Serena Williams’ 2025 Super Bowl appearance during Kendrick Lamar’s halftime show performance may have drawn its fair share of praise, but it’s also drawn it’s fair share of critics. Williams’ husband, Alexis Ohanian, isn’t here for the negativity.
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After the show, Ohanian hopped on X/Twitter to casually give his wife her flowers for her fun cameo, writing: “Pretty fantastic halftime show.”
Just a few hours later, Ohanian went back on social media again to further express why he was proud of his wife and what this moment meant in the broader scheme of things.
“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,” he wrote.
Ohanian is, of course, referencing the 2012 Olympics, during which his wife finally won the gold medal against competitor Maria Sharapova. As a part of celebration, Williams did the crip walk or the C-walk, a dance that has roots in L.A. gang culture (the Crips) but has evolved to be regarded as fun nod to Black L.A. culture.
As a result of her dance, Williams was raked over the coals by most of the media with many likening her actions to that of the “glorification of gang culture” and the “height of disrespect” at the time.
Now, all these years later, Williams’ got the chance to do it on an even grander scale—and on one of sports’ biggest nights. Her appearance along with Lamar’s performance made it the most watched Super Bowl halftime show performance of all time. Per Billboard, it brought in 133.5 million viewers, beating the viewership that Michael Jackson brought in for his iconic performance back in 1993.
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