I’ve read a lot of Serena Williams interviews over the past, say, five years. Serena isn’t what I would call a great interview, but that’s because she rarely lets down her guard and truly gossips. She usually maintains some air of grace, especially in the past few years as she’s closed in Steffi Graff’s Grand Slam record (which Serena now matches). But this Serena profile and interview in Fader is something else! It’s a really great piece because, I think, Serena gave them a lot of her time, over several days of the US Open (where she lost her semifinal match, for the second year in a row at the major). My favorite line about Serena? “She’s written her name all over the Wall of Champions at those hallowed white spaces and she refuses to act like a guest there.” Word. You can read the full piece here. Some highlights:

Whether the story of her success is universal: “I think that my story is universal. I don’t think it’s limited to my country, I don’t think it’s limited to my color, I don’t think it’s limited to my sex. I think it’s universal because I was not born with anything more special than anyone else. I wasn’t born with an extra arm. I wasn’t born super tall. I’m here — a lot of hard work, a lot of dedication, a lot of commitment. And I’ve had a lot of people that didn’t believe in me, so I had to develop a lot of self-belief. At the end of the day, I think it’s a story that everyone in all walks of life can relate to.

Dreams of Africa: “Being African-American, I’ve always dreamt of going back to Africa. That was just my main goal for as long as I can remember. I gotta get back to Africa. I want to see my roots, where I’m from. I want to see the struggle. I want to see the slave castles. I need to see that journey. I just wouldn’t have felt full if I had never experienced that…And I think it changed me. It changed me to realize how strong I was and to realize that I, through my ancestors, am capable of doing anything. I’m really capable. They endured the toughest, and only the strongest survived. I realized that I was built from this incredible bloodline that many different types of people aren’t built from. The whole journey, and just visiting other places throughout the world as well, has been really educational for me and uplifting.”

Why she decided to learn French: “It’s so funny because I was at the Olympic Village the other day, and I was talking to this African athlete. A lot of Africans speak French, and I noticed that his English wasn’t great, so I started speaking French to him. He stopped and was like, “You speak French?” and I was like, “Yeah.” And he said, “But you’re American…” And I’m like, “Yeah.” And he’s like, “But no Americans speak other languages.” And I was like, “Yeah, that’s true!” Venus is really fluent, much more so than me. One of the reasons I learned French was I wanted to win the French Open, and I wanted to speak French when I won. The second was because, most African countries, the main language outside of their local language is French or English. So I figured: I know English, maybe I can learn French.”

She can’t carry everyone else’s expectations on her shoulders: “At some point you have to play for yourself, you have to compete for yourself. You can’t carry the weight of the world on your shoulders, and I think that’s really important for people to realize that, yeah, it might be in the back of my head or it might be in my mind once it’s over.”

Whether she feels pressure to “behave” a certain way: “I do have a temper tantrum sometimes that I’ve definitely made an effort to calm down, only because I do want to be a role model and I don’t want to send the wrong message. But I also think it shows my passion. It helps me. If I don’t have that intensity or that anger, I’m not doing as well as I need to do to win. Sometimes I almost need to get angry to win, which is really, really weird but it works for me.

How she feels about a possible Hillary Clinton presidency: “How I feel about that is it would be different if a woman was president. But I don’t get involved in politics because of my religion.”

[From The Fader]

There’s a lot more – so much more! – about how she feels about the history of Africa, the history of African-Americans, how she isn’t always conscious of how groundbreaking she is as an African-American woman and more. I like what she said about learning French and wanting to be able to speak French when she won the French Open (which happened!). And yes, Americans tend to not speak other languages very well. We’re doing better though… a lot of us are picking up Spanish as we go along! Americans are en fuego!

It’s funny, after Serena lost her semifinal match against Karolina Pliskova last month, I think a lot of people were like, “I wonder how much longer Serena is going to stick around.” Isn’t that weird? Yes, she’s 35 years old now, but…she made it to the finals in three out of four majors this year. She won Wimbledon and made it to the semifinals at the US Open. She only just lost her #1 ranking last month. She’s very much preparing to dominate in the 2017 season. But people still freak the f—k out whenever she isn’t completely flawless. I honestly think she’s going for one more major title and then maybe she’ll consider retiring. But who even knows?

Photos courtesy of Fader.