ClutchPoints
We are still not over Serena Williams’s surprise cameo at the Super Bowl halftime show.
The tennis great went to Instagram to detail how she made her Super Bowl halftime debut. Williams joined Kendrick Lamar on stage at the Super Bowl on Sunday (Feb. 9) as she crip-walked during the rapper’s Grammy-winning “Not Like Us.”
“When @kendricklamar and team called and was like ‘we’ve been trying to do something forever, what about this? We loved your crip walk at the Olympics after you won the gold medal,” Williams wrote in the caption of her recap of the night’s performance.
“I’m like Super Bowl? Are you serious? When in the world would I ever be able to dance at a superbowl? (Never) let’s do it! I knew my winning dance after the @olympics would pay off one day. End of story.”
Williams was first criticized for the controversial moves at the 2012 Olympics at Wimbledon court. She celebrated her gold medal win after defeating Maria Sharapova.
The six-time US Open champion mentioned her crip walk at Wimbledon in another video jokingly reminicing on the time.
“Man I did not crip walk like that at Wimbledon,” she said laughing. “Oh, I would’ve been fined.”
“It was all love,” she added.
Super Bowl halftime show babyyyyyyyyy pic.twitter.com/zufoSNdNhe
— Serena Williams (@serenawilliams) February 10, 2025
At the time, Williams was criticized for the moves for glorifying gang violence. She responded, “It’s just a dance.”
The crip walk was created in Compton, the city where both Williams and Kendrick are from.
Alexis Ohanian came to his wife’s defense after the backlash from the Super Bowl. Williams and Ohanian got married in 2017 and share two daughters together: Alexis Olympia Ohanian Jr., who goes by Olympia, and Adira River Ohanian.
The timing of Williams’ crip walk was also under scrunity as she danced during “Not Like Us” which notoriously ended a rap feud with Drake, whom Williams briefly dated from 2011 to 2015. While some fans viewed Williams’ move at the halftime show as “petty” given her history with the Canadian rapper, her husband adored it.
“Pretty fantastic halftime show,” Ohanian wrote on X following the performance.
“Some of y’all have no idea how criticized Serena was for this same dance at Wimbledon 13 years ago and it shows…. This is bigger than the music,” Ohanian said in another post on X.
In case you missed it or want to watch it for the 10th time, take a look at the performance below:
The post Serena Williams shares how she got her Super Bowl halftime spot appeared first on ClutchPoints.
