Naomi Osaka’s secret to staying grounded as fame (Getty Images) Naomi Osaka is a four-time Grand Slam champion, a former World No. 1, and one of the most talked-about athletes on the planet. And yet, the 28-year-old said something that stopped the room. She doesn’t consider herself famous. Eight and a half years into a career that has reshaped women’s tennis, Osaka’s perspective on her own stardom remains almost stubbornly unchanged. For her, that is not a problem. It might actually be the point.
Why does Naomi Osaka say she doesn’t want to be famous?
Naomi Osaka’s relationship with fame has always been a strange one. When she beat Daria Kasatkina 6-3, 6-2 at Indian Wells in March 2018 to claim her first WTA title, she thought that was it. The ceiling. Her mother, who had been working long hours, was finally able to retire because of that win, and for Osaka, nothing in tennis felt bigger than that moment.”When I won Indian Wells, I for sure thought ‘Wow, life can’t get any crazier than this’ because my mom was working all the time, and I rarely saw her, and she was able to retire because of that,” Osaka said. “I felt like that was peak.”Then came the 2018 US Open. Then the second US Open. Then two Australian Open titles. Then a mental health break that shifted the entire conversation around athlete wellbeing. Then a pregnancy, a daughter named Shai, and a comeback. Each chapter raised her profile further, and yet Osaka keeps arriving at the same conclusion.”I actually don’t really want to be famous, so I’m good with where I’m at right now,” she said in Washington. “I feel like every moment has blips, and it’s kind of just like always steadily going up. Whenever I think it’s levelled out, something else keeps happening. I’ve never considered myself famous, so I’ve always done everything that I’ve done before now.”There is something quietly radical about that. The world’s press follows her every outfit change. Fashion houses track her Grand Slam walk-on looks. Sponsors line up. And through all of it, Osaka approaches Monday the same way she apparently approached the week before Indian Wells in 2018. Without the weight of the spotlight she never asked to carry.
How has Naomi Osaka’s fashion changed her public image in 2026?
The fashion angle is new territory, and Osaka knows it. Throughout 2026, her on-court walk-on outfits at all three Grand Slams have drawn as much discussion as her tennis, sometimes more. For someone who describes herself as introverted, that is a deliberate decision, not a branding exercise.”Ironically, wearing the outfits that I wear have kind of forced me to speak a lot more, especially about topics that I’m not necessarily an expert on,” Osaka said. “Kind of branching out, doing the fashion stuff has made me talk to people that I’ve never met before and things like that. [I’m] just trying to go into worlds that I’ve never imagined myself sort of being in before.”She even mentioned a preference for small, independent designers who are not household names. Which, in a way, sounds exactly like how she describes herself. Not someone chasing the biggest stage, but finding meaning in the spaces most people overlook.What’s interesting is the bleed-over. Osaka said people now follow her more for fashion than for tennis. That could read as a threat to her athletic identity. She doesn’t seem to see it that way. For her, it is just another blip in a career full of them, another moment she did not plan for but has learned to move through.Now she heads into the hard court swing, the surface where all four of her majors have come, with the US Open ahead. Osaka noted she can “only hope to be really optimistic” and play well. That word, hope, from someone with four Grand Slams, is worth sitting with. She is not coasting. She is still reaching.That, more than any outfit or quote about fame, tells you most of what you need to know about where Naomi Osaka is right now.
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