Becoming Zendaya (2026) Movie Script
1
Before the red carpets, before the Emmys,
before her name became
shorthand for a certain kind
of fearlessness, she was just a
kid from Oakland who liked to move.
She didn't know it yet, but she would
spend the next two
decades making moves over
and over in front of larger
and larger audiences.
This is the story of how a kid from
the Bay Area became one of the
defining performers of her generation.
Not by accident and not all at once,
but through a series of deliberate choices,
most of them made before
she was old enough to vote.
Zendaya Marie Stormer Coleman
was born on September 1st,
1996 in Oakland, the youngest of
six children in a close blended family.
Her father Kazembe is
African American and her
mother Claire grew up in the Midwest.
Zendaya has set her name, which means to
give thanks in Shona,
a language of Zimbabwe
and was chosen deliberately, a small act of
honoring heritage before she'd
done anything to be thankful for.
Both of her parents were teachers.
Money was tight in the early years, and
when Claire took a job managing the house
at the California Shakespeare
Theater in nearby Orenda,
it wasn't a glamorous career move.
It was a way to help support six
kids, but it changed the trajectory of the
youngest one's life.
Zendaya grew up backstage.
While her mother sold
raffle tickets and seated
patrons, her daughter watched
Shakespeare from the wings
night after night,
absorbing the rhythm of a
live audience before she
understood a word of the language.
She trained at the theater's
own conservatory program,
then later at San Francisco's
American Conservatory Theater.
At the Oakland School for the Arts, a
competitive audition only public
school, she majored in theater,
taking stage roles that ranged from a
young girl in a Caribbean
folktale to, notably,
a male lead in the musical
Caroline or Change.
Outside the theater
world, she found two more
disciplines, three years
dancing hip hop with the
Bay Area Troupe Future
Shock Oakland and hula
training at the Academy of Hawaiian Arts.
None of it was casual.
Between theater, hip hop, hula, and a run
of modeling and commercial
work, the young Zendaya was,
in effect, already a
working performer years
before Hollywood found her,
showing up, rehearsing, hitting
marks, absorbing notes.
Her parents didn't push
her into show business
so much as they built a structure around
a kid who wanted to be there anyway.
Discipline first, ambition second.
It's a childhood that, on
paper, looks unremarkable,
a working-class family,
a public art school,
community theater, but it
produced something specific, a
performer who understood,
long before fame arrived, that
talent without discipline goes nowhere.
That lesson would carry
her through every version
of the career still to come.
My mom, she used to work at the
California Shakespeare Theater.
So I always grew up around the theater,
and that's kind of where I really started
to really fall in love with
the arts and things like that.
But I knew I really wanted to be
on Disney Channel when
Hannah Martinez first came out.
I was in my room, I was in like
fourth grade or something like that, and
I was in my room and I was
just watching on my television,
and then all of a sudden I started crying.
And I was crying because I wasn't
up there, and I felt like it wasn't fair
that she was doing what I really
wanted to do, but I wasn't up there.
So that's when I kind of knew I
wanted to be on Disney Channel.
In 2010, at 13 years old, Zendaya
won the role of Rocky Blue in a new
Disney Channel series called Shake It Up,
about two friends in Chicago who
become dancers on a local TV show.
I think we're just, we're just like our
character except for the
fact that my mom is not a cop.
I do not have a younger
brother, I have an older one.
Yeah, I think I'm basically
just like my character.
I act a lot like her, and the only
thing different is I don't dress like
her a lot, but that's it.
Basically, we're like
kind of the same person.
We're technically the same person.
It was, in a sense, a role built for
exactly the skill set she'd spent years
accumulating.
A dancer's body, a
trained performer's ease on
camera, and none of the
visible nerves of a first-timer.
Me, I was extremely shy.
If anyone can tell you when
she first met me, I was really shy.
We were in the audition, there was
a whole bunch of girls, and I just kind
of was in the corner listening to
Michael Jackson just by myself.
I was always really shy until I actually
moved out of Los Angeles
and started doing Shake It Up.
That's when I kind of broke
out of my shell actually.
Now I'm not shy at all.
I don't get nervous anymore.
I don't get those butterflies
as much, but I like it.
Shake It Up ran for three seasons and
turned Zendaya, alongside co-star
Bella Thorne, into a bona fide tween idol.
She released her first single in 2011 and
her debut solo single, Replay,
charted on the Billboard Hot 100 in 2013,
a rare crossover for a Disney
Channel star of that moment.
Yeah, wanna put this song on replay
I can listen to you all day
Hear you all day
Yeah
Fan conventions, mall
tours, magazine spreads,
the machinery of a Disney
franchise moved into full gear,
and she moved with it.
If one day we did a
pop-up, what would you do?
I would probably be...
Let's see...
That's tough.
I couldn't really see
myself doing anything else.
What's been the funniest thing
that's ever happened on set?
I think one funny thing,
I walked into a wall.
You walked into a wall?
I walked into a wall.
I was talking to Adam and
Zendaya, and Adam plays Deuce,
and I don't know how it happened,
but I was looking at them,
and I just straight face into a wall.
And then Zendaya was sitting
on my couch with me on set.
Oh, this is a good one.
- And she had...
- Technically, this is my
embarrassing moment.
Yes, I'm sharing hers
because it was really ridiculous.
She had a vitamin water on the
couch, and I was like, she had that there.
We're just sitting and
relaxing on the computer,
but all of a sudden, I feel like
something really cold on my butt.
And I'm like, what is that?
Like, Spilsberg, what is going on?
Look, my entire bottom is
covered in vitamin water.
And I was in an outfit that was
Ibrahim's clothes, it wasn't mine.
So I had to go on camera,
and I had to be in front of an
audience with that wet bottom.
And I was like, oh no, oh
no, what am I going to do?
So she had to blow dry her butt.
Bring out her blow dryer.
We blow dyed off so that nobody would
freak out, but wardrobe didn't
freak out because they still noticed it.
And I had to go on with...
They rewashed our
clothes because it also got
on mine, and it was really cold
outside, we were shooting outside.
And I had to go on with wet pants.
Yep, the whole time with wet pants.
I was very, very upset.
Reporters at the time
regularly remarked on how
composed she seemed
on camera, how unrattled by
repetitive questions, how
ready with an answer that
was thoughtful rather than rehearsed.
Some of that was simply
a trained performer's
instinct, but it also reflected
something her parents
had insisted on from
the start, that education
and self-possession mattered as much as the
work itself, and that a camera pointed
at her was not a reason to stop being
careful, deliberate, or herself.
What do I have coming up next?
Definitely season two of Shake It Up just
premiered, so we're super excited for that.
Super excited for the fans to see
what we've been working so hard on.
Lots of music.
I just came out with my first single,
Swag It Out, so that's doing really well.
Also, I did a single with Bella called
Watch Me, and so I'm just working on
my music, trying to make that happen, and
balancing school and life
and everything else with it.
Behind the scenes,
colleagues from this era have
described a young
performer who treated the set
less like a playground and more like a
workplace, arriving prepared,
aware of the camera, aware
of the brand she was
building in real time.
It was a foundation of
professionalism that a
great many child stars never get
the chance or the guidance to build.
For Zendaya, it would
prove essential to what
came next, not just staying
famous, but staying whole.
Thank you so much.
By her late teens,
Zendaya was navigating one
of the most well-documented
traps in entertainment,
the transition out of being a Disney kid.
Countless young stars before
her had struggled publicly
with that shift, and she
seemed acutely, almost
strategically, aware of the
pattern, determined not to repeat it.
In 2015, she returned
to Disney Channel, this
time on her own terms, starring in and
producing K.C. Undercover,
a spy family sitcom
she helped shape from the inside.
K.C., are you okay?
Yeah, I don't know.
Suddenly, I feel a little
sick to my stomach.
It sounds like you have food poisoning.
- What'd you eat?
- I don't know, just that pasta that...
You made me.
What are you saying?
I'm saying you did this to me.
You poisoned your own daughter.
K.C., do you honestly believe
that I would ever poison anyone?
Well, you did it to the
enemy agent in Luxembourg.
It's how you got the
nomination in the first place.
You make me sick to my stomach.
She has spoken publicly
about pushing for the
show to center a Black family and for
her character to break
from the network's usual
Disney girl mold, an early example of an
instinct that would
define her career, not just
accepting roles but negotiating
for what those roles represented.
That same instinct for choosing her
moments carefully is part of why, in 2016,
a 20-year-old Zendaya
found herself in the cast
of Beyonc's Lemonade,
the surprise visual album that
became one of the defining
cultural statements of the decade.
Zendaya appeared in the
all-night segment alongside
a group of young Black
actresses and artists
in a project explicitly built
around Black womanhood,
resilience, and reclamation.
For a performer who'd spent her whole life
idolizing Beyonc from a distance,
it wasn't just a credit on a resume.
She'd later call it a genuine honor to
have been part of the project, a rare
instance of the fan and the
professional lining up in the same frame.
Pull the sorrow from
between my legs like silk,
knot after knot after knot.
It's a small credit in the larger arc
of her career, easy to overlook next to
the Emmys and the movie
premieres still to come.
Around the same time she was reshaping her
career on screen, Zendaya
was building an entirely
different kind of platform,
the red carpet itself.
I like the fact that it was kind of like
a simple dress and you
can do anything with it.
So it's like, it's more about
your, like how you style it.
And so I liked that it
was very chic and easy.
It's like a blank canvas and I could
just have fun and like, so we decided
to pack on, you know, bracelets
and big hoop earrings and crazy hair.
That kind of gives it a look of your
own that, you know, anyone can wear
it and do their own thing with it.
She met stylist Law Roach
when she was just 13 years old.
On the strength of a
mutual introduction rather
than any formal industry connection,
Roach, a self-taught former
vintage shop owner from Chicago,
would later call her
his first major client.
What began as an unlikely pairing between a
teenager and a stylist
with no established fashion
pedigree grew over more than a decade into
one of the most influential creative
partnerships in modern celebrity fashion.
I have a stylist, he's right over
there and we work together.
We're like the dream team.
And basically, you know, he knows my style.
He knows what I'm
comfortable with, what I feel.
And we always try to push it a little bit.
So, you know, there's times
where I'm like, come on, let's try this.
And he's like, no, I'm not a fan.
And then he ends up loving it.
And there's times when
he's like, just try this.
I'm like, I don't really like it.
And then I'm a fan.
It's just that, you know, push and
pull, give and take kind of thing.
Roach began styling
Zendaya in vintage couture and
bold archival pieces most
stylists wouldn't have risked
on a young star still
associated with a kid's network.
Of course, I think it's so important as
somebody who, you know, loves fashion or is
interested in fashion to be around it,
you know, and actually see it happen.
So it's exciting for me.
Together, they treated
red carpets less like photo
opportunities and more like storytelling.
Each look built around a theme, a film's
world, or a cultural
reference, turning press tours
into something closer to performance art.
It is by multiple accounts
the reasons Zendaya
became one of the only performers of her
generation as closely associated
with fashion as with acting.
I think fashion is kind of a way
for us to express ourselves anyway.
So just that coming hand in
hand, I think is really, really special.
So I'm excited to be here tonight.
I think it definitely, as like I said,
a young woman in the
entertainment industry.
And, you know, it's just, I think fashion
and everything is definitely my world.
So I love being here.
What I love most about the
Grammys, um, the red carpets.
I love to see what people are wearing.
You know what I'm saying?
It's that's always a fun
thing because the Grammys,
like people either go really classic
and elegant or they just go wild.
So we'll see.
Roach has described their
relationship less as stylists
and client and more as siblings who made
a pact early on to
support each other's rise.
And the results bear that out.
I mean, we've been doing it for so long.
Like we've been together
for 15 years, you know,
and I've been very lucky to do, to be the
only stylist she's ever
had and to do everything.
So it's just a, you know, it's just a
maturation of, you know, where she was
when she first started her career,
where I was and to where we are now.
So, you know, it's all so special, I guess.
His work with her helped launch his own
career into the top tier of the fashion
industry, eventually earning him
the industry's first ever stylist award.
For Zendaya, fashion became
something more than promotion.
It became another stage on which to say
who she was and who she was becoming.
I've grown and I've
experimented and I've, you know,
met Law when I was like 14 years old.
So we've grown together in such a way
and, um, developed our
tastes and things that we enjoy.
And, um, and then you just become more
and more like fearless, you know,
you get, well, let's try it, let's do it.
Like who cares?
You know, and, and that's
always a really good feeling.
And it's a, and it's a power,
empowering feeling too.
In 2017, two films arrived within months of
each other that would permanently
change the scale of Zendaya's career.
The first was The Greatest Showman.
The circus musical in which she
played trapeze artist Anne Wheeler.
Of course, in the beginning,
you're like, Of course.
Well, you know, you've
got to understand that
like, you know, this, this woman is, is
experiencing this, you
know, this is something that
she deals with every
day that she's confronted
with and she faces with and she walks
around with, but not for
his character, you know?
So this is an entirely new world for him.
And she, she's explaining
this is no, this does not happen.
You don't understand.
This is dangerous.
This is not going to happen.
And so it's that idea of, of knowing
in your mind what you think is right,
but then also having to, at some point,
let your heart speak louder than your mind
and just follow what your heart is saying.
And that's very difficult,
especially at the time,
especially with the dangers,
especially given the circumstances.
But I think, again, I think it's, it's so,
it's so relevant to now, you know,
people still try to tell people
who they're allowed to love.
And that's just not how it should be.
It was a commercial
afterthought on release, opening
modestly, and then became
a sleeper phenomenon driven
by streaming and its
soundtrack, turning into one
of the most enduring
movie musicals of its decade.
Hit it!
I'm very excited.
You know, it's definitely
that time of year.
And I feel like because I work so
much, I never get to enjoy the holidays
and like, you know, fully soak up all
the fun stuff that happens during
the holidays, which is things like this.
So it's kind of lucky that my job
has allowed me to do something
that's actually really fun and really cool.
And I wish my whole
family was here to see it.
I'm so excited.
I did this collaboration with
Booming Girls and Aqua.
And basically, you know, we wanted to do
pieces and, and things
that were inspired by
the movie, but also were wearable for a
girl going to a cocktail party or going to,
you know, a holiday event, you know,
so obviously there's no trapeze
artist wear, but there's some inspiration.
There's a little glitter,
there's a little shine,
you know, without being
too literal, you know.
The second was Spider-Man:
Homecoming, her entry
into the Marvel Cinematic Universe as
Michelle Jones, otherwise known as MJ.
It was her feature film debut inside one
of the largest franchises on the planet.
And it placed her,
almost overnight, inside a
level of fame most performers never reach.
She's very enthusiastic, she's
always observing, and she
says her little one-liner.
And I think it's cool to embrace
the weird, you know what I mean?
Like have somebody that
doesn't make the situation
awkward, but doesn't care, you know?
Out of that comes a lot of comedy.
She's mysterious, but
she likes it that way.
Very intelligent, smart,
always reading a book or
thinking about something, can't
really tell what she's thinking.
But when she does
interact with people, because
she's so smart, she comes
off a little weird, right?
And people don't quite understand
her and what's going on in her head.
And I think that it's, I
think it's cool, you know?
I feel like she's relatable in that sense
to every kid that's just so smart,
they just don't really have friends.
But she secretly does want
to have friends, you know?
She secretly does want to
be friends with Peter and Ned.
She just would never
want them to know that.
It also put her alongside
co-star Tom Holland,
playing Peter Parker to her MJ, a
professional pairing that
would, over the following years,
become something more.
Though neither of them said
much about it publicly for a long time.
My favorite thing about MJ in this film
that is something we
haven't seen massively in
the previous two films
is how nurturing she is.
You know, she really does become a shoulder
for Peter to cry on, and I really
like that we've been able to build our
relationship like that
throughout the films.
It's so funny, he can say why,
but can't ask her out on a date.
Right?
You think that one would
be easier than the other.
- That's the thing there.
- Oh, so great.
I feel like that's what
this movie does so well,
is it illustrates how difficult
that is when you're that age.
Like, that's scarier than
jumping off a building
and saving people's lives,
is like, talking to your crush.
That is so crazy.
The stakes are much higher.
The stakes are much higher.
The Spider-Man films that
followed only accelerated that shift.
Premiere footage from
the era tells its own story.
Each red carpet larger
and louder than the last,
fan crowds stretching
further down the block,
press events multiplying across continents.
What had been a
career built carefully, city
by city and role by role, was
now operating on a global scale.
Box office receipts
translated into a kind of
fame that doesn't fit neatly into
any one country's media cycle.
Spider-Man's been in everyone's life.
Yeah, I feel like how can
you ever not be Spider-Man?
Yeah, what's so funny is that like, I
didn't realize before how much
people actually reference Spider-Man.
- In everything, yeah!
- Yeah, but its everywhere.
Literally everywhere.
It's so cool.
Somewhere inside that
scale was a relationship the
tabloids had been speculating
about for years before
either of them confirmed anything.
Zendaya and Holland kept
their personal life almost
entirely off the record through
multiple Spider-Man press tours.
A level of discipline
that, watching it now,
looks like an extension of the same
boundary-setting instinct
from earlier in her career.
They didn't publicly acknowledge
the relationship until late
2021 on their own terms
and timeline, not the industry's.
So, I was wondering what British
stuff Tom has taught you about?
Any slang you've picked
up, or anything you've
learned up about British culture?
Other than the C word!
Yeah.
Uh...
Let's see, yeah, no, I've...
You've learned a bit of copywriting lately.
Yeah, yeah, and I, you know, I
find that like, I do this thing when I'm
around him for a while where I speak
with British inflections
but not the British accent.
- Yeah.
- Which is really strange.
You have like an English cadence
while saying it as an American.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Because you guys like
ask questions, like we
go down, so we're like,
like, where are you going?
And he goes, where are you going?
Yeah.
And then I just kind of, I, oh, yeah, so.
Your favorite one is, I say,
yeah, he was funny, weren't he?
Yeah, funny, weren't he?
And she says that all the time.
Because you just said funny, weren't he?
Yeah.
Yeah, he's funny, weren't he?
Yeah, he was funny, weren't he?
Funny, weren't he?
Or something that is that,
you always say that at the end.
Yeah, that was funny, that.
That was funny, that.
That was proper funny, that was.
That.
Yeah, you're right, we do do that.
Something you already said, that.
It was funny, wasn't it?
Wasn't it, that.
That.
Your relationship with
Tom, though, working on this,
I love even on social media, seeing it,
you guys are just constantly,
like, having digs at each other.
Has it just been like that the entire time?
Yes, yes, it has.
No, honestly, from the first day, when the
cast kind of first met each other,
we all bonded, like, immediately.
We had a day where we
hung out with each other,
went to a picnic and
did, like, this whole thing.
And then the next day, we were
supposed to have work and our
work was supposed to go do an
activity and bond with each other.
And we were like, we
just did that yesterday.
Like, so all of us
became friends so quickly.
And then, you know, with Tom, I think,
doing lip sync battle and stuff like that,
you know, we're always paired together.
So we have just become
really, really close.
And he's just, he's so great.
He's a great person.
And it's nice to know that, like,
the superhero is also a good person.
You know what I mean?
And I'm, again, I can't
complain about having
any type of pressure on
my character because,
I mean, he's Spider-Man
and he's handling it so well, so.
It would have been easy at this point
for the story to become
simply about box office
and franchise math or just as
easily about tabloid speculation.
Zendaya has generally
declined to let it become either.
But even as the scale of her fame
kept expanding, the more
interesting turn in Zendaya's
career was about to happen
somewhere much smaller
and much darker than
a blockbuster premiere.
I promise you, if I could be
a different person, I would.
Not because I want
it, but because they do.
But here's the thing.
One day I just showed up without a
map or a compass and at some point,
you have to make a choice.
In 2019, Zendaya took on the role of
Rue Bennett in HBO's
Euphoria, a drug-addicted
teenager narrating her own unraveling.
It was as far from a Disney Channel
dance number as a role could get.
And it announced, unmistakably,
that the actress behind
it intended to be taken seriously
as an artist, not just as a star.
The recognition came fast.
At the pandemic-altered
2020 Emmys, delivered largely
over video call, Zendaya
won Outstanding Lead Actress
in a Drama Series for the role, becoming,
at 24, the youngest person ever to win
in that category and only the second Black
woman in the award's history to do so.
Two years later, for the
show's second season,
she won it again, becoming the youngest
two-time winner in Emmy
history in any category.
Accepting the award,
she spoke not about the
achievement itself but
about the audience, who had
seen themselves in Rue's
struggle, telling the room
she carried their stories with
her along with the characters.
You know, my greatest wish for Euphoria
was that it could help heal people.
And I just want to say
thank you to everyone who
has shared their story with me.
I want you to know that anyone
who has loved a Rue or feels like they
are a Rue, I want you to know that
I'm so grateful for your stories and
I carry them with me
and I carry them with her.
So thank you so much.
By this point, she wasn't
only Euphoria's star.
She was also a credited
executive producer on the series,
recognized that same award season as
the youngest producing
nominee in Emmy history,
a distinction that quietly foreshadowed
the next phase of her career.
The dramatic weight of Euphoria
didn't slow her film career down.
If anything, it ran alongside
an unprecedented run
of blockbuster roles,
including the culmination of her
Spider-Man trilogy in No Way Home and
playing Shani in Denis
Villeneuve's Doom and its sequels.
What do I like most about playing Shani?
I think what I really appreciate that Denis
brought forward with
Shani in this iteration, I
think is really giving
her strong conviction and
a real strong sense of self.
And I think for me, that was enjoyable
as an actress because it made the whole
love story much harder and more
difficult, which means we had to earn it.
And their love isn't given.
It's something that they have to work for.
It's breathtaking.
When you see sand here, imagine water.
If you dive in, you can't reach the bottom.
You dive in?
Yes, it's called swimming.
I don't believe you.
What would you give to be back filming
those incredible desert scenes now?
It was absolutely beautiful.
I mean, I got to see views that I
think very few people get to see.
And I was able to really be
submerged in the world of Doom.
I felt like I was literally in Arrakis.
So I was incredibly grateful for the whole
journey and very excited
for more people to see it.
And I hope everyone enjoys it because I
would love to revisit these
characters and experience it all again.
The opportunity to work with Denny, I think
he's an extraordinary
filmmaker and has always been
someone that I also admired.
So stepping into that, I was like, I
don't have much time and there's so many
people that I have to hopefully stand next
to and do somewhat of a good job, you know?
And it was intimidating and scary.
But as soon as I got there, there was
such a warmth and an embrace that
I felt immediately
comfortable and taken care of.
And all I had to do was be guided
and Denny opened up and explained the
world to me and was able to
do that in a short amount of time.
And everybody was so welcoming
and it was a beautiful experience.
I was only there for a few days,
but I felt like I had been very
quickly a part of a family.
So yeah, I appreciate all of you guys
for making it such a wonderful time.
And I feel extremely grateful to just be
a piece of this really gorgeous
puzzle that is Dune, you know?
So I, yeah, very, very humbled
and it was a special, special time.
Watching the footage from these
years side by side is almost disorienting.
The same actress within the same 12 months
delivering an Emmy winning
performance as a teenager
in crisis and headlining
some of the biggest
science fiction and superhero
productions in the world.
She comes into it extremely guarded with a
lot of pain surrounding what
Paul really represents in her life.
And so I think for me, it was exciting
because I was like, oh, there's this
internal constant dialogue
I think she's having with
herself over whether
or not she should allow
this person in and whether
or not it is safe to love.
And I don't know.
So the love story was interesting to find
with someone who is so intensely fierce and
strong and guarded for good reason.
It was the moment Critical
Respect finally caught
up with the ambition that had been visible
to anyone paying close
attention since that first
Disney Channel audition tape.
In the summer of 2020, with film and
television production shut down
worldwide, Zendaya called Sam Levinson,
the creator of Euphoria,
whose second season
had just been halted by the pandemic and
asked if he could write and direct a
movie during quarantine,
something small enough to shoot
safely that could put the
show's idol crew back to work.
Six days later, he had a script.
Malcolm and Marie, a black and white
two-hander about a filmmaker
and his girlfriend unraveling
over one long night
after his film's premiere.
You are by far the most
excruciating, difficult,
stubbornly obnoxious woman
I've ever met in my entire life.
I fucking love you.
Oh, he's so sensitive.
He's romantic.
I bet he's sweet, right?
Well, I mean, yeah.
When he's not being an
emotional fucking terrorist.
Oh.
I love the way you see the world, Marie.
Mystery.
The unknown.
It's what supports the
tension of a relationship.
You're angry.
No.
It's a what-if factor.
Marie.
Marie.
Marie.
What if there's someone
who loved them better?
Zendaya starred opposite
John David Washington, but she
didn't stop at acting.
She helped finance the production
alongside Washington, Levinson,
and his producing partner,
taking on real financial
risks for a project built from nothing but
urgency and an empty house outside Carmel.
The gamble paid off commercially
before the film had even been finished.
Netflix won a bidding war against half a
dozen major studios and
streamers, acquiring the film
for $30 million, a striking sum for a
movie made on a budget of roughly $2
...5 million.
Critically, the reception was more divided.
Reviewers were split
on the script itself, some
calling it self-indulgent,
but there was little
disagreement about the two
performances at its center.
Even critics who
disliked the film tended to
single out Zendaya's work
opposite Washington as some
of the most mature, unguarded
acting of her career to that point.
Commercial success, mixed
reviews, a performance that expanded
what people thought she could do.
It was a strange, telling
combination, and it
wouldn't be the last time in her
career that all three arrived together.
If Euphoria marked her
arrival as a serious actress,
the years that followed marked a quieter,
less publicized shift from
performer to producer, shaping
projects from the inside rather
than simply appearing in them.
Challengers, the 2024 tennis
drama directed by Guadagnino,
is the clearest example.
Zendaya was accredited
producer on the film by
her own account, drawn to producing
not as a vanity title, but as a way to
be present in the filmmaking
process itself, sitting
in on cinematography discussions,
learning from directors, having
what she has described as a genuinely valid
seat at the table rather
than a ceremonial one.
The first thing that I
produced was my Disney show.
Yeah, so way back when.
And then, yeah, Malcolm & Marie, Euphoria.
A little couple things.
But this is the second film, yes.
Welcome to London.
How does it feel to be
in the home of tennis?
You're in here, the UK.
I know, I feel very lucky to be here.
I'm so grateful to everyone
who has showed up.
Every time I do these things, I'm
like, nobody's going to actually be there.
But then they are, and you're like, oh
my gosh, this is so cool and so special.
So I feel very lucky.
And why should audiences see this?
What's the message?
Man, it's just, it's a ride.
It's a rollercoaster, like
an emotional rollercoaster.
But ultimately I think a lot of fun
and leaves you questioning
everything and wanting to
talk to, you know, and argue probably about
what character you like best
and what character you hate most.
- And want to play tennis as well.
- Yeah.
It wasn't the first time
she'd done this kind of work,
her producing credit on
K.C. Undercover years earlier
was an early, less noticed
version of the same instinct.
But by the time of Challengers, the
ambition was unmistakable and public.
An actress who had spent her whole career
being directed was now actively
choosing which stories got told and how.
You were incredible today.
To have a fashion line, a foundation.
Just gonna turn a whole
family into millionaires.
What are you gonna do now?
Unfortunately, my only skill in
life is hitting a ball with a racket.
I want you to be my coach.
I want you to be my coach.
How often does this happen?
Going after the same girl?
Come here.
Which one of us?
Shes a maneater
This is a game about
winning the points that matter.
I don't need to play my games with you.
Can I have a cigarette with me?
I have to talk to you.
I don't smoke and I'm not talking to you.
The film unfolds around a single lower tier
match between Art and
Patrick years later, cutting
back and forth across more than a decade
to reveal the tangled
history between all three.
It's a role built on control
rather than sympathy.
Tashi is exacting, strategic,
often unreadable, and it
gave Zendaya a very different
kind of showcase than Euphoria.
Not a character unraveling, but
one who never stops calculating,
even when everything
around her is falling apart.
In which ways do you,
kind of, connect to Tashi?
Erm, in many ways I think erm...
You know, while we go about
things very differently,
I think ultimately she has a real love and
passion for what she does and it's taken
away from her so soon, so I
definitely empathize with that.
Industry coverage increasingly
described her less as a
star for hire and more as an architect
of her own slate, building
relationships with directors,
developing projects, and
positioning herself for a career
that extends well past any single role.
It is in many ways the natural continuation
of the instinct first
visible in that Oakland
theater lobby, not just
performing in someone else's
story, but helping decide
what story gets told at all.
- Zendaya, right here, right here.
- Right here, right here, right here.
Zendaya, yeah!
Zendaya grew in her world of fame by
also letting the public know that she cares
about them and about people with illnesses.
She has grown to be a huge support system
to her many fans and of the wider public.
In 2012, she became an
ambassador for Convoy
of Hope and encouraged fans to
support Hurricane Sandy response efforts.
It's awesome.
You know, I really, really
appreciate it because
I love what they do and I'm
very inspired by what they do.
You know, both my parents are educators, so
young people and kind of, I don't know,
just kind of giving them something to kind
of release their energy into and be
a part of and feel like they're part of
something bigger, I think
is really, really important,
especially like from a
teacher's perspective.
Our next honoree's
name means to give thanks
in Shona, which couldn't be more fitting.
She's an exceptional role
model for young people
everywhere, standing
up for the joys of giving
back and the importance
of empathy and kindness.
It means a lot to me.
I definitely think why it's so important is
because, you know,
sometimes you have to realize
that you have a lot of things in
your life and sometimes people don't.
So seeing things like this, you don't have
any clue how important it is and how
much it really does affect their lives.
I think that, you know, idle time
is the devil's workshop, right?
So being able to have something
that they can hold on to and they can be
a part of and just kind of seeing
that and being actually there on the ground
and understanding that is so beautiful.
So I appreciate everything
that you do and thank you.
In 2014, she recorded
John Legend's All of Me
with a portion of the proceeds
going to the organization.
The same year, she
celebrated her 18th birthday
with a campaign to help feed at least
150 hungry children in Haiti,
Tanzania and the Philippines.
Today, I'm here to surprise
some of our trick-or-treaters.
We have this amazing school here and I
cannot wait to meet them and just talk
to them and make sure they know that
I am watching them and I'm very, very
thankful for all the work that they've done
and hopefully inspire them to just go out
there and continue to support the cause.
I am the spokesperson for Trick-or-Treat
for UNICEF, which is very exciting for me
given that I was a UNICEF trick-or-treater
for elementary school,
my entire elementary school.
So I already knew about it.
I was already aware with the work that
UNICEF had done and continued to do.
So when they kind of came to me about
the whole project, the interest, and I
was just like totally on
board and totally ready to go.
What does it mean to
Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF?
It means that, you know, I think it says
it on the box, really kids helping kids.
I think not only are we helping people
and we're making a difference
and providing things for
children that they actually need and like
just basic things that
you would just assume
that people would have the
luxury of having that don't.
But we're also in the process,
I think, teaching humanity.
We're teaching love.
We're teaching sharing, giving, kindness.
There's so many things that we're
learning as well in this process.
And I think it's really important to start
kids off young kind of thinking that
way because at least for me, when I did
it now, look at me now kind of
still being a part of UNICEF and still,
I guess you say, trick-or-treating.
This year, what's really cool is if you
don't have the orange box, if it's not
in your school or you
haven't ordered yours,
you can actually go online and basically, I
would say, virtually
have a little orange box
and kind of set up a donation page
that you can notify
your friends, family about
and still be a part of the cause,
still donate more, if not as much as
anybody else would and
still make a difference,
but just in a much easier,
new age kind of way.
Hi!
We have matching shirts.
Okay, I'm going to let the shock set in.
Zendaya has supported
campaigns to raise awareness about
underserved communities
and underprivileged schools.
Well, I think it's important
that young people
feel accepted and feel loved and feel that
they have a support system
and people behind them.
And so I think that young people, like
I've said a million times, we're the future
and it's important that
we cultivate the young
people's minds and allow
them to be exactly who they are.
In September 2017, she
partnered with Verizon Foundation
as a spokesperson for
their national We Need
More initiative to bring
technology, access and learning
opportunities to children.
Don't care about other people's opinions.
That's what I think is
the number one thing.
And when you step outside and you do
what you do, dress and live for yourself
and for the satisfaction of yourself.
A lot of people do that just so
someone can tell them that they're pretty.
But the person that you should be waiting
to hear I'm pretty from is yourself.
Two decades on from that first leap across
an Oakland stage, it is difficult to find
a corner of popular culture
Zendaya hasn't touched.
Television, film, fashion, music,
producing, magazine covers across
continents and languages.
Museum-adjacent fashion moments
discussed as seriously as any runway show.
Awards season campaigns
built around performances that, a
decade earlier, a former
Disney Channel star wasn't
supposed to be trusted with.
What makes the arc unusual
isn't simply the scale of the fame.
Plenty of performers
reach a version of that.
It's the visible thread of intention
running through nearly every turn.
A childhood built on
discipline rather than accident.
A teenage star who
protected her own boundaries
when the industry offered none.
A red carpet partnership
built on genuine creative
trust rather than transaction.
And a dramatic pivot
into difficult material taken
on for its own sake, years before
the awards arrived to validate it.
They need to love themselves
and that it takes time.
It's not something that happens overnight.
No one is born with perfect confidence.
No one just comes out the room like,
oh, I feel fabulous, you know what I mean?
It takes time and you need to know
that there are tons and tons of other
women and you can go through
that change at any point in your life.
You know, my mom recently just kind of,
I think, became more
confident and came into
her own and she's a grown woman, you
know, so it's something that can happen at
any point in your life and know that
you are on your own clock, you are
on your own time
and not to rest yourself.
By 2026, the story had
entered a new phase entirely.
Zendaya took a small but pointed role, the
goddess Athena, in Christopher
Nolan's The Odyssey, a
film that would go on to become the
highest grossing movie of
Nolan's career, crossing a
billion dollars worldwide within weeks.
That same year, she returned to the role
that first made her a
global star, headlining
Spider-Man: Brand New
Day, alongside Tom Holland,
a film that delivered the
second biggest opening
weekend in box office history.
For one extraordinary stretch,
Zendaya and Holland had
two films simultaneously
breaking records at the same
box office, on the same
weekends, press labeling
them, only half-jokingly, the
reigning king and queen of Hollywood.
It was a strange symmetry.
A partnership that had
spent years staying almost
entirely out of public view was now, by
simple commercial
force, impossible to ignore.
I also feel like you need to talk
about your ins and outs when you wish
Zendaya a happy birthday.
You said, my M.J., happy birthday,
give me a call when you're up.
It was iconic.
Thank you.
- It's had like 19 million likes.
- Wow.
How does it feel to be in the public
eye and have people be so invested
in like a social media post, say,
in the two of you in this franchise?
- I mean...
- I took the picture.
- No, I'm kidding.
- Yeah, you did take the picture.
I mean, it's crazy.
It's crazy, but something we try and not
think about all that much, you know.
We're here to do a job.
We're here to promote a movie
that we love and we're proud of.
And, you know, we're very lucky that we
have fans that are so supportive
and so invested in our lives.
You know, we're very careful with
how much of our personal lives we share.
So everything, you know,
is something that goes
through, not planning, but like,
you're like, hey, can I post this?
And you're like, let me just have a look.
And then we're zooming
in in the background,
making sure there's nothing in there.
So, you know, everything,
you know, there's a process to it.
But, you know, it's sometimes nice to
share some of your life with the fans.
And it's nice to see that they,
you know, reciprocated that love.
And, you know, I didn't know
it had 19 million likes, though.
That is fucking crazy.
Yeah.
Speaking of secrets, you told
the secret that broke the Internet.
Did I?
Yes, you did.
- Oh.
- Was that planned?
I don't know what you're talking about.
You think I'm married.
We missed a wedding.
We could roll back that tape.
I have no idea what you mean.
Who got married?
I mean, people get married every day.
It's about a wedding.
I know, but dark, but dark, but dark.
It's about a wedding.
And she's signing her name Holland.
In Vegas, she was signing her name Holland.
Do you call her Mrs. Holland?
I call her Zendaya.
Zendaya's story, notably,
has no tidy ending.
New films, new collaborations, and
new producing credits continue to arrive.
What began as a little girl in the
wings of a community theater has become, by
any reasonable measure, one
of the defining entertainment
figures of her generation.
And, on the evidence of the last two
decades, someone who is only just
beginning to decide what comes next.
I'd much rather be known for the
kind of human being that I am than the
last project that I did.
And I would much rather people
respect me for that part of who I am.
So I think it's just kind of demanding
that respect and also continuing
to project that upon others as well.
It's really important.
Before the red carpets, before the Emmys,
before her name became
shorthand for a certain kind
of fearlessness, she was just a
kid from Oakland who liked to move.
She didn't know it yet, but she would
spend the next two
decades making moves over
and over in front of larger
and larger audiences.
This is the story of how a kid from
the Bay Area became one of the
defining performers of her generation.
Not by accident and not all at once,
but through a series of deliberate choices,
most of them made before
she was old enough to vote.
Zendaya Marie Stormer Coleman
was born on September 1st,
1996 in Oakland, the youngest of
six children in a close blended family.
Her father Kazembe is
African American and her
mother Claire grew up in the Midwest.
Zendaya has set her name, which means to
give thanks in Shona,
a language of Zimbabwe
and was chosen deliberately, a small act of
honoring heritage before she'd
done anything to be thankful for.
Both of her parents were teachers.
Money was tight in the early years, and
when Claire took a job managing the house
at the California Shakespeare
Theater in nearby Orenda,
it wasn't a glamorous career move.
It was a way to help support six
kids, but it changed the trajectory of the
youngest one's life.
Zendaya grew up backstage.
While her mother sold
raffle tickets and seated
patrons, her daughter watched
Shakespeare from the wings
night after night,
absorbing the rhythm of a
live audience before she
understood a word of the language.
She trained at the theater's
own conservatory program,
then later at San Francisco's
American Conservatory Theater.
At the Oakland School for the Arts, a
competitive audition only public
school, she majored in theater,
taking stage roles that ranged from a
young girl in a Caribbean
folktale to, notably,
a male lead in the musical
Caroline or Change.
Outside the theater
world, she found two more
disciplines, three years
dancing hip hop with the
Bay Area Troupe Future
Shock Oakland and hula
training at the Academy of Hawaiian Arts.
None of it was casual.
Between theater, hip hop, hula, and a run
of modeling and commercial
work, the young Zendaya was,
in effect, already a
working performer years
before Hollywood found her,
showing up, rehearsing, hitting
marks, absorbing notes.
Her parents didn't push
her into show business
so much as they built a structure around
a kid who wanted to be there anyway.
Discipline first, ambition second.
It's a childhood that, on
paper, looks unremarkable,
a working-class family,
a public art school,
community theater, but it
produced something specific, a
performer who understood,
long before fame arrived, that
talent without discipline goes nowhere.
That lesson would carry
her through every version
of the career still to come.
My mom, she used to work at the
California Shakespeare Theater.
So I always grew up around the theater,
and that's kind of where I really started
to really fall in love with
the arts and things like that.
But I knew I really wanted to be
on Disney Channel when
Hannah Martinez first came out.
I was in my room, I was in like
fourth grade or something like that, and
I was in my room and I was
just watching on my television,
and then all of a sudden I started crying.
And I was crying because I wasn't
up there, and I felt like it wasn't fair
that she was doing what I really
wanted to do, but I wasn't up there.
So that's when I kind of knew I
wanted to be on Disney Channel.
In 2010, at 13 years old, Zendaya
won the role of Rocky Blue in a new
Disney Channel series called Shake It Up,
about two friends in Chicago who
become dancers on a local TV show.
I think we're just, we're just like our
character except for the
fact that my mom is not a cop.
I do not have a younger
brother, I have an older one.
Yeah, I think I'm basically
just like my character.
I act a lot like her, and the only
thing different is I don't dress like
her a lot, but that's it.
Basically, we're like
kind of the same person.
We're technically the same person.
It was, in a sense, a role built for
exactly the skill set she'd spent years
accumulating.
A dancer's body, a
trained performer's ease on
camera, and none of the
visible nerves of a first-timer.
Me, I was extremely shy.
If anyone can tell you when
she first met me, I was really shy.
We were in the audition, there was
a whole bunch of girls, and I just kind
of was in the corner listening to
Michael Jackson just by myself.
I was always really shy until I actually
moved out of Los Angeles
and started doing Shake It Up.
That's when I kind of broke
out of my shell actually.
Now I'm not shy at all.
I don't get nervous anymore.
I don't get those butterflies
as much, but I like it.
Shake It Up ran for three seasons and
turned Zendaya, alongside co-star
Bella Thorne, into a bona fide tween idol.
She released her first single in 2011 and
her debut solo single, Replay,
charted on the Billboard Hot 100 in 2013,
a rare crossover for a Disney
Channel star of that moment.
Yeah, wanna put this song on replay
I can listen to you all day
Hear you all day
Yeah
Fan conventions, mall
tours, magazine spreads,
the machinery of a Disney
franchise moved into full gear,
and she moved with it.
If one day we did a
pop-up, what would you do?
I would probably be...
Let's see...
That's tough.
I couldn't really see
myself doing anything else.
What's been the funniest thing
that's ever happened on set?
I think one funny thing,
I walked into a wall.
You walked into a wall?
I walked into a wall.
I was talking to Adam and
Zendaya, and Adam plays Deuce,
and I don't know how it happened,
but I was looking at them,
and I just straight face into a wall.
And then Zendaya was sitting
on my couch with me on set.
Oh, this is a good one.
- And she had...
- Technically, this is my
embarrassing moment.
Yes, I'm sharing hers
because it was really ridiculous.
She had a vitamin water on the
couch, and I was like, she had that there.
We're just sitting and
relaxing on the computer,
but all of a sudden, I feel like
something really cold on my butt.
And I'm like, what is that?
Like, Spilsberg, what is going on?
Look, my entire bottom is
covered in vitamin water.
And I was in an outfit that was
Ibrahim's clothes, it wasn't mine.
So I had to go on camera,
and I had to be in front of an
audience with that wet bottom.
And I was like, oh no, oh
no, what am I going to do?
So she had to blow dry her butt.
Bring out her blow dryer.
We blow dyed off so that nobody would
freak out, but wardrobe didn't
freak out because they still noticed it.
And I had to go on with...
They rewashed our
clothes because it also got
on mine, and it was really cold
outside, we were shooting outside.
And I had to go on with wet pants.
Yep, the whole time with wet pants.
I was very, very upset.
Reporters at the time
regularly remarked on how
composed she seemed
on camera, how unrattled by
repetitive questions, how
ready with an answer that
was thoughtful rather than rehearsed.
Some of that was simply
a trained performer's
instinct, but it also reflected
something her parents
had insisted on from
the start, that education
and self-possession mattered as much as the
work itself, and that a camera pointed
at her was not a reason to stop being
careful, deliberate, or herself.
What do I have coming up next?
Definitely season two of Shake It Up just
premiered, so we're super excited for that.
Super excited for the fans to see
what we've been working so hard on.
Lots of music.
I just came out with my first single,
Swag It Out, so that's doing really well.
Also, I did a single with Bella called
Watch Me, and so I'm just working on
my music, trying to make that happen, and
balancing school and life
and everything else with it.
Behind the scenes,
colleagues from this era have
described a young
performer who treated the set
less like a playground and more like a
workplace, arriving prepared,
aware of the camera, aware
of the brand she was
building in real time.
It was a foundation of
professionalism that a
great many child stars never get
the chance or the guidance to build.
For Zendaya, it would
prove essential to what
came next, not just staying
famous, but staying whole.
Thank you so much.
By her late teens,
Zendaya was navigating one
of the most well-documented
traps in entertainment,
the transition out of being a Disney kid.
Countless young stars before
her had struggled publicly
with that shift, and she
seemed acutely, almost
strategically, aware of the
pattern, determined not to repeat it.
In 2015, she returned
to Disney Channel, this
time on her own terms, starring in and
producing K.C. Undercover,
a spy family sitcom
she helped shape from the inside.
K.C., are you okay?
Yeah, I don't know.
Suddenly, I feel a little
sick to my stomach.
It sounds like you have food poisoning.
- What'd you eat?
- I don't know, just that pasta that...
You made me.
What are you saying?
I'm saying you did this to me.
You poisoned your own daughter.
K.C., do you honestly believe
that I would ever poison anyone?
Well, you did it to the
enemy agent in Luxembourg.
It's how you got the
nomination in the first place.
You make me sick to my stomach.
She has spoken publicly
about pushing for the
show to center a Black family and for
her character to break
from the network's usual
Disney girl mold, an early example of an
instinct that would
define her career, not just
accepting roles but negotiating
for what those roles represented.
That same instinct for choosing her
moments carefully is part of why, in 2016,
a 20-year-old Zendaya
found herself in the cast
of Beyonc's Lemonade,
the surprise visual album that
became one of the defining
cultural statements of the decade.
Zendaya appeared in the
all-night segment alongside
a group of young Black
actresses and artists
in a project explicitly built
around Black womanhood,
resilience, and reclamation.
For a performer who'd spent her whole life
idolizing Beyonc from a distance,
it wasn't just a credit on a resume.
She'd later call it a genuine honor to
have been part of the project, a rare
instance of the fan and the
professional lining up in the same frame.
Pull the sorrow from
between my legs like silk,
knot after knot after knot.
It's a small credit in the larger arc
of her career, easy to overlook next to
the Emmys and the movie
premieres still to come.
Around the same time she was reshaping her
career on screen, Zendaya
was building an entirely
different kind of platform,
the red carpet itself.
I like the fact that it was kind of like
a simple dress and you
can do anything with it.
So it's like, it's more about
your, like how you style it.
And so I liked that it
was very chic and easy.
It's like a blank canvas and I could
just have fun and like, so we decided
to pack on, you know, bracelets
and big hoop earrings and crazy hair.
That kind of gives it a look of your
own that, you know, anyone can wear
it and do their own thing with it.
She met stylist Law Roach
when she was just 13 years old.
On the strength of a
mutual introduction rather
than any formal industry connection,
Roach, a self-taught former
vintage shop owner from Chicago,
would later call her
his first major client.
What began as an unlikely pairing between a
teenager and a stylist
with no established fashion
pedigree grew over more than a decade into
one of the most influential creative
partnerships in modern celebrity fashion.
I have a stylist, he's right over
there and we work together.
We're like the dream team.
And basically, you know, he knows my style.
He knows what I'm
comfortable with, what I feel.
And we always try to push it a little bit.
So, you know, there's times
where I'm like, come on, let's try this.
And he's like, no, I'm not a fan.
And then he ends up loving it.
And there's times when
he's like, just try this.
I'm like, I don't really like it.
And then I'm a fan.
It's just that, you know, push and
pull, give and take kind of thing.
Roach began styling
Zendaya in vintage couture and
bold archival pieces most
stylists wouldn't have risked
on a young star still
associated with a kid's network.
Of course, I think it's so important as
somebody who, you know, loves fashion or is
interested in fashion to be around it,
you know, and actually see it happen.
So it's exciting for me.
Together, they treated
red carpets less like photo
opportunities and more like storytelling.
Each look built around a theme, a film's
world, or a cultural
reference, turning press tours
into something closer to performance art.
It is by multiple accounts
the reasons Zendaya
became one of the only performers of her
generation as closely associated
with fashion as with acting.
I think fashion is kind of a way
for us to express ourselves anyway.
So just that coming hand in
hand, I think is really, really special.
So I'm excited to be here tonight.
I think it definitely, as like I said,
a young woman in the
entertainment industry.
And, you know, it's just, I think fashion
and everything is definitely my world.
So I love being here.
What I love most about the
Grammys, um, the red carpets.
I love to see what people are wearing.
You know what I'm saying?
It's that's always a fun
thing because the Grammys,
like people either go really classic
and elegant or they just go wild.
So we'll see.
Roach has described their
relationship less as stylists
and client and more as siblings who made
a pact early on to
support each other's rise.
And the results bear that out.
I mean, we've been doing it for so long.
Like we've been together
for 15 years, you know,
and I've been very lucky to do, to be the
only stylist she's ever
had and to do everything.
So it's just a, you know, it's just a
maturation of, you know, where she was
when she first started her career,
where I was and to where we are now.
So, you know, it's all so special, I guess.
His work with her helped launch his own
career into the top tier of the fashion
industry, eventually earning him
the industry's first ever stylist award.
For Zendaya, fashion became
something more than promotion.
It became another stage on which to say
who she was and who she was becoming.
I've grown and I've
experimented and I've, you know,
met Law when I was like 14 years old.
So we've grown together in such a way
and, um, developed our
tastes and things that we enjoy.
And, um, and then you just become more
and more like fearless, you know,
you get, well, let's try it, let's do it.
Like who cares?
You know, and, and that's
always a really good feeling.
And it's a, and it's a power,
empowering feeling too.
In 2017, two films arrived within months of
each other that would permanently
change the scale of Zendaya's career.
The first was The Greatest Showman.
The circus musical in which she
played trapeze artist Anne Wheeler.
Of course, in the beginning,
you're like, Of course.
Well, you know, you've
got to understand that
like, you know, this, this woman is, is
experiencing this, you
know, this is something that
she deals with every
day that she's confronted
with and she faces with and she walks
around with, but not for
his character, you know?
So this is an entirely new world for him.
And she, she's explaining
this is no, this does not happen.
You don't understand.
This is dangerous.
This is not going to happen.
And so it's that idea of, of knowing
in your mind what you think is right,
but then also having to, at some point,
let your heart speak louder than your mind
and just follow what your heart is saying.
And that's very difficult,
especially at the time,
especially with the dangers,
especially given the circumstances.
But I think, again, I think it's, it's so,
it's so relevant to now, you know,
people still try to tell people
who they're allowed to love.
And that's just not how it should be.
It was a commercial
afterthought on release, opening
modestly, and then became
a sleeper phenomenon driven
by streaming and its
soundtrack, turning into one
of the most enduring
movie musicals of its decade.
Hit it!
I'm very excited.
You know, it's definitely
that time of year.
And I feel like because I work so
much, I never get to enjoy the holidays
and like, you know, fully soak up all
the fun stuff that happens during
the holidays, which is things like this.
So it's kind of lucky that my job
has allowed me to do something
that's actually really fun and really cool.
And I wish my whole
family was here to see it.
I'm so excited.
I did this collaboration with
Booming Girls and Aqua.
And basically, you know, we wanted to do
pieces and, and things
that were inspired by
the movie, but also were wearable for a
girl going to a cocktail party or going to,
you know, a holiday event, you know,
so obviously there's no trapeze
artist wear, but there's some inspiration.
There's a little glitter,
there's a little shine,
you know, without being
too literal, you know.
The second was Spider-Man:
Homecoming, her entry
into the Marvel Cinematic Universe as
Michelle Jones, otherwise known as MJ.
It was her feature film debut inside one
of the largest franchises on the planet.
And it placed her,
almost overnight, inside a
level of fame most performers never reach.
She's very enthusiastic, she's
always observing, and she
says her little one-liner.
And I think it's cool to embrace
the weird, you know what I mean?
Like have somebody that
doesn't make the situation
awkward, but doesn't care, you know?
Out of that comes a lot of comedy.
She's mysterious, but
she likes it that way.
Very intelligent, smart,
always reading a book or
thinking about something, can't
really tell what she's thinking.
But when she does
interact with people, because
she's so smart, she comes
off a little weird, right?
And people don't quite understand
her and what's going on in her head.
And I think that it's, I
think it's cool, you know?
I feel like she's relatable in that sense
to every kid that's just so smart,
they just don't really have friends.
But she secretly does want
to have friends, you know?
She secretly does want to
be friends with Peter and Ned.
She just would never
want them to know that.
It also put her alongside
co-star Tom Holland,
playing Peter Parker to her MJ, a
professional pairing that
would, over the following years,
become something more.
Though neither of them said
much about it publicly for a long time.
My favorite thing about MJ in this film
that is something we
haven't seen massively in
the previous two films
is how nurturing she is.
You know, she really does become a shoulder
for Peter to cry on, and I really
like that we've been able to build our
relationship like that
throughout the films.
It's so funny, he can say why,
but can't ask her out on a date.
Right?
You think that one would
be easier than the other.
- That's the thing there.
- Oh, so great.
I feel like that's what
this movie does so well,
is it illustrates how difficult
that is when you're that age.
Like, that's scarier than
jumping off a building
and saving people's lives,
is like, talking to your crush.
That is so crazy.
The stakes are much higher.
The stakes are much higher.
The Spider-Man films that
followed only accelerated that shift.
Premiere footage from
the era tells its own story.
Each red carpet larger
and louder than the last,
fan crowds stretching
further down the block,
press events multiplying across continents.
What had been a
career built carefully, city
by city and role by role, was
now operating on a global scale.
Box office receipts
translated into a kind of
fame that doesn't fit neatly into
any one country's media cycle.
Spider-Man's been in everyone's life.
Yeah, I feel like how can
you ever not be Spider-Man?
Yeah, what's so funny is that like, I
didn't realize before how much
people actually reference Spider-Man.
- In everything, yeah!
- Yeah, but its everywhere.
Literally everywhere.
It's so cool.
Somewhere inside that
scale was a relationship the
tabloids had been speculating
about for years before
either of them confirmed anything.
Zendaya and Holland kept
their personal life almost
entirely off the record through
multiple Spider-Man press tours.
A level of discipline
that, watching it now,
looks like an extension of the same
boundary-setting instinct
from earlier in her career.
They didn't publicly acknowledge
the relationship until late
2021 on their own terms
and timeline, not the industry's.
So, I was wondering what British
stuff Tom has taught you about?
Any slang you've picked
up, or anything you've
learned up about British culture?
Other than the C word!
Yeah.
Uh...
Let's see, yeah, no, I've...
You've learned a bit of copywriting lately.
Yeah, yeah, and I, you know, I
find that like, I do this thing when I'm
around him for a while where I speak
with British inflections
but not the British accent.
- Yeah.
- Which is really strange.
You have like an English cadence
while saying it as an American.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Because you guys like
ask questions, like we
go down, so we're like,
like, where are you going?
And he goes, where are you going?
Yeah.
And then I just kind of, I, oh, yeah, so.
Your favorite one is, I say,
yeah, he was funny, weren't he?
Yeah, funny, weren't he?
And she says that all the time.
Because you just said funny, weren't he?
Yeah.
Yeah, he's funny, weren't he?
Yeah, he was funny, weren't he?
Funny, weren't he?
Or something that is that,
you always say that at the end.
Yeah, that was funny, that.
That was funny, that.
That was proper funny, that was.
That.
Yeah, you're right, we do do that.
Something you already said, that.
It was funny, wasn't it?
Wasn't it, that.
That.
Your relationship with
Tom, though, working on this,
I love even on social media, seeing it,
you guys are just constantly,
like, having digs at each other.
Has it just been like that the entire time?
Yes, yes, it has.
No, honestly, from the first day, when the
cast kind of first met each other,
we all bonded, like, immediately.
We had a day where we
hung out with each other,
went to a picnic and
did, like, this whole thing.
And then the next day, we were
supposed to have work and our
work was supposed to go do an
activity and bond with each other.
And we were like, we
just did that yesterday.
Like, so all of us
became friends so quickly.
And then, you know, with Tom, I think,
doing lip sync battle and stuff like that,
you know, we're always paired together.
So we have just become
really, really close.
And he's just, he's so great.
He's a great person.
And it's nice to know that, like,
the superhero is also a good person.
You know what I mean?
And I'm, again, I can't
complain about having
any type of pressure on
my character because,
I mean, he's Spider-Man
and he's handling it so well, so.
It would have been easy at this point
for the story to become
simply about box office
and franchise math or just as
easily about tabloid speculation.
Zendaya has generally
declined to let it become either.
But even as the scale of her fame
kept expanding, the more
interesting turn in Zendaya's
career was about to happen
somewhere much smaller
and much darker than
a blockbuster premiere.
I promise you, if I could be
a different person, I would.
Not because I want
it, but because they do.
But here's the thing.
One day I just showed up without a
map or a compass and at some point,
you have to make a choice.
In 2019, Zendaya took on the role of
Rue Bennett in HBO's
Euphoria, a drug-addicted
teenager narrating her own unraveling.
It was as far from a Disney Channel
dance number as a role could get.
And it announced, unmistakably,
that the actress behind
it intended to be taken seriously
as an artist, not just as a star.
The recognition came fast.
At the pandemic-altered
2020 Emmys, delivered largely
over video call, Zendaya
won Outstanding Lead Actress
in a Drama Series for the role, becoming,
at 24, the youngest person ever to win
in that category and only the second Black
woman in the award's history to do so.
Two years later, for the
show's second season,
she won it again, becoming the youngest
two-time winner in Emmy
history in any category.
Accepting the award,
she spoke not about the
achievement itself but
about the audience, who had
seen themselves in Rue's
struggle, telling the room
she carried their stories with
her along with the characters.
You know, my greatest wish for Euphoria
was that it could help heal people.
And I just want to say
thank you to everyone who
has shared their story with me.
I want you to know that anyone
who has loved a Rue or feels like they
are a Rue, I want you to know that
I'm so grateful for your stories and
I carry them with me
and I carry them with her.
So thank you so much.
By this point, she wasn't
only Euphoria's star.
She was also a credited
executive producer on the series,
recognized that same award season as
the youngest producing
nominee in Emmy history,
a distinction that quietly foreshadowed
the next phase of her career.
The dramatic weight of Euphoria
didn't slow her film career down.
If anything, it ran alongside
an unprecedented run
of blockbuster roles,
including the culmination of her
Spider-Man trilogy in No Way Home and
playing Shani in Denis
Villeneuve's Doom and its sequels.
What do I like most about playing Shani?
I think what I really appreciate that Denis
brought forward with
Shani in this iteration, I
think is really giving
her strong conviction and
a real strong sense of self.
And I think for me, that was enjoyable
as an actress because it made the whole
love story much harder and more
difficult, which means we had to earn it.
And their love isn't given.
It's something that they have to work for.
It's breathtaking.
When you see sand here, imagine water.
If you dive in, you can't reach the bottom.
You dive in?
Yes, it's called swimming.
I don't believe you.
What would you give to be back filming
those incredible desert scenes now?
It was absolutely beautiful.
I mean, I got to see views that I
think very few people get to see.
And I was able to really be
submerged in the world of Doom.
I felt like I was literally in Arrakis.
So I was incredibly grateful for the whole
journey and very excited
for more people to see it.
And I hope everyone enjoys it because I
would love to revisit these
characters and experience it all again.
The opportunity to work with Denny, I think
he's an extraordinary
filmmaker and has always been
someone that I also admired.
So stepping into that, I was like, I
don't have much time and there's so many
people that I have to hopefully stand next
to and do somewhat of a good job, you know?
And it was intimidating and scary.
But as soon as I got there, there was
such a warmth and an embrace that
I felt immediately
comfortable and taken care of.
And all I had to do was be guided
and Denny opened up and explained the
world to me and was able to
do that in a short amount of time.
And everybody was so welcoming
and it was a beautiful experience.
I was only there for a few days,
but I felt like I had been very
quickly a part of a family.
So yeah, I appreciate all of you guys
for making it such a wonderful time.
And I feel extremely grateful to just be
a piece of this really gorgeous
puzzle that is Dune, you know?
So I, yeah, very, very humbled
and it was a special, special time.
Watching the footage from these
years side by side is almost disorienting.
The same actress within the same 12 months
delivering an Emmy winning
performance as a teenager
in crisis and headlining
some of the biggest
science fiction and superhero
productions in the world.
She comes into it extremely guarded with a
lot of pain surrounding what
Paul really represents in her life.
And so I think for me, it was exciting
because I was like, oh, there's this
internal constant dialogue
I think she's having with
herself over whether
or not she should allow
this person in and whether
or not it is safe to love.
And I don't know.
So the love story was interesting to find
with someone who is so intensely fierce and
strong and guarded for good reason.
It was the moment Critical
Respect finally caught
up with the ambition that had been visible
to anyone paying close
attention since that first
Disney Channel audition tape.
In the summer of 2020, with film and
television production shut down
worldwide, Zendaya called Sam Levinson,
the creator of Euphoria,
whose second season
had just been halted by the pandemic and
asked if he could write and direct a
movie during quarantine,
something small enough to shoot
safely that could put the
show's idol crew back to work.
Six days later, he had a script.
Malcolm and Marie, a black and white
two-hander about a filmmaker
and his girlfriend unraveling
over one long night
after his film's premiere.
You are by far the most
excruciating, difficult,
stubbornly obnoxious woman
I've ever met in my entire life.
I fucking love you.
Oh, he's so sensitive.
He's romantic.
I bet he's sweet, right?
Well, I mean, yeah.
When he's not being an
emotional fucking terrorist.
Oh.
I love the way you see the world, Marie.
Mystery.
The unknown.
It's what supports the
tension of a relationship.
You're angry.
No.
It's a what-if factor.
Marie.
Marie.
Marie.
What if there's someone
who loved them better?
Zendaya starred opposite
John David Washington, but she
didn't stop at acting.
She helped finance the production
alongside Washington, Levinson,
and his producing partner,
taking on real financial
risks for a project built from nothing but
urgency and an empty house outside Carmel.
The gamble paid off commercially
before the film had even been finished.
Netflix won a bidding war against half a
dozen major studios and
streamers, acquiring the film
for $30 million, a striking sum for a
movie made on a budget of roughly $2
...5 million.
Critically, the reception was more divided.
Reviewers were split
on the script itself, some
calling it self-indulgent,
but there was little
disagreement about the two
performances at its center.
Even critics who
disliked the film tended to
single out Zendaya's work
opposite Washington as some
of the most mature, unguarded
acting of her career to that point.
Commercial success, mixed
reviews, a performance that expanded
what people thought she could do.
It was a strange, telling
combination, and it
wouldn't be the last time in her
career that all three arrived together.
If Euphoria marked her
arrival as a serious actress,
the years that followed marked a quieter,
less publicized shift from
performer to producer, shaping
projects from the inside rather
than simply appearing in them.
Challengers, the 2024 tennis
drama directed by Guadagnino,
is the clearest example.
Zendaya was accredited
producer on the film by
her own account, drawn to producing
not as a vanity title, but as a way to
be present in the filmmaking
process itself, sitting
in on cinematography discussions,
learning from directors, having
what she has described as a genuinely valid
seat at the table rather
than a ceremonial one.
The first thing that I
produced was my Disney show.
Yeah, so way back when.
And then, yeah, Malcolm & Marie, Euphoria.
A little couple things.
But this is the second film, yes.
Welcome to London.
How does it feel to be
in the home of tennis?
You're in here, the UK.
I know, I feel very lucky to be here.
I'm so grateful to everyone
who has showed up.
Every time I do these things, I'm
like, nobody's going to actually be there.
But then they are, and you're like, oh
my gosh, this is so cool and so special.
So I feel very lucky.
And why should audiences see this?
What's the message?
Man, it's just, it's a ride.
It's a rollercoaster, like
an emotional rollercoaster.
But ultimately I think a lot of fun
and leaves you questioning
everything and wanting to
talk to, you know, and argue probably about
what character you like best
and what character you hate most.
- And want to play tennis as well.
- Yeah.
It wasn't the first time
she'd done this kind of work,
her producing credit on
K.C. Undercover years earlier
was an early, less noticed
version of the same instinct.
But by the time of Challengers, the
ambition was unmistakable and public.
An actress who had spent her whole career
being directed was now actively
choosing which stories got told and how.
You were incredible today.
To have a fashion line, a foundation.
Just gonna turn a whole
family into millionaires.
What are you gonna do now?
Unfortunately, my only skill in
life is hitting a ball with a racket.
I want you to be my coach.
I want you to be my coach.
How often does this happen?
Going after the same girl?
Come here.
Which one of us?
Shes a maneater
This is a game about
winning the points that matter.
I don't need to play my games with you.
Can I have a cigarette with me?
I have to talk to you.
I don't smoke and I'm not talking to you.
The film unfolds around a single lower tier
match between Art and
Patrick years later, cutting
back and forth across more than a decade
to reveal the tangled
history between all three.
It's a role built on control
rather than sympathy.
Tashi is exacting, strategic,
often unreadable, and it
gave Zendaya a very different
kind of showcase than Euphoria.
Not a character unraveling, but
one who never stops calculating,
even when everything
around her is falling apart.
In which ways do you,
kind of, connect to Tashi?
Erm, in many ways I think erm...
You know, while we go about
things very differently,
I think ultimately she has a real love and
passion for what she does and it's taken
away from her so soon, so I
definitely empathize with that.
Industry coverage increasingly
described her less as a
star for hire and more as an architect
of her own slate, building
relationships with directors,
developing projects, and
positioning herself for a career
that extends well past any single role.
It is in many ways the natural continuation
of the instinct first
visible in that Oakland
theater lobby, not just
performing in someone else's
story, but helping decide
what story gets told at all.
- Zendaya, right here, right here.
- Right here, right here, right here.
Zendaya, yeah!
Zendaya grew in her world of fame by
also letting the public know that she cares
about them and about people with illnesses.
She has grown to be a huge support system
to her many fans and of the wider public.
In 2012, she became an
ambassador for Convoy
of Hope and encouraged fans to
support Hurricane Sandy response efforts.
It's awesome.
You know, I really, really
appreciate it because
I love what they do and I'm
very inspired by what they do.
You know, both my parents are educators, so
young people and kind of, I don't know,
just kind of giving them something to kind
of release their energy into and be
a part of and feel like they're part of
something bigger, I think
is really, really important,
especially like from a
teacher's perspective.
Our next honoree's
name means to give thanks
in Shona, which couldn't be more fitting.
She's an exceptional role
model for young people
everywhere, standing
up for the joys of giving
back and the importance
of empathy and kindness.
It means a lot to me.
I definitely think why it's so important is
because, you know,
sometimes you have to realize
that you have a lot of things in
your life and sometimes people don't.
So seeing things like this, you don't have
any clue how important it is and how
much it really does affect their lives.
I think that, you know, idle time
is the devil's workshop, right?
So being able to have something
that they can hold on to and they can be
a part of and just kind of seeing
that and being actually there on the ground
and understanding that is so beautiful.
So I appreciate everything
that you do and thank you.
In 2014, she recorded
John Legend's All of Me
with a portion of the proceeds
going to the organization.
The same year, she
celebrated her 18th birthday
with a campaign to help feed at least
150 hungry children in Haiti,
Tanzania and the Philippines.
Today, I'm here to surprise
some of our trick-or-treaters.
We have this amazing school here and I
cannot wait to meet them and just talk
to them and make sure they know that
I am watching them and I'm very, very
thankful for all the work that they've done
and hopefully inspire them to just go out
there and continue to support the cause.
I am the spokesperson for Trick-or-Treat
for UNICEF, which is very exciting for me
given that I was a UNICEF trick-or-treater
for elementary school,
my entire elementary school.
So I already knew about it.
I was already aware with the work that
UNICEF had done and continued to do.
So when they kind of came to me about
the whole project, the interest, and I
was just like totally on
board and totally ready to go.
What does it mean to
Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF?
It means that, you know, I think it says
it on the box, really kids helping kids.
I think not only are we helping people
and we're making a difference
and providing things for
children that they actually need and like
just basic things that
you would just assume
that people would have the
luxury of having that don't.
But we're also in the process,
I think, teaching humanity.
We're teaching love.
We're teaching sharing, giving, kindness.
There's so many things that we're
learning as well in this process.
And I think it's really important to start
kids off young kind of thinking that
way because at least for me, when I did
it now, look at me now kind of
still being a part of UNICEF and still,
I guess you say, trick-or-treating.
This year, what's really cool is if you
don't have the orange box, if it's not
in your school or you
haven't ordered yours,
you can actually go online and basically, I
would say, virtually
have a little orange box
and kind of set up a donation page
that you can notify
your friends, family about
and still be a part of the cause,
still donate more, if not as much as
anybody else would and
still make a difference,
but just in a much easier,
new age kind of way.
Hi!
We have matching shirts.
Okay, I'm going to let the shock set in.
Zendaya has supported
campaigns to raise awareness about
underserved communities
and underprivileged schools.
Well, I think it's important
that young people
feel accepted and feel loved and feel that
they have a support system
and people behind them.
And so I think that young people, like
I've said a million times, we're the future
and it's important that
we cultivate the young
people's minds and allow
them to be exactly who they are.
In September 2017, she
partnered with Verizon Foundation
as a spokesperson for
their national We Need
More initiative to bring
technology, access and learning
opportunities to children.
Don't care about other people's opinions.
That's what I think is
the number one thing.
And when you step outside and you do
what you do, dress and live for yourself
and for the satisfaction of yourself.
A lot of people do that just so
someone can tell them that they're pretty.
But the person that you should be waiting
to hear I'm pretty from is yourself.
Two decades on from that first leap across
an Oakland stage, it is difficult to find
a corner of popular culture
Zendaya hasn't touched.
Television, film, fashion, music,
producing, magazine covers across
continents and languages.
Museum-adjacent fashion moments
discussed as seriously as any runway show.
Awards season campaigns
built around performances that, a
decade earlier, a former
Disney Channel star wasn't
supposed to be trusted with.
What makes the arc unusual
isn't simply the scale of the fame.
Plenty of performers
reach a version of that.
It's the visible thread of intention
running through nearly every turn.
A childhood built on
discipline rather than accident.
A teenage star who
protected her own boundaries
when the industry offered none.
A red carpet partnership
built on genuine creative
trust rather than transaction.
And a dramatic pivot
into difficult material taken
on for its own sake, years before
the awards arrived to validate it.
They need to love themselves
and that it takes time.
It's not something that happens overnight.
No one is born with perfect confidence.
No one just comes out the room like,
oh, I feel fabulous, you know what I mean?
It takes time and you need to know
that there are tons and tons of other
women and you can go through
that change at any point in your life.
You know, my mom recently just kind of,
I think, became more
confident and came into
her own and she's a grown woman, you
know, so it's something that can happen at
any point in your life and know that
you are on your own clock, you are
on your own time
and not to rest yourself.
By 2026, the story had
entered a new phase entirely.
Zendaya took a small but pointed role, the
goddess Athena, in Christopher
Nolan's The Odyssey, a
film that would go on to become the
highest grossing movie of
Nolan's career, crossing a
billion dollars worldwide within weeks.
That same year, she returned to the role
that first made her a
global star, headlining
Spider-Man: Brand New
Day, alongside Tom Holland,
a film that delivered the
second biggest opening
weekend in box office history.
For one extraordinary stretch,
Zendaya and Holland had
two films simultaneously
breaking records at the same
box office, on the same
weekends, press labeling
them, only half-jokingly, the
reigning king and queen of Hollywood.
It was a strange symmetry.
A partnership that had
spent years staying almost
entirely out of public view was now, by
simple commercial
force, impossible to ignore.
I also feel like you need to talk
about your ins and outs when you wish
Zendaya a happy birthday.
You said, my M.J., happy birthday,
give me a call when you're up.
It was iconic.
Thank you.
- It's had like 19 million likes.
- Wow.
How does it feel to be in the public
eye and have people be so invested
in like a social media post, say,
in the two of you in this franchise?
- I mean...
- I took the picture.
- No, I'm kidding.
- Yeah, you did take the picture.
I mean, it's crazy.
It's crazy, but something we try and not
think about all that much, you know.
We're here to do a job.
We're here to promote a movie
that we love and we're proud of.
And, you know, we're very lucky that we
have fans that are so supportive
and so invested in our lives.
You know, we're very careful with
how much of our personal lives we share.
So everything, you know,
is something that goes
through, not planning, but like,
you're like, hey, can I post this?
And you're like, let me just have a look.
And then we're zooming
in in the background,
making sure there's nothing in there.
So, you know, everything,
you know, there's a process to it.
But, you know, it's sometimes nice to
share some of your life with the fans.
And it's nice to see that they,
you know, reciprocated that love.
And, you know, I didn't know
it had 19 million likes, though.
That is fucking crazy.
Yeah.
Speaking of secrets, you told
the secret that broke the Internet.
Did I?
Yes, you did.
- Oh.
- Was that planned?
I don't know what you're talking about.
You think I'm married.
We missed a wedding.
We could roll back that tape.
I have no idea what you mean.
Who got married?
I mean, people get married every day.
It's about a wedding.
I know, but dark, but dark, but dark.
It's about a wedding.
And she's signing her name Holland.
In Vegas, she was signing her name Holland.
Do you call her Mrs. Holland?
I call her Zendaya.
Zendaya's story, notably,
has no tidy ending.
New films, new collaborations, and
new producing credits continue to arrive.
What began as a little girl in the
wings of a community theater has become, by
any reasonable measure, one
of the defining entertainment
figures of her generation.
And, on the evidence of the last two
decades, someone who is only just
beginning to decide what comes next.
I'd much rather be known for the
kind of human being that I am than the
last project that I did.
And I would much rather people
respect me for that part of who I am.
So I think it's just kind of demanding
that respect and also continuing
to project that upon others as well.
It's really important.