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On a Sunday morning in July—specifically the middle Sunday of Wimbledon, when the players rest and the trampled lawns recover—Serena Williams awoke from one of those vivid dreams that are a common feature in the hormonal rush of pregnancy. In it she was competing, except that she wasn’t at Wimbledon or even on a tennis court. Instead this was the Williams Invitational, the mock-seriously titled (but very real) dance tournament that Serena and Venus Williams have mounted each spring for the better part of a decade and that, Serena explains, has gone from fun to serious to Broadway to Vegas in short order. In the dream, Serena was suspended from the ceiling, twirling inside a hoop attached to a long ribbon. (True story: Williams has an aerial-dancing coach in Florida and another in California.) Sequins and wigs may also have been involved, though the details are fuzzy.
“What do you think it means?” Williams asks as her fiancé, Alexis Ohanian, 34, works on coffee and soft-scrambled eggs. (You got lucky, she says, when he hands me the mug with the giant S on it.) What it does not mean, as anyone who saw her cracking forehands on a recent Instagram video knows already, is that Williams’s mind has floated away from tennis. In fact, for the last week she has been watching Wimbledon with such intensity that her chef has started giving her concerned glances from over the breakfast bar.
“I learn by watching,” she explains. “I’m like the Parasite”—here the first of many references to DC Comics superheroes. “He’s a leech. He takes all your energy with him. Or I watch old matches of myself on the Tennis Channel. I hit amazing shots, and these girls are running them down and hitting winners, and I’m beginning to see why. It’s because I have patterns.” She breaks into a laugh that I come to know well because it is so easily summoned. “I don’t want to say more than that. I don’t want these girls to read this article and get a leg up.”
We’re sitting in the giant kitchen of her house in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, whose demure gray facade belies the fact that in other days it has been something of a party pad for the sisters Williams. Outside, sprinklers hiss, lizards scurry across a tiled patio, and behind the pool, a family of blue cranes pecks at the grass in search of their own breakfast. These Sundays are precious, since Alexis will soon be on a plane back to San Francisco, where Reddit, the social-news website he cofounded, is based.
“The downside is not being able to be here 24-7,” he says.
“Babe, that’s the upside,” she says. More laughter.
Nearly eight months pregnant, Williams wears a stretchy dress with nautical stripes, her hair exquisitely cornrowed, with red and gold beads and cowries, her pearlized nails the color of pink champagne. Since 2011, when she was hospitalized with bilateral pulmonary embolisms following foot surgery (months earlier she had stepped on a piece of glass at a World Cup party in Munich), Williams has been terrified of getting pregnant. Carrying a child increases the risk of blood clots, and she now has to inject herself with anticoagulants, the most dreaded part of her daily routine. This pregnancy was unexpected and accidental. “But once I found out, something happened that surprised me,” she explains. “I became really calm. I thought, You have to win, but you’re allowed to lose, because you have something to look forward to.”
Williams is in planning mode. A fifties-themed baby shower (she loves a theme party, or any excuse to get into costume, really) is in the works. There is the bachelorette party—maybe the islands, maybe Las Vegas, maybe both—and, one of these days, the wedding itself. But most of her energy is directed at preparing the nursery. Williams, a Francophile who keeps an apartment in Paris, is looking for a baby nurse who speaks French and just found a wall hanging of a medieval French poem by Charles d’Orléans for the room. “Alexis thinks we’re having a boy, but I have a strong suspicion that it’s a girl,” she says. “Two weeks after we found out, I played the Australian Open. I told Alexis it has to be a girl because there I was playing in 100-degree weather, and that baby never gave me any trouble. Ride or die. Women are tough that way.”
For many of her fans—and here I should disclose that I’m among the die-hards—the news that Williams was pregnant stirred an uneasy mix of feelings. So this was how her tennis career would end? Well, why not? It would mean that the 2017 Australian Open final was her last competitive match; in it, she defeated her oldest and greatest rival, Venus Williams, for her twenty-third major title and in doing so broke Steffi Graf’s heavily armored Open-era record. Could the loop close any more perfectly? In fact, yes: There were other records still looming, none so large as Margaret Court’s 24 major titles. Then there was the fact that Williams, at 35, seemed, by some miraculous fusion of physical gifts and prudent time management, still to be playing at her apex.
“It’s hard to figure out what the end of your tennis career should look like,” she says. “I used to think I’d want to retire when I have kids, but no. I’m definitely coming back. Walking out there and hearing the crowd, it may seem like nothing. But there’s no better feeling in the world.” Chip, her Yorkie (full name Christopher Chip Rafael Nadal), bounces skittishly from her chair to mine, though his allegiance is never in dispute. “Obviously, if I have a chance to go out there and catch up with Margaret, I am not going to pass that up. If anything, this pregnancy has given me a new power.”
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Power—it’s a word that has clung with a sometimes unsavory vigor to Williams over the years, perhaps as a dismissal of her prodigious technical skill or, worse, as a proxy for her race. And it’s a word she has only recently come to embrace. “I think I’ve had a love-hate relationship with the idea of power,” she says. “In the beginning I didn’t like it when they said that my sister and I were power players. I thought, I don’t hit as hard as a Monica Seles. In Australia last year, I read that Maria Sharapova’s backhand and forehand are as good or better than mine, and that the only reason I win is that my serve is bigger. I was like, wait a minute, please. I place my serve. And what about my volleys? My speed? I’m the player who’s hitting angles. I’m the player who moves you. I use my brain, and that’s really why I win. Not only me, but women in general sometimes feel that power is a bad word. As I’ve gotten older I’ve started to feel differently about it. Power is beauty. Strength is beauty. So now on the court I want people to think that I’m powerful. But I also want them to be shocked at how I play. I want people to expect something, then get something different.”
Williams has been a target this year off the court. In March, the Romanian former world number one Ilie Nastase accused her of doping and suggested that American athletes’ behavior essentially goes unchecked. “It’s pretty clear in Serena’s case,” he told reporters. “Do you see what she looks like?” Only a month later, he was heard speculating about Williams’s baby. “Let’s see what color it is. Chocolate with milk?” This presented a bitter pill for those who wished to believe that tennis was above, or beyond, racism. Williams knew better, of course. “I’m like, dude, are you serious? Classless,” she says. “Don’t come for me, and don’t come for my baby. And then the drug rant! I’m tested all the time. I’m not putting poison in this body. If I can’t beat you, I’m not going to cheat to win. End of story.” (Ohanian says that his fiancée’s fastidiousness borders on the paranoid: “I’ll be eating a protein bar and she’s starving, and she’ll be like, Nope. Can’t risk it. Not sure that’s approved.”)
In June, John McEnroe drew the ire of tennis fans when he stated in an NPR interview that Williams would be “like 700 in the world” if she played on the men’s tour. “Why the fixation on me playing dudes?” she asks. “It’s clear that men are stronger than women, and that’s just science. I’m very content to play on the women’s tour. John’s unapologetic, he says what he thinks, and people respect that about him. God forbid I do it, though.”
Williams has said more than a few things over the course of her career that she likely regrets. “I think people do love when I get angry—that’s when the crowd cheers the hardest. But now I’m like, OK, I’m going to be a mom next time I play. I need to not make the baby faces anymore.” And lately she appears to be watching her words.
“I wish people could see her silly side,” says Kim Kardashian West, who has been a close friend of Williams’s for fifteen years. “She is obsessed with karaoke, which personally is my biggest fear in life. I remember a dinner in San Francisco before a DNC fund-raiser. Serena sang, Obama sang, Kanye sang. It was legendary. She gives herself those moments—it’s how she recharges. Serena’s the girl you can call and say anything to. She’ll never judge you, and she’s never too busy for you. Oh, and she can keep any secret.” The actress Meghan Markle, another friend, says, “She will be an amazing mom. The very best, because she is so attuned to balancing strength and sensitivity. Plus, given that she is pretty epic at karaoke, I think she’ll put her signature Serena spin on singing lullabies for the baby. I can’t wait for that!”
And yet Williams is concerned that her game face has been misinterpreted, that the posture she assumes to let everyone know she means business looks threatening instead. “I feel like people think I’m mean,” she says. “Really tough and really mean and really street. I believe that the other girls in the locker room will say, ‘Serena’s really nice.’ But Maria Sharapova, who might not talk to anybody, might be perceived by the public as nicer. Why is that? Because I’m black and so I look mean? That’s the society we live in. That’s life. They say African-Americans have to be twice as good, especially women. I’m perfectly OK with having to be twice as good.”
Her friend the singer Ciara wonders whether Williams’s intensity on the court makes it difficult for people to imagine another version of her. “In tennis mode, she’s a beast, a lioness,” Ciara says. “But when she’s not in work mode—well, let’s just say you want to be at her table. You’ll die laughing. She’s that girl, and I think it will serve her so well as a mom. That and the fact that she has a partner who complements her. Alexis is calm and cool.”
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The couple met by chance in Rome in the spring of 2015. She was competing in one of the clay-court tournaments that precede the French Open (and prodding Italian friends to persuade restaurants to make her gluten-free cacio e pepe), and he was speaking at a tech convention that happened to take place at her hotel. By December, they were engaged. “Alexis is basically the guy I’ve always told my friends to look for, since I love to give advice,” says Williams, whose old flames include the musicians Common and Drake, the basketball player Amar’e Stoudemire, and the director Brett Ratner. “He’s extremely smart but not a know-it-all. He’s curious about what he doesn’t know. Being a Jehovah’s Witness is important to me, but I’ve never really practiced it and have been wanting to get into it. Alexis didn’t grow up going to any church, but he’s really receptive and even takes the lead. He puts my needs first.” Though Ohanian has been doing weekends in Florida, Williams is not exactly ignoring the needs of her husband-to-be, either. She plans to move to San Francisco after the wedding—no cohabitation before then, at her insistence—even though she’s in the process of building a sprawling home in Florida. For years she lived in Venus’s Palm Beach Gardens house and has only just relocated across the street. “I was like, ‘I’m 35, Venus. We have got to live apart.’ ” Venus comes over frequently because she never has food in her refrigerator.
Williams mentions another crucial point in Ohanian’s favor: He has passed muster with Patrick Mouratoglou, her coach of the past five years and, though neither has ever discussed it publicly, her romantic partner for a portion of that time. “Once we got over that little hump of weirdness, it was fine,” she explains. “Fortunately I’m really good friends with most everyone I’ve ever dated. I don’t like bad blood.”
Ohanian plans to recast his late mother’s wedding ring for Williams. Family, he says, is crucial to them both: “One of the first things we really connected on at a deeper level was that she lost her sister during a formative time in her life”—Williams’s half-sister Yetunde Price was the victim of a drive-by shooting in 2003—“and my mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer when I was 22, just as we were starting Reddit. For both of us, we learned at a young age the pain of loss, and I think for both of us, this helped make us who we are.” The couple, spectacularly busy in such different ways, give each other freedom; there have been no fights over putting in extra hours at the office (or on the court) or taking a last-minute trip. “One of the best parts of this relationship for me is that it really shattered the tech-bubble illusion that we’re the hardest-working people,” Ohanian adds. “It’s amazing how much harder I push myself now because I’m with someone who has even more discipline, even more focus.”
As focused as she remains on her future as a player, Williams is looking beyond tennis, as she always has. Nearly two decades ago, in one of the valleys between her career’s scattered peaks, she somehow made time to study fashion design at the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale. “My dad always told us to have a plan B,” she says. If not for her pregnancy, Williams’s namesake ready-to-wear line would have had its fourth New York Fashion Week show this month.
“I feel I can put myself into Serena’s mind,” says Donatella Versace, who designed the emerald-green chiffon dress Williams wore at this year’s Met gala. “She’s fierce, but there is a side that people don’t consider until they get to know her, that maybe people don’t expect. She has an enormous warmth and a vulnerability. With her style she loves to push it, to go to extremes—high platforms, tight bodysuits. But I saw one of her collections, which showed another side. Very classic.”
“My feet are really in this,” Williams says of her line, which is sold on HSN. “For me there was only one thing I connected to the way I’ve connected to tennis, and that’s been fashion. If you give me a garment, I can tell you what the fabric is, how it’s made, why something can or can’t be done because of the draping, et cetera. Who knows? Maybe I would have won more grand slams if I had been 100 percent tennis.” Here she slips momentarily into a whisper: “I should have 30 already.”
Last month, Williams appeared in nude plenitude à la Demi Moore on the cover of Vanity Fair, photographed by Annie Leibovitz. “I was really nervous about that shoot,” she admits. “I’ve not been that exposed, and I was unsure up until a couple of days before. But I’m happy with how raw and real it is.” Williams has appeared on the cover of Vogue twice before, first in June 2012 for the London Olympics and again in April 2015, both times also shot by Leibovitz. “Being black and being on the cover was really important to me,” she explains. “The success of one woman should be the inspiration to another, and I’m always trying to inspire and motivate the black girls out there. I’m not a model. I’m not the girl next door. But I’m not hiding. Actually, I look like a lot of women out there. The American woman is many women, and I think it’s important to speak to American women at a time when they need encouragement. I’m not political, but I think everyone is worried, to a degree.”
Williams has already begun to prepare for next January, when she hopes to defend her Australian Open title. “It’s the most outrageous plan,” she says. “I just want to put that out there. That’s, like, three months after I give birth. I’m not walking anything back, but I’m just saying it’s pretty intense.” At her age and stage, there is always the risk of falling short of her previous heights. “In this game you can go dark fast. If I lose, and I lose again, it’s like, she’s done. Especially since I’m not 20 years old. I’ll tell you this much: I won’t win less. Either I win, or I don’t play.”
Venus, who went on to reach the Wimbledon final despite battling Sjögren’s syndrome, remains her sister’s inspiration to keep playing. (Venus’s deep run was all the more impressive because it came in the wake of her involvement in a Florida car accident that claimed the life of a 78-year-old man.) Meanwhile, Serena maintains the famous Williams balance: sweating through an hour of cardio every day (she has never really lifted weights, her muscles the gift of nature), taking French lessons, scrolling through makeup and nails on Instagram, perfecting her taco recipes, and listening to the Moana sound track. (“No judgments, please,” she asks.) Her mother, Oracene Price, and her friend Sheryl Sandberg, the Facebook executive, have impressed upon her the importance of staying positive. Her father, Richard Williams, lives twelve minutes away, and they see each other at church every weekend.
“I’m nervous about childbirth,” Williams acknowledges. “I’m not a spring chicken. The one thing I really want is an epidural, which I know a lot of people are against, but I’ve had surgeries galore, and I don’t need to experience any more pain if I can avoid it. But the biggest thing is that I don’t really think I’m a baby person. Not yet. That’s something I have to work on. I’m so used to me-me-me, taking care of my health, my body, my career. I always ask, Am I going to be good enough?” She looks toward Ohanian, who is blending smoothies in the Vitamix. “I know he’ll be great.”
“It’s funny that you say that,” he answers, “because that’s exactly how I feel about you.”
In this story: Fashion Editor: Tonne Goodman. Hair, Yusef Williams; Makeup: Sir John; Manicure: Gina Viviano. Tailor: Leah Huntsinger for Christy Rilling Studio.
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