Zendaya covers the May issues of both American and British Vogue. She’s the co-chair of this year’s Met Gala (the May issue usually goes to one of the co-chairs) and she’s also promoting Challengers, and that’s mostly what the interview is about. Well, that and Zendaya’s super-stardom and how she’s dealing with all of it. Hint: she’s a Virgo and she’s just plowing through and figuring it out as she goes along. Zendaya also makes some sweet comments about her boyfriend Tom Holland and whether she’s got babies on the brain (not so much). Some highlights from Vogue:
Playing a character in her 30s: “I’m always in a high school somewhere. And, mind you, I never went to high school.” So, to break away from that “was refreshing. And it was also kind of scary, because I was like, I hope people buy me as my own age, or maybe a little bit older, because I have friends that have kids, or are having kids.”
Starting a family some day: She too would like to start a family one day—and is a doting aunt to her gaggle of younger nieces and nephews (she has five half siblings)—but Zendaya is, unmistakably, in no rush to get there.
She produced Challengers and she chose her costars: Josh O’Connor (“I was like, You know who would be great? The guy from The Crown”), then Faist, a revelation in Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story, whom Zendaya had seen on Broadway in Dear Evan Hansen years earlier.
Whether she’s as competitive as Tashi: “I mean, listen, she takes the sh-t to a whole new level. [But] I’d say, yeah, I’m competitive, in the sense that I want to work hard and I try to not be competitive with anyone else. I try to just be like, I already did that, okay, so now I got to do better.” In her words, “sometimes it’s a bit crippling,” the pressure she puts on herself. “I guess where I was trying to empathize with my character—because it’s my job, even though I think she does some sh-t that I would absolutely never do—is in how nobody’s like, ‘Tashi, are you okay? What do you need?’ She’s just always running sh-t, and nobody is taking any of that off of her shoulders.”
Tom Holland’s fame: “We were both very, very young, but my career was already kind of going, and his changed overnight. One day you’re a kid and you’re at the pub with your friends, and then the next day you’re Spider-Man. I definitely watched his life kind of change in front of him. But he handled it really beautifully.”
On dealing with her level of fame longterm: “Because I don’t necessarily want my kids to have to deal with this. And what does my future look like? Am I going to be a public-facing person forever?” The dream scenario, to her mind, is being able to “make things and pop out when I need to pop out, and then have a safe and protected life with my family, and not be worried that if I’m not delivering something all the time, or not giving all the time, that everything’s going to go away. I think that’s always been a massive anxiety of mine: this idea that people will just be like, Actually, I know I’ve been with you since you were 14, but I’m over you now because you’re boring.”
Connecting to her famous peers like Timothee Chalamet & Austin Butler: “I think there could be more. I don’t know. I keep to myself a lot, which is my own fault. But also, I love and I’m grateful for my peers, but I would love to see more who look a little bit more like me around me. I think that that is something that is crucial and necessary.”
She didn’t make many choices when she was younger: “I don’t know how much of a choice I had. I have complicated feelings about kids and fame and being in the public eye, or being a child actor. We’ve seen a lot of cases of it being detrimental.… And I think only now, as an adult, am I starting to go, Oh, okay, wait a minute: I’ve only ever done what I’ve known, and this is all I’ve known. I’m almost going through my angsty teenager phase now, because I didn’t really have the time to do it before. I felt like I was thrust into a very adult position: I was becoming the breadwinner of my family very early, and there was a lot of role-reversal happening, and just kind of becoming grown, really.” She’d felt that she needed to be “this perfect being, and be everything that everyone needs me to be, and live up to all these expectations.”
She wishes she went to school: “Now, when I have these moments in my career—like, my first time leading a film that’s actually going to be in a theater—I feel like I shrink, and I can’t enjoy all the things that are happening to me, because I’m like this”—Zendaya balls up her fists. “I’m very tense, and I think that I carry that from being a kid and never really having an opportunity to just try sh-t. And I wish I went to school.”
Zendaya has previously talked about her “always in high school” vibe, and how rarely she plays characters her own age. Challengers should change that a little bit, and Zendaya’s own choices of which scripts and projects she does next will change that too. She knows she’s not going to be the ingenue forever and I think she’s prepared for it, honestly. That being said, she’s a natural to play a tennis player – most tennis players were pushed into the sport by their parents, much like child actors. The “stage mom/dad” thing is the same in tennis in particular, and on both sides, there will often be a real crisis when they realize how few choices they had and how they really weren’t “allowed” to make mistakes or figure out what they really wanted to do. What she says about Tom is really sweet though – she really loves that short king and he loves her right back.
Cover & IG courtesy of Vogue, additional photos courtesy of Backgrid.
Paris, FRANCE – The cast and guests attend the “Challengers” Paris Photocall at Maison De L’Amerique Latine in Paris, France. Pictured: Zendaya BACKGRID USA 6 APRIL 2024 BYLINE MUST READ: Best Image / BACKGRID USA: +1 310 798 9111 / usasales@backgrid.com UK: +44 208 344 2007 / uksales@backgrid.com *UK Clients – Pictures Containing Children Please Pixelate Face Prior To Publication* 
Paris, FRANCE – The cast and guests attend the “Challengers” Paris Photocall at Maison De L’Amerique Latine in Paris, France. Pictured: Zendaya BACKGRID USA 6 APRIL 2024 BYLINE MUST READ: Best Image / BACKGRID USA: +1 310 798 9111 / usasales@backgrid.com UK: +44 208 344 2007 / uksales@backgrid.com *UK Clients – Pictures Containing Children Please Pixelate Face Prior To Publication* 
Paris, FRANCE – The cast of “Challengers” gather for an exclusive photocall at the iconic Maison de l’Hôtel de Crillon in Paris. Pictured: Zendaya BACKGRID USA 6 APRIL 2024 BYLINE MUST READ: Best Image / BACKGRID USA: +1 310 798 9111 / usasales@backgrid.com UK: +44 208 344 2007 / uksales@backgrid.com *UK Clients – Pictures Containing Children Please Pixelate Face Prior To Publication*
Paris, FRANCE – Zendaya, Mike Faist, and Josh O’Connor dazzle on the red carpet at the Paris premiere of their new film “Challengers”. Pictured: Luca Guadagnino, Josh O’Connor, Zendaya Coleman Mike Faist BACKGRID USA 6 APRIL 2024 BYLINE MUST READ: Best Image / BACKGRID USA: +1 310 798 9111 / usasales@backgrid.com UK: +44 208 344 2007 / uksales@backgrid.com *UK Clients – Pictures Containing Children Please Pixelate Face Prior To Publication* 
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