CNN interviewed Serena Williams when she was 9. Here’s what she said:
“He looked at me and said I should be there. I didn’t even cry. I was told by him, I was going to be there, and I was like, ‘He’s not going to say that I have to do it, he’s going to say I’ll see how far I can push myself, and that’s fine. I’m going to be there.’”
The interview’s most profound takeaways:
Williams is not one of those girls who “always makes plans.”
“I love being spontaneous,” she said. “I wish I was more of a planner. I mean, I have to plan a lot of stuff for my life. And I’m like, I have so much stuff on my mind. I don’t want to miss a moment of anything. I think I need to be spontaneous in my life more.”
She thinks about all the little things in her life.
“I have a life goal, which is to be married and have children, and being a grandmother is so much fun, but then you start thinking, what would I be doing if, you know, I don’t have a husband and I don’t have children? What would my life be like?” she said.
Williams is happy she’s been through “all of this” without major injury.
“I’m not going to take any chances. I want to be physically strong,” she said.
She is going to do two interviews in the next seven days, one with Diane Sawyer and someone she has never heard of before.
“Well, you know, I’m a little freaked out, so I might as well do two interviews,” she said.
She is very passionate about what she does.
Williams grew up watching her grandmother and her mother coach their daughters tennis.
“I grew up watching my mother coach my sisters at the same time. It was my mom, my oldest sister, and my youngest sister, and then my youngest sister, and then my oldest sister, and then my youngest sister. There’s like four of us. So it was always coaching tennis. And she also did swimming and basketball in the morning with me. That was in the morning,” she said.
She told the New York Times her mom “will give you a million dollars if