MHP: The U.S. women’s soccer team has been challenging inequity in women’s sports, fighting for equal pay. It’s an issue facing NCAA women in multiple fields [including tennis, where women make 80 cents for each dollar men earn]. Want to weigh in on this?

SW: These sports have a lot of work to do. And I really hope that I can be helpful in that journey because I do believe that women deserve the same pay. We work just as hard as men do. I’ve been working, playing tennis, since I was three years old. And to be paid less just because of my sex—it doesn’t seem fair. Will I have to explain to my daughter that her brother is gonna make more money doing the exact same job because he’s a man? If they both played sports since they were three years old, they both worked just as hard, but because he’s a boy, they’re gonna give him more money? Like, how am I gonna explain that to her? In tennis we’ve had great pioneers that paved the way—including Venus, who fought so hard for Wimbledon to pay women the same prize money they pay men, and Billie Jean King, who is one of the main reasons Title IX exists.

MHP: You mentioned kids. Do you want a family of your own?

SW: Yeah. I definitely want to have kids one day. That’s something I’ve always wanted since as long as I could remember. And the older I get, the more I’m like, “I’m too young!” [Laughs.]

MHP: The older you get, the more real it gets, the more you realize how hard parenting is, right?

SW: Yeah. I was just joking with Venus about this yesterday and saying, “I’m far too young!” Hopefully I’ll be able to mature one of these days, get serious, and at least have them pretty fast.

MHP: Many of us came to know your sister first. What about living with Venus now is different from when you were girls?

SW: I just moved about a month ago; we live across the street [from each other]. Found my freedom. [Laughs.] It was hard, though. I didn’t even want to go that far. Incidentally, all my stuff is still at her house, so I haven’t really moved out. If anything, we haven’t changed much since we were kids. We really are the same people.

MHP: What do you learn watching Venus play?

SW: It’s remarkable she plays at all, given her Sjögren’s syndrome [an autoimmune disorder that can cause joint pain]. She’s back, winning tournaments. She didn’t allow society to tell her, “You have this disease; you can’t do that anymore.” I look at her, like, “She’s not playing at 100 percent. You are. You don’t have excuses.” Knowing what she went through helped me try to be a more positive person.

MHP: You do seem quite determined to live all the way out loud—you have a playfulness, a joy. But it has come at a cost, for instance, with what happened at Indian Wells in 2001. [Serena was set to play Venus in the semifinals, but after Venus pulled out due to tendinitis, a rival accused their father of fixing the match. When Serena came out to play in the finals, the crowd booed and jeered, and her father said people yelled racial slurs at him. Williams won but boycotted the tournament for years, returning only in 2015.] Have you developed tools over time for dealing with [attacks]?