Photo courtesy of She Knows.
Tennis stars Serena and Venus Williams featured on the cover of Harper’s Bazaar Legacy March issue wearing elegant black gowns while donning exclusive pieces from Cartier jewelry.
The Williams sisters wore various high-end outfits during the photoshoots and shared the footage on their respective Instagram accounts.
During an exclusive interview with the magazine, Serena, 40, and Venus, 41, opened up about their careers, father Richard Williams, and plans after retiring from tennis.
“From such a young age, all we’ve done is work,” Venus told the magazine.
“So I think for Serena and I to explore that freedom is surreal. We’ve never been free,” the elder sister added.
While Venus’ tennis career began in 1994, Serena followed in her footsteps in 1995. The Compton natives have dominated the sport and have won a total of 48 Grand Slam titles, 14 of which they shared as women’s double titles. Since then, they have ventured into entrepreneurship and have created several businesses, including fashion lines, an interior-design company, and a venture-capital firm, Harper Bazaar reported.
Though tennis has been their primary focus since their careers began, Venus said she’s looking to delve into other opportunities in the near future.
“Serena and I say we’re going to become bodybuilders after tennis. It might be extreme. It might not happen exactly like that, but you never know,” teased Venus.
However, Serena isn’t sure when her last time competing on the tennis courts will occur.
“That’s something I don’t think about, nor do I want,” said Serena. “I don’t want to think about what I’m leaving. I just think about who I am every single day behind closed doors and behind cameras. And that’s what I focus on.”
The tennis champions who executive produced the movie King Richard starring Will Smith, credit their parents for teaching them mental toughness and the sacrifices they made to become two of the best female athletes in history.
“I don’t think people even thought about what happened before we turned pro,” Venus told the publication. “This isn’t a movie about tennis,” Serena noted. “This is a movie about family.”
Venus explained the importance of Black love within a familial dynamic, even though the Williams family wasn’t the typical Black American family.
“I think that our family is just unique to ourselves,” the 41-year-old said. “Obviously, we’re an African American family, and it’s important for people to see African American families in that dynamic … to have role modeling.” Still, she stresses again, “our family was super unique.”
Serena said the film captured their father, emphasizing their health and well-being over their athletic careers.
“A lot of people get this different story of sports fathers—especially tennis fathers, who are really overbearing,” she said. “And that wasn’t necessarily my dad.”
“Everyone’s like, ‘Well, how do you play tennis for so long?’ It’s because we weren’t raised in an environment where it was something that we abhorred,” Serena noted.
The 40-year-old confessed that she doesn’t always inform her father of her injuries because he would insist that she rested.
“He’s always like, ‘Take your time. You’ll be okay. Don’t play.’ “
While their father has provided them with life-long lessons into adulthood, the sisters said one of the crucial lessons they learned from him was the ability to plan.
Serena said, “My dad always told us to plan ahead. ‘If you fail to plan, you plan to fail,” and they have taken that one piece of advice and excelled in all aspects of their careers.
The March issue of Harper’s Bazaar will be available on newsstands on March 1.