Meghan Markle hints she will be there to cheer on Serena Williams when she bows out of tennis at the US Open – and promises ‘we’re going to have fun’ celebrating

• Meghan Markle has hinted she will cheer on Serena Williams in her final match 
• Williams, 40, announced her retirement from the sport earlier in August   
• Duchess of Sussex, 41, suggested on a podcast that the pair would party hard
• Markle released it today as part of her and Prince Harry’s £18million Spotify deal

Meghan Markle has hinted she will cheer on her friend Serena Williams in the tennis ace’s final tennis match at the US Open.

Williams, 40, announced earlier this month she would retire from tennis after the US Open to try for a second baby with her billionaire husband Alexis Ohanian.

The Duchess of Sussex, 41, suggested the pair would party hard after the sporting legend’s final game in the US Open, which begins on August 29 and continues until September 11.

Speaking in the first episode of her new Spotify podcast Archetypes, the Duchess said: ‘Yeah, we’re going to have fun. We’ll make sure you get a good one.’ 

Williams added: ‘To the bar– to the bar. That’s something to do afterwards. I’m just going out because I can never drink. Have a glass of Champagne.’

‘Maybe I’ll just do some twirls right on out of the stadium.’  

Meghan Markle has hinted she will cheer on her friend Serena Williams (pictured playing Britain’s Emma Raducanu in the Western and Southern Open tournament on August 16) in the tennis ace’s final tennis match at the US Open

The former working royal spoke made the revelation during a podcast released today ash she spoke to her close friend Williams about the double standards women face when they are labelled as ‘ambitious’. Pictured, cheering on Serena at the US Open in 2019

Their conversation was revealed on Markle’s The Misconception of Ambition with Serena Williams on Spotify, which came out today.

The former working royal spoke to her close friend and tennis superstar Williams about the double standards women face when they are labelled ‘ambitious’. 

Meghan and Harry signed a lucrative deal with the audio streaming giant to host and produce podcasts, estimated to be worth around £18million in late 2020. 

Meghan Markle and Serena Williams first met at a Super Bowl party in 2010 and eventually became close friends. 

Serena explained during the first episode of the highly anticipated series that she is ‘super loyal, to a fault’ after being ‘friends for so long’ with the Duchess.

Meghan met Serena briefly in 2010, and again in 2014, explaining on her now defunct blog The Tig that the pair ‘hit it off immediately’.

The Duchess invited the sportswoman to her wedding to Prince Harry and her star-studded baby shower when pregnant with Archie in New York City in February. 

Serena, who equally isn’t shy about her friendship with Prince Harry’s wife, previously advised Meghan to ‘stop being so nice’ and also praised her ‘class and poise’ in the famous Oprah interview.

Meghan Markle and Serena Williams (pictured in 2014) first met at a Super Bowl party in 2010 and eventually became close friends

The Duchess of Sussex, 41, and the American tennis champ (pictured with husband Alexis Ohanian at Meghan’s wedding to Prince Harry) , 40, chat to one another on the royal’s first Archetypes podcast, released on Spotify today, about the double standards women face when they are labelled ‘ambitious’

Williams was in attendance for Markle’s blowout baby shower in New York City in February 2019, a few months before she gave birth to son Archie with her husband Prince Harry

According to Mark Hodgkinson in Serena: A Graphic Biography of the Greatest Tennis Champion, the women’s friendship quickly evolved through frequent phone calls and texts.

After becoming Prince Harry’s girlfriend and then a Duchess, Markle leaned on Serena for mentoring on how to handle the paparazzi and the international media.

Serena advised her to ‘stop being so nice’, according to the author.

And when Meghan learned she was pregnant shortly after Serena’s little girl was born, Serena offered her parenting advice.

Last year, Williams revealed: ‘We have known each other for a long time, but we really are relying on each other a lot recently.’ 

She added that watching Meghan marry Prince Harry in May 2018 was particularly special.

Meghan and Serena have been close friends since 2014 after having their first ‘real hangout’ at the DirecTV Beach Bowl (pictured), although they briefly crossed paths in 2010 at the SuperBowl 

Serena said: ‘It was really exciting to see so much African-American culture in the wedding and I was really happy that Meghan wanted to incorporate that into it. It was just a whole cultural shift and change. 

‘It was seeing how far African-Americans have come.  I thought it was an incredibly inspiring and beautiful and really motivating thing. I was so proud of her and so happy for her.’ 

Meanwhile, in 2021, Serena praised Meghan, saying she is the ‘epitome of class and strength’ following her bombshell interview with Oprah Winfrey.  

She spoke to Behnaz Ghahramani the Chief Marketing Officer for Stuart Weitzman for their debut episode of the Shine Series, where she discussed her long-term friendship with the royal.

She described Meghan as ‘the strongest person she knows’.      

‘Meghan is a great person and I think the epitome of strength, the epitome of confidence, the epitome of just selflessness, and the epitome of everything is just her and everything that she’s gone through,’ the tennis player told the Shine series.   

‘You can see from the interview that it wasn’t easy. But she had so much poise and she still had so much class,’ she added.

‘I just think that she is the strongest person I know. I don’t know anyone else that could handle anything on such a global scale the way that she’s had to handle things that are just untrue – minute after minute. 

‘Not even day after day. Just minute after minute, another untrue allegation being thrown at her,’ she added. 

‘I think it was important for me to say something because I’m tired of sitting back and seeing all this negativity that’s just not true,’ she went on.

Meghan and Serena have been close friends since 2014 after having their first ‘real hangout’ at the DirecTV Beach Bowl, although they briefly crossed paths in 2010 at the SuperBowl.

Meghan Markle has a long-standing relationship with tennis ace Serena Williams (pictured at the Duchess’s wedding in 2018 between her husband Alexis Ohanian and Markle’s friend and Suits co-star Abigail Spencer)

The Duchess of Cambridge and Meghan Markle watch Williams in the 2019 Wimbledon final, which Simona Halep won

Meghan, who was starring on Suits at the time,  wrote on her now defunct blog The Tig:  ‘We hit it off immediately, taking pictures, laughing through the flag football game we were both playing in, and chatting not about tennis or acting, but about all the good old fashioned girly stuff. So began our friendship’.

It comes after Serena defended Meghan following a backlash during the bombshell interview with Oprah Winfrey.

 In a statement on Twitter after the interview aired, Williams – who was among those to attend Meghan’s wedding to Prince Harry – described her as a ‘selfless friend’ who ‘teaches me every day what it means to be truly noble’.

‘Her words illustrate the pain and cruelty she’s experienced,’ Williams wrote.

‘I know first hand the sexism and racism institutions and the media use to vilify women and people of color to minimise us, to break us down and demonize us. We must recognize our obligation to decry malicious, unfounded gossip and tabloid journalism.

‘The mental health consequences of systemic oppression and victimization are devastating, isolating and all too often lethal.

‘I want Meghan’s daughter, my daughter and your daughter to live in a society that is driven by respect.

‘Keep in your memory the fruitage of the spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faith, mildness, self-control. Against such things there is no law.’  

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