- Serena Williams said she once won a French Open match on 30 minutes of sleep.
- The night before the match, Williams' daughter broke her wrist in a fall.
- "We didn't get back until like four in the morning," Williams told Meghan Markle on her new podcast.
Serena Williams said she played and won a match at the 2018 French Open match on just "30 minutes sleep" after her daughter broke her wrist the night before.
Williams, who is retiring from tennis following the US Open, told the story on the first episode of Meghan Markle's podcast, "Archetypes," on Tuesday.
The episode, titled "The Misconception of Ambition with Serena Williams," was focused on both Williams and Markle being working mothers in the public eye.
"So she fell, we went to the hospital, and she had a small tear or break in her wrist, so she had to get a cast," Williams told Markle of her daughter, Olympia.
"We didn't get back until like four in the morning. Meanwhile, of course, this is the one day I was playing early. I remember holding her the whole night and just rocking her to sleep. I just didn't let her out of my sight at that point.
"So I think I got like 30 minutes of sleep and then I had to go play this match. And I'm just thinking, 'How am I going to play?"
Williams did play, beating Germany's Julia Görges in straight sets.
"I somehow managed to win, but I was so emotionally spent and so emotionally drained that it was crazy," she said.
Williams added that she was "devastated" and "felt so guilty" that Olympia had injured herself on her watch, so didn't let her out of her sight afterwards.
"Every night after that, I just was with her the whole time. It was like, 'You're gonna be with me,'" she said.
The 2018 French Open was the first tournament Williams played in after giving birth to Olympia.
During the competition, she wore a "Black Panther-style catsuit" designed to help prevent blood clots. Williams also said the suit made her feel like a "warrior princess" from Wakanda, the fictional kingdom from the comic books.
The suit was later banned, with French Tennis Federation President Bernard Giudicelli saying it did not "respect the game and the place."
In the introduction to the podcast, Markle said she wanted to rip apart "the labels and tropes that try to hold women back."
In the episode, Williams touched upon the double standards between men and women in tennis she said she experienced.
"Often women are definitely put in these different boxes when we are ambitious or when we do have goals or when we reach our goals, it's a negative connotation on how we reach the goals," she said.