After defeating Naomi Osaka at the French Open, Aryna Sabalenka received a strange request during her post-match interview that Andy Roddick found extremely offensive. During the interview on the court, player-turned-broadcaster Fabrice Santoro asked Aryna Sabalenka to dance.
“I always got along with Fabrice Santoro. He was like not a lot of the veterans when you come out are like super nice. He was always great. I like Fabrice Santoro. And like saying, ‘Will you dance for us?’ is just such a weird thing to ask. I don’t like it,” Andy Roddick said on his podcast Served. “And then when she does it a little bit and it’s kind of over, and then being, like, ‘moonwalk,’ f—, I don’t know. Maybe people loved it, and I might be in the minority.”
“There was one, I’ll get it wrong, it was at the Aussie Open, and it wasn’t Courier, because he would never, and they asked some female, ‘Could you twirl for us?’ Roddick continued. “I was like, ‘What the f— are we doing? What are we doing?’ I don’t know. Maybe some people like it. I could be wrong. I am fully open to that being a possibility. And when it’s like, ‘Dance for us,’ I am like ‘Uggh!’
“But to your point, if Sabalenka’s like, ‘No, thank you.’ Then everyone’s like, ‘What you can’t play along? Like, that’s no fun.’ It’s a lose-lose situation. You’re either kind of like corny. Maybe maybe I’m just putting myself in that position and realizing how uncomfortable I would be if someone was like, ‘Dance for me.'”
Also of note, this was the first women’s night session match held at the French Open in three years, so asking her to dance perhaps wasn’t the best choice for a post-match interview. Maybe Aryna Sabalenka should have just continued with her “media protest” so she wouldn’t have had to be put through such a bizarre request on the court in front of everyone.