Serena Williams has been retired from professional tennis for three years, but she’s still a global icon — one powerful enough to set the internet on fire with just a quick cameo dance during a Super Bowl Halftime Show watched by 200 million people.
Williams, who appeared during Kendrick Lamar’s performance of “Not Like Us,” caused a stir. She was only on screen for five seconds, Crip walking during the Drake diss track, and that was enough to light up social media.
How Did Serena Williams End Up Dancing During the Super Bowl Halftime Show?
People speculated whether Williams was making a statement against President Donald Trump’s stance on DEI initiatives. Others wondered if she was just taking a shot at Drake, her ex-boyfriend.
Williams talked to TIME magazine about the five seconds that lit up people’s screens and how the moment quickly came together. A couple of weeks before the game, Lamar, a fellow Compton native, reached out to her. Apparently, he’d seen her do the Crip Walk on Wimbledon’s Centre Court after she won Olympic gold in 2012.
Columnist Claudia Rankine called the moment like “cracking a tasteless, X-rated joke inside a church.”
Williams told TIME that Lamar was up front, and she knew she’d be dancing to “Not Like Us,” the five-time Grammy-winning song from 2024. In it, Lamar accuses Drake of being sexually inappropriate with minors and tells him to leave Williams alone. Drake once sang, “Sidebar, Serena, your husband a groupie.”
Williams said she and her team strategized how the moment would play out. They weighed the risk of backlash against what it meant to represent Compton on one of the biggest stages in the world.
“Who would have thought that a tennis player from Compton would be regarded as one of the best tennis players of all time,” she told TIME. “It was just putting an exclamation on it.”
Once at the stadium, Williams said she took a couple shots of tequila and Crip walked her way into controversy.
Stephen A. Smith, ESPN’s $100 million man, chimed in.
“If I’m married and my wife is going to join trolling her ex, go back to his a**,” Smith said on First Take. “’Cause clearly you don’t belong with me. What you worried about him for and you’re with me? Bye-bye.”
As for Williams’ actual husband, Reddit co-founder and investor Alexis Ohanian, he kept it short but pointed. He noted that the Philadelphia Eagles danced to Lamar’s song after their Super Bowl win and reminded people that Williams had already danced at Wimbledon.
“This is bigger than the music,” Ohanian wrote.
Either way, Williams doesn’t seem too concerned with what sports commentators have to say about her chance to dance.