A Journey That Began in a Small Canadian Town Culminates on the Cover

Nicole Williams English has been manifesting this moment for nearly 20 years. “It was 1997—I was 13 years old—and I saw the SI Swimsuit cover with Tyra Banks in the polka-dot bikini and thought, I want to be on that cover,” she recalls. “Then and there, I made myself a promise that I’d do everything I could to turn that dream into a reality.”

Looking back, Williams English jokes that she was probably a bit delusional. She grew up in Paradise, Newfoundland—a town with a population of around 23,000. It’s not exactly a place with robust modeling opportunities. Nonetheless, Williams English had the support of her mom, who was determined to help her daughter reach her full potential. So they moved to Toronto, where Williams English began meeting with agencies. She endured a slew of rejections before she got signed at the age of 16. One of the first things she told her new agency was that her goal was to land the cover of SI Swimsuit. “They gave me a long list of things I’d need to do in order to even attempt that, including building my portfolio,” she says. “So, I lived in Taipei, I lived in Barcelona, I lived in Cape Town—working on my book like they told me to. I didn’t want anyone to ever be able to say, ‘Well, you didn’t do this and that’s why you didn’t get it.’ ”

Eventually, she landed in New York City. “I was so excited because I knew SI Swimsuit had annual castings there, so I started going every single year,” she says. Time went by and though Williams English didn’t book her dream job, she watched as many of her friends—including Jasmine Sanders and former roommate Chrissy Teigen—did.

Nicole Williams English was photographed by Ben Watts in Montauk, N.Y. | Ben Watts/Sports Illustrated

One might assume that watching those around her get the thing she had been pining for would stir up jealousy, but it actually had the opposite effect. “My mom raised me to be super compassionate,” Williams English says. “I truly believe that everyone deserves happiness and success—why would I ever not want someone to be able to have this incredible experience?” She wasn’t just happy for her friends from afar, she’d cheer them on from the sidelines at SI Swimsuit runway events.

Then, in 2011, she started dating Larry English, who was a linebacker for the San Diego Chargers. The relationship changed her life—both personally and professionally. In 2015, she appeared on WAGS, a reality show on E! about the wives and girlfriends of athletes, and the couple married in 2017.

They spent the next several years trying to start a family and in 2022, with the help of IVF, Williams English finally got pregnant. “Honestly, it’s not that I had given up on SI Swimsuit—I don’t think I’d have ever given up—but I had put that dream on hold,” she says. “And then, here I was five months pregnant, and I got a call that they wanted me to be a rookie.”

Williams English says she bawled her eyes out—and hints that Larry may have shed a tear or two, too. “These two major things that I had wanted so badly and worked so hard for—being a mom and appearing in SI Swim—were suddenly happening at the same time,” she says. “In that moment, all of the hard work I had put in flashed before my eyes, and it felt incredibly gratifying.” She became the first person to announce her pregnancy on the SI Swimsuit runway, in Miami Beach, and then she shot for the magazine while visibly pregnant. Since then, she has appeared in every issue before landing this year’s cover. “For me, this is about more than being in a magazine,” she says. “I look back at my journey and I gave up time away from my family, I did schoolwork in hotel rooms, I worked nonstop. I believed in myself. I bet on myself—and that dream became a reality.”