure, and Williams swings from the shoulders of giants. But she remains a singular powerhouse presence in tennis, and in sports overall.
Williams’s granite résumé is etched with 21 U.S. Open appearances—she has won the singles title six times and maintained a 108-15 record. With the Belarusian Max Mirnyi, she also won the mixed-doubles title in 1998, back when she was 16 and caused folks’ blood to boil by wearing bead-covered braids. Now considered iconic, and recently worn by Zendaya while she promoted her tennis-based feature film Challengers, the African hairstyle—a common one among young Black girls—was hated on. Wearing it was heavy cultural work, done by the Williams sisters. Serena’s super-girly leap of joy when she won the U.S. Open in 2014 was oxygen for Black women around the world: gleeful triumph. Play. Excellence. Pride. Goodness. Serena has worked hard, for herself, for her family—and for us.
She did all this work on the way to 23 Grand Slam singles titles—more than any other woman or man during the Open era. She holds the records for the most women’s singles matches won at majors (367) and the most singles majors won after turning 30. Serena and Venus have won 14 Grand Slam doubles titles; and they are the only tennis players to have won four Olympic gold medals: three in women’s doubles together, and one each in singles.
There is also Serena Williams’s magnificent versatility. She will give it to you on (bouncy) hard courts, (slow) clay courts, (fast, unpredictable) grass courts—whatever skills the day calls for. And all of this (and more!) was done under duress. That Williams was so often met with animosity by the very sport she was uplifting is not a fact to be blithely accepted as a Black person’s role. Like so many Black people in the workplace, she has been doing representational work and inclusion work while being, literally, at the top of her game.
That’s the way of the world, you say? Sure. But acting as if those ways are to be hushed is the way of the old world. To excel in a sport while kicking down doors and enduring racial and gender-based dehumanization is crazy work. Too many have forgotten how the Williams sisters were booed, taunted and even threatened as children, while playing the once-classist White sport. Excelling required extreme physical and mental stamina. Just as it does for the WNBA players who, even now, are called N-words during games. Just as it does for Black gymnasts like the girl in Ireland, who was apparently deliberately passed by in a 2022 medal ceremony. Simone Biles had to call out the racism. This is labor, on top of athletic labor. This is what it means to start at less than zero—and then succeed, against all odds.
Living-Legend Status
Serena Williams is the best tennis player, woman or man, to have ever walked the Earth; and she is among the best professional athletes, across all sports, in modern history. It’s impossible not to see her aura around, say, the aforementioned Osaka, who walked on court at the most recent U.S. Open glorious in massive neon bows and gorgeous white ruffles. Her looks were overwhelmingly and immediately beloved. Yet in 2018, people were deeply ruffled when Williams stepped on court at the French Open in a superheroic black and red Nike catsuit. French Tennis Federation president Bernard Giudicelli said Williams “disrespected the game,” and she was banned from wearing the suit at future French Open tournaments. And it’s not just Williams’s style points that have popped off so loudly—it’s her ability, in front of the whole world, to stand up for herself. When 2023 U.S. Open champion Coco Gauff rightfully, and righteously, went off on umpires at this year’s French Open, and again recently at the Paris Olympics, Williams had chopped the wood for Gauff to be so much on fire. Williams often hotly pushed back at umps, citing, among other things, sexism from the chair—and she was globally demeaned for it. Speaking generally about the sisters recently, Gauff said, “Having Serena and Venus lead that path for me, and pave that path for me, it means a lot.”
Williams has grown up and evolved in front of all of us. She has set the tone of tennis in the United States, and in the world, for almost the entirety of her life. Not only has she lived to tell the tale, but she is happily living in Florida with her family. And like a fluid forehand, she is powering smoothly into what’s next.
If you’re intentional and inquisitive, you learn more about yourself with each passing year. You learn when to choose others and when to choose yourself. And best of all, you learn when, how and if it’s worth it to choose both at the same time. You become able to look at your past without sadness, because you know that within your most gorgeous glory days, and in every hoist of each trophy, is a future you built, brick by brick. That’s the pride, and that’s the peace. What you have is the prize you’ve been trying to keep your eye on all this time. “I gave so much to tennis,” says Williams. “I gave my whole life. Sacrificed everything.” Williams is still in her car, in front of a grade school, waiting on Miss Olympia. “I don’t know if I want to make any more sacrifices,” she reflects, “in terms of my kids.”
We have seen her mentally destroy opponents. We have seen her stoically walk off court, face tight, in pain. We have seen her go after shots with so much power and grace that she lands, triumphant, in a split. And we are with her, in this new era of her life, as she continues to defy the expectations of our cruel world. “I do miss it,” says the great Serena Williams of her beloved game. “But I know I would miss this—” she makes a small gesture toward her daughter’s world, the clear blue skies of Jupiter and what she calls her regular life—“more than I miss that.”
CREDITS:
Talent: @serenawilliams
Photographer: @jessicamadavo
Stylist: @jan.quammie
Hair: @angelameadowssalon
Makeup: @officialsheiks
Nails: @sreyninpeng
Set Design: @wanenmacherstudios
Tailor: @hasmik_scdinc
Post Production: @mcd.creative
Location: @studiostropa
Special Thanks: @willys.la
Production: @themorrisongroup
ESSENCE, VP, Content: @itsnandibby
ESSENCE, Visual Director: @_mq______
ESSENCE, Design Director: @anthonybones_