Serena Williams Remembers The Time She Tried to Cash A Million-Dollar Check At A Drive-Thru

Source: Emma McIntyre / Getty

H aving so much money you forget to cash a few million-dollar checks must be nice. Tennis GOAT and 2024 ESPYS host Serena Williams knows all about that. The now retired 42-year-old mother of two has been cashing big checks since her teens but in the beginning, she says she’d hold on to a few of them before putting them in the bank.

During a recent appearance on Hot Ones, Williams told host Sean Evans that it was true she once tried to deposit a million-dollar check at a drive-through ATM.

This happened during Williams’ first year on tour when she said her tax advisor had to keep reminding her that she needed to deposit her checks from various international tournaments. But when she got her first seven-figure check, she thought she should go ahead and put it in the bank.

“I got my check and it was a million dollars,” Williams said. “Like, okay, I’m gonna go deposit it. I’d never really spent a lot of money. I was so serious. I don’t know what happened to me, I used to be serious. So I just went through the drive-thru … and the guy was like, ‘Uh, I think you need to come inside for this.'”

Williams says that she wasn’t focused on the money and that’s why she was so careless when it came to collecting it.

“So, I never played for money. Like, I played ’cause I loved the sport. I wanted to be the best. I wanted to win, I don’t even know if at the time I wanted to be the best. I just wanted to win,” she said.

Williams’s ESPYS hosting role went off without a hitch, and during show she got off several zingers including one aimed at LeBron James’ magical hairline. But Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker, who said earlier this year that he believed women reached their highest callings only when they were wives and mothers, caught the biggest stray.

See the reactions to her hosting below.