Venus Williams is an American treasure and one of the most iconic female athletes of the past fifty years, if not of all time. She is the reason why Wimbledon finally had to give women and men the same amount of prize money (something which only happened in 2007). Slander on Venus Williams’ name will not be tolerated. Well, Venus attended the ESPYs last Thursday. Her sister Serena was the host, and Venus is always welcomed at those sports events. Plus, she’s been going through a phase where she’s really visible and attending a lot of red carpet events this year.
Well, at the ESPYs, Venus was seated next to Prince Harry, with the Duchess of Sussex on Harry’s other side. When Harry stood up and walked to the stage to receive the Pat Tillman Award for Service, Venus stayed seated as Meghan stood to applaud her husband. Here’s the clip, and watch for Venus in the green dress.
Page Six, Perez Hilton and all of the British tabloids are now trying to make “Venus snubbed Harry” into a story, because they’re so f–king mad that Harry got such an amazing reception at the ESPYs despite their best efforts to smear him. If you watch the video though… Venus was merely delayed in standing. As the camera pans to Harry as he walks up to the stage, you can see Venus in the corner of the frame, starting to stand up. At the 35-second mark, I’m pretty sure that’s the back of Venus’s head too – she’s super-tall and yes, it appears that she’s standing. I can’t believe I have to do this like the Zapruter film, but *someone* issued talking points and tried to use Venus’s name to bash Harry, so here we are.
While Harry and Meghan are much closer to Serena Williams, they’re obviously cool with the whole Williams-Ohanian fam. Harry and Alexis Ohanian are friends and the Sussexes were obviously seated in Serena’s section – you can see Alexis, Olympia and Jill Smoller (Serena’s agent) seated behind Harry and Meghan, and Venus and Harry were seated beside each other for a reason. Don’t let people use Venus’s name to attack Harry.
Photos courtesy of Getty, ESPN.
Oh for pity’s sake!
Meghan and Harry must be really winning 😍😍😍nobody spends that much time on losers 🤣🤣🤣
Yes! Thank you for pointing this out. Honestly, how low are the Brit tabs willing to sink? Oh, so very, very low to drag a tennis legend into the mix. Is everyone on Salty Isle green with envy?
No, Venus got up when she realized everyone was standing… the camera swung away to capture Harry going up the stairs — crazy tabloids need to put a zipper on it. If you go back to the ESPN footage directly pointing to the stage you will see the backs of everyone’s heads in the front row.
From left to right, Meghan, Harry’s empty spot, tall Venus, and the other two women with her, then others.
Yeah. 🥱 FFS, Venus turned to look at Meghan’s reaction in a sweet way, as Harry was walking to the stage. And then Venus turned toward the stage and rose to her feet, clapping. WTF is wrong with these weirded out desperados?! Neither Venus, Serena, Meghan, nor Harry got time for this a’hole nonsense. They all booked, busy, unbothered, and T-H-R-I-V-N-G 🤑 💅🏼 babieee! 🫳🏽 🕳 ✊🏽
And, for all the online idiots who want to claim the standing was because the vets were there giving the award, they were applauded and then people started standing when PH walked up. All these tools have to lie and make things up to try to downplay PH’s popularity in any way they can. They need to realize that isn’t going to make the other royals more popular. It just makes them look petty by extension.
Exactly, the Vets got a standing ovation when they came on the stage but then the audience sat back down for the mini documentary about Invictus. When Harry was announced by the Vera’s the audience stood again, this time just for Harry.
Whether you are supporting or defending, if you have to do silly things like, grasp at straws, twist yourself into pretzels, make shite up out of whole cloths, or crawl on the floor for crumbs, you have lost. That folks, is pretty much where Harry’s jealous haters are right now. And I’m loving it.
The derangers just can’t leave the sussexes alone
lol. This might be the stupidest lie they cooked up. Why would she sit next to them if she didn’t like them? You need to be deranged to believe all these lies.
Seriously. No one would have noticed if she had been seated with her brother-in-law and niece and Serena’s agent (or anyone else on Serena’s guest list) had been seated next to Harry. Venus was next to Harry because she wanted to be.
The account that I read of her sitting down and not clapping didn’t mention that she was sitting next to him, it would have looked distinctly odd as she clearly chose to sit there.
Um Serena and Meghan are total besties and Serena and Venus are close. There is no way she would snub Harry in public (I doubt in private either.) Serena made sure that H&M were surrounded by people they knew and trusted, and that included Venus. Stupid tabloids.
I don’t think they’re stupid – they’re just relying on the stupidity of the readers. It’s actually very clever to figure out how to make a resounding success look like a failure – they’re masters at propaganda.
I don’t believe for one minute that they have succeeded in making Harry’s success look like a failure. The only people who actually believe this is a very small number of low information tabloid readers. Most people know it’s nonsense,
@Julia – low information can be people who don’t want to know anything or people who don’t care enough about a particular subject to question what they hear. I might be able to tell you everything about a certain piece of literature, but I don’t know anything about Megan Trainor, except that she likes to take a crap next to her husband. I read that here and said, ok whatever.
People who don’t care one way or the other about Harry will hear “Venus snubbed Harry,” they’ll internalize it and move on. They’re not going to bother asking “does this make sense?” If anything, they might have read about the “controversy” and this added thing about Venus is confirmation. That’s the interesting thing about propaganda – it’s not about convincing the haters.
Eurydice, this campaign has been going on for at least five years. Most people are not falling for it. At least 10 million, and counting, have viewed Harry’s speech, and the video that proceeded it. Not one single thing either William or Charles have done this year have equaled that. The desperate heaving from BP and KP, acting through their mouth pieces in the the press is not going to change that.
@Proud Mary – You’re right about the actual facts and I agree with you, in general. It’s just that I know a lot of people who are up on all the world events and all the political chatter and who never think about Harry and Meghan. And really, why should they? But what they know about them is what they’ve heard on the fringes for the past 5 years, that H&M are selfish and only out for money and all the usual claptrap.
The thing is that there’s constant negativity every day and the positives only come out when H&M want to come out. I think that’s just going to be the way it is because I don’t see H&M wanting to change their lives and they shouldn’t have to if they don’t want to.
Unfortunately that is the British right wing press.
I saw it when Harry got up and everyone gave standing ovations Venus just starred at Meghan it was weird to me why Venus didn’t stand for Harry. She finally stands up caused everybody did something about Venus seems not liking Duchess Meghan. Bad vibes.
Bad vibes because she didn’t stand straight away? There is an article from Vanity Fair written by someone who
was actually there who describes Venus and Meghan hugging when H@M arrived and chatting, this is from an actual eyewitness. Please think carefully before posting comments that pit two women of colour against each other! Especially when you have no evidence.
She stood up and cheered. Please stop with the manufactured outrage. Not everyone stands up at the same time during a standing O.
@Lexi, I too noticed that Venus didn’t get up when everyone leaped to their feet to give our Harry a standing ovation. She also didn’t clap when everyone around her was applauding Harry wildly. You only just see her on the periphery of the camera start to slowly rise from her seat as Harry reached the top of the stage.
Without seeing anything about a “snub” online, in newspapers or on the tv, I thought her reaction quite odd.
It should be noted as well that for years when Meghan went to see Serena play she sat in the players box with the Williams family and Jill and that Jill was featured in the Harry and Meghan docuseries as their friend and she’s also now one of Meghan’s agents at WME(it’s probably one of the major reasons Meghan chose WME and they’ve been pictured together multiple times in the past couple years). While we’re on the topic of WME: isn’t Staud which Meghan was wearing that night the fashion line of the wife of Ari Emmanuel(WME’s head)? There goes the dumb ‘Meghan was dropped by WME’ lies being disproven yet again.
Jill Smoller is also Meghan’s agent. The royalists and British press don’t want to accept that Harry was well received by the audience so they’re desperate for anything to be perceived as a snub or a slight. Whatever. I guess this is proof that Kate didn’t break the internet on Sunday as they said she would because if she did they would still be talking about her appearance at Wimbledon instead of Harry and Meghan.
The BBC viewing figures for the match she attended were well down on last year’s numbers. So I guess her big return wasn’t much of a draw!
Wimbledon TV ratings for the Men’s Finals were down over 3 million, they’re trying to say, because it was the same players from last year
@Jan, so Kate being there had no effect on ratings?? But I though W&K are sooo popular in UK.
The viewing figures for the whole two weeks were down I think. Also we were saving ourselves for seeing Willi at the footie that night ( JOKE!!!… but many people were doing jobs in the day and having parties and get togethers in the evening. )I made a comment on some dumb report that said ‘all eyes were on Kate’, to reason that all eyes were on the tennis, but I was told I was an idiot.
You can see her watching Harry intently and clapping and then looking to her left and think to herself “oh crap everyone is standing” and begin to get up. It was, at the most, a two second delay. I would imagine that not everyone got a standing ovation that night. It’s like the Oscars – sometimes no one stands, sometimes a few people close to the winner stands, sometimes the whole room stands. I myself would take moment to figure out if I should stand or if I will be drawing unnecessary performative attention to myself.
Agreed. It was clearly a “oh crap, this is turning into a dull room ovation thing” delay. Who among us hasn’t been there 😂.
Seriously! I’m sometimes a little late to rise.
Even if the propagandists did not see when she began to stand up, they can see the back of her head in the middle of the frame, when she’s actually standing. They are so desperate and pathetic.
“Oop okay, we’re standing”
🙄
Whats going on over in the UK they want to distract from now?
This is stupid as usual. Perez is too old to still be this juvenile mean girl after all of these years. I can’t believe he hasn’t found a meaningful job that doesn’t involve lying for a living. Meghan is obviously extremely close with Serena but she also has a close relationship with the rest of the Williams and Ohanian family. Photos have always shown that Meghan has always greeted and embraced the rest of Serena’s family and that was before Harry and since their wedding. During Serena’s final US Open Meghan made a special trip to NY and was seated and greeted warmly not just by Ohanian but by Venus, their other sister, their BIL and their mom. Even on the night of the ESPYs, there are photos of both Harry and Meghan hugging either their mom or another sister. It was from the back but it was obviously either Serena and Venus’ mom or a sister. Venus was in the front row, it’s likely she wasn’t aware that everyone was giving him a standing ovation so she didn’t stand up immediately until she was aware. I don’t understand how these people don’t realize that this doesn’t make Harry look bad. They are trying to imply that Venus wasn’t willing to stand up in honor of a man who created something as important and meaningful as the Invictus Games for veterans. How do they not see how that is so far from who she is and that it’s more of an insult to who she is instead of the intended attack on Harry?
I was so disappointed to see that Perez Hilton is in the royals’ coffers. He must be desperate for money. He’s never been a good person, making money of attacking people, but as an American, his constant attacks on Meghan are very suspicious. Along with People magazine, Vanity Fair, ABC, New York Post (well, that’s the Murdoch machine), it’s disheartening to see American media joining in the bullying of an American woman who had the strength to escape the royal mafia.
Add Yahoo “News” to this group. Every day, their front page features multiple articles from publications that disparage the Sussexes. It’s too consistent to be random. It’s also odd, since it’s both relentless negative coverage — and not really of general interest to people glancing at news headlines and general news coverage.
I read yahoo, their stories are often word for word the same as in the Fail and Excess, but funnily enough the Excess ran a story that Kate had snubbed Meghan at a Polo match, with a couple of pictures, Yahoo reported the same match with more pictures including a couple of Kate and Meghan chatting away with Kate’s children. Archie was a few weeks old at the time. What the Excess didn’t seem to realise was, that to accuse Kate of snubbing Meghan in a public place was a criticism of Kate, and Meghan would have been the victim.
In 2011, she was diagnosed with Sjogren’s Syndrome, which causes joint pain and fatigue. It is an autoimmune disease that threatened her career. Venus explained to Insider: “Living with an autoimmune disease, things can get a little tricky and you can be on loads of medicine, and that’s not something t want to do.
this is most likely the real reason – it probably causes her physical discomfort to stand. so she wouldn’t be jumping out of her seat.
shame on the brit garbage tabs for attacking her for having a disability!
I love Venus and Harry. When I watched it, I thought it was strange. I still think it is odd. At the same time, I don’t think Venus was trying to start this or snub Harry.
What was odd about it? She is sitting watching Harry get up and obviously doesn’t realise the people behind her have stood up. Honestly, you sound like you are trolling…
Yeah it’s trolling. This this the ‘I love them but’ brigade. They can’t be more obvious. 🤣🤣🤣
Not odd at all. Many times you don’t realize that people behind you are also standing up.
These royalist cretins are so pathetic grasping at straws invented in the recesses of their minds.
Looking for anything to create the narrative they want to push.. there literally isn’t anything else for them but Venus didn’t stand up quick enough 🤷🏼♀️.. the two videos from espn that I’ve been keeping track of the view is over 10 million, on one social media platform. (I only use Twitter) They rota propaganda used to be subtle, now it’s very aggressive and “in your face” which will only harm the BRF in the long run, because they are the only ones reliant on the public support and tax payer income.
Venus also has a SERIOUS autoimmune disease (Sjogrens Syndrome) and her knees are shot, so she might’ve just been slow to get up but she was clapping and then when she saw everyone else standing, she did too.
Perez Hilton is the WORST, right along with the BM trying to make something out of nothing. Leave Venus out of your hate campaigns. She did not snub Prince Harry
Exactly. As a fellow spoonie, sometimes you just don’t have a spoon for an immediate standing up.
That makes sense. Older people and people with medical issues are going to be slower to stand. I hate it for her and for PH that idiots want to start drama.
ALSO, that same day, she incurred an abdominal injury while hitting at UCLA. Jim Courier mentioned it on the Tennis Channel. She also pulled out of an exhibition match she was suppose to play in Atlanta because of it.
So, between her Sjogrens and an ab injury she might’ve been slow to get to her feet. What a shame that the British Press and Perez Hilton would grasp at anything to try to make Prince Harry look bad.
This is so silly. What are we supposed to even do with this? Oh no, Venus didn’t stand up right away so America hates Harry 4vr! It really bothers them that Harry got such an amazing recognition and such positive exposure for Invictus. How many days has it been since that award ceremony?
This is stupid — there’s no way in hell that Venus was snubbing Harry, so I wasn’t even going to comment, except that I had to say I LOVED Venus’ green dress.
In any crowd, when there is a standing ovation, people will get up at different times. Unless it’s a courtroom and they announce “All rise for the judge”. People are not robots where a switch is flipped and everyone jumps up at once. But this much I know, no one there was booing and shouting ” Not my king!”
@MSIAM – Beautifully said and on the nose.
Wasn’t very moving film footage of Invictus competitors shown just prior to Harry’s introduction?
If I were there, I might still have been thinking about what I had just seen, and in a bit of a fog when Harry was introduced and heading toward the stage. I’ve never known any group so obsessed with “snubbing” people. The RR has made “snubbing” a hallmark of the Windsors, and it’s not a good look. They crow at “snubbing” everyone in Harry’s family, including baby Lili. People who do not see the pettiness of it, the lack of generosity and good will, must be must be like that themselves, or so full of resentment and whatever “ism” drives them to think that such attitudes are rational.
Well stated, @tamsin. It’s high school all over, and the “popular” mean girl is throwing a party and loudly snubbing the nerds, who couldn’t care less anyways because they’ve got more important things on their minds. I was Team Nerd in high school, and I always wondered why Mean Girl was so determined to make the nerds feel bad about themselves.
If you engage in “snubbing” in high school, you’re mean. If you’re still doing it as an adult, you’re pathetic. Enough with the snubs. No one cares anymore — although I’m sure the RRats would drop everything and come drooling to Montecito if H&M ever invited them. Which ain’t gonna happen …
I feel like there’s a catch-22 here. The British tabloids stay obsessed with this royal game of “who’s snubbing Harry & Meghan now.” But if Venus were truly snubbing Harry there would be such performative outrage, as in how dare a Black woman snub a white British prince. I remember when Priyanka Chopra Jonas was thought to snub Pegs at some outing, the tabloids and their readers lost their damn minds.
I haven’t forgotten the racist tone behind all their outrage. So while they like to speculate that Venus snubbed Harry, if she really had, the commentary would be truly ugly.
This is what the bm is reduced to? Writing about a snub that didn’t happen?
I’ve gained the impression that many people in the UK snub people left and right. That’s got to be the reason that the bm see snubs behind every bush.
These people are liars who like to deceive those who continue to believe them.
Venus starts clapping, looks to her left side, sees people getting up, and then puts her right hand on the armrest to get up herself around the 25 sec. mark. And yes, it’s the back of her head that’s visible a few seconds later.
BTW, Perez’s real name, Lavandeira, means laundress or washerwoman, and they were historically associated with being mean gossips. Self-fulfilling prophesy with the emphasis on *mean*‽
Oh for God’s sake. Venus looked so pretty and happy throughout, confident, relaxed. I was happy to see her. It’s disgusting that a racist press would use her to smear another black woman. I hope she says nothing.
As the clip cuts out she looks like she’s about to stand up.
Bonkers.. ….. Take one minute nanosecond on the video frame , freeze it, spin a tale and ran it across the globe. All for clickbait and to advance the anti -Harry vendetta
At 29 seconds in you can see Venus standing. She watched Meghan get up, then stood along with everyone else who could stand. Such BS they’re trying to sell!
Venus suffers from an auto-immune disease. My guess is that she decided to stay in her seat until she saw Meghan stand up.
The most important thing is that Harry gave FABULOUS speech which will not be forgotten.