Serena Williams Says She and Venus Are ‘Still Codependent’ on Each Other

Serena Williams and Venus Williams are closer than ever — even if one of them is no longer competing on the tennis court.

Serena, 43, admitted that she and Venus, 44, “are still codependent” on each other in her Glamour Women of the Year 2024 cover story, published on Monday, September 30. “Some things never change,” she stated. “I don’t even want to not be codependent with her. I love her. I don’t want our lives to ever be separate.”

Noting that the sport of tennis is “so lonely,” Serena said competing with Venus for several years together helped them form a strong bond. “You’re on the road for 10 or 11 months out of the year. You really rely on having someone else out there. And Venus was there, and who else was going to relate to me?” she told the outlet. “We were successful, and we were Black. We leaned on each other. We lived together. We lived together until a year before I had Olympia, so literally our whole lives.”

Both sisters have become icons in the tennis world, going from being coached by their parents — Richard Williams and Oracene Price — to winning multiple Grand Slam titles and Olympic medals. While Venus continues to compete professionally, Serena announced her retirement from tennis in August 2022.

Her retirement news came less than one year before she revealed she was pregnant with her and her husband Alexis Ohanian’s second child at the 2023 Met Gala. She gave birth to the couple’s daughter Adira, now 13 months, in August 2023.

Serena told Glamour that she was excited for her and Ohanian’s eldest daughter, 7-year-old Olympia, to have a sister given her own strong connection to Venus. “I grew up with girls. I’d honestly never been around boys unless I was dating one,” she stated. “And sisters are so special.”

Her joy about seeing her daughters grow close overshadowed her worries about childbirth, as she nearly died giving birth to Olympia in September 2017. She described the scary experience in an April 2022 personal essay for Elle, revealing that she was diagnosed with an embolism and a hematoma after undergoing an emergency C-section.

Adira was also born via C-section, a decision Serena said she made to be better safe than sorry. “This time I went in with a plan. I like to say I put my best effort out there, and this was no different,” she explained. “I literally thought about it as a Grand Slam: ‘How can I succeed?’”

After the craziness of saying goodbye to tennis and her postpartum recovery, Serena said she’s finally begun to give herself some grace. “It could be a month; it could be a week. It could take a year for things to settle down a lot,” she noted. “We are the vessels of increasing the population, literally. It’s really just keeping a positive environment and giving yourself grace and understanding.”

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She and Venus have remained booked and busy over the past few months, attending the 2024 Met Gala together in May and posing for red carpet pics together at Milan Fashion Week in June.

One month later, Venus joked that she increased her resemblance to Serena by going blonde. “As soon as I saw it, I was thrilled,” she exclusively told Us Weekly in July. “And I thought, ‘Oh, my gosh, it looks just like Serena.’”