Serena Williams posed nude for the August cover of Vanity Fair, opening up about her pregnancy as well as her relationship with fiancée Alexis Ohanian.
The pictures, taken by celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz, feature the tennis star posing nude and showing off her bump. Williams, 35, is due in September and found out that she was pregnant after taking six pregnancy tests just before the Australian Open.
In the magazine, the 23-grand slam champion explained that she felt different physically after a poor showing during her first match of the year, and her friend, Jessica Steindorff, suggested that she might be pregnant.
She immediately dismissed the suggestion but took the test that Steindorff brought her because, she said, “I’ll take it just because (a) to prove you wrong and (b) because it’s fun, whatever. It’s like a joke. Why not?”
That Friday, she took the test.
“I put it down. I went back to finishing hair and makeup, was laughing, talking. I was getting the styling done. An hour and a half later, I went back to the bathroom and I totally forgot about it because it was impossible for me. . . . So I went back to get dressed and I went back in the bathroom and I was like, ‘Oh yeah, that test,'” Williams recalled.
While her friend was thrilled, Williams was upset, because “I had planned on winning Wimbledon this year.”
But she went on to win the Australian Open without dropping a set. Before she did that, though, she called Ohanian and told him that he needed to come to Australia sooner than he had planned. She handed him the bag with six positive pregnancy tests, and that was how she told him they were pregnant.
Williams also told the story of how Ohanian proposed to her, taking her back to the very table in Italy where they first met, and where they discovered that she knew nothing about Reddit and he had never watched any tennis. Williams said that she knew he was going to propose before it happened: “I knew it was coming. I was like, ‘Serena, you’re 35, you’re ready. This is what you
want.’”
Check out the full interview with Vanity Fair for more on her love story and pregnancy journey!