Zendaya’s Biggest Year Yet Is Just Getting Started
How does a superstar on the cusp of 30 take on The Odyssey and two other soon-to-be-released projects? By keeping it grounded.
On nearing 30 and her character Athena in The Odyssey: “I think I do have wisdom to offer, but I also do still feel like a f***ing kid. Like what the f**k, I’m about to be 30? I still feel like a child inside,” she says. Athena is also the goddess of war, and as a creative person putting out art while the United States wages war in the Middle East, Zendaya sees a need for greater empathy. “There’s a real heaviness, and a real responsibility to that. How much we lean into dehumanizing other people—that breaks my heart, that’s something I can’t get down with. Because I just feel we have a tendency to not see other people as human beings worthy of safety, of joy, of the same things that we’re also worthy of,” she says.
On balancing multiple projects at once: “I remember being on set for Euphoria; it was a night shoot at a ranch. I was so tired, but I was also learning my Chakobsa lines for Dune. And then I started writing out my lines to memorize for that quick turnaround trip I was going to make to Iceland [for The Odyssey],” she says. “It’s not like I have a lot of lines in The Odyssey, but I was working with Christopher Nolan! The most embarrassing thing in life would be messing up my lines, which did happen once.”
On working with Tom Holland on both The Odyssey and Spider-Man: Brand New Day: They didn’t share scenes on the first film, so she was able to watch him on set. “I could have cried, I was so proud,” she says. “And then Spider-Man was a dream; I get to go to work every day with my best friend, the person that I love. We bring our dogs to work; it’s like a family affair. We grew up on those movies! It’s like coming home.”
On confirming rumors she and Tom Holland are married: (And she has a gold band on her ring finger, but when asked if she can confirm the rumors that she and partner Tom Holland are married, she says: “No, I’m not going to do that. They’re always searching for something”—meaning the internet, one presumes.)
On The Drama and expanding the roles available to Black women on screen: “I am drawn to complicated characters who I have to earn the audience’s empathy and trust for,” she says. She saw a personal challenge in the project [The Drama]. “I want to expand the roles someone like me is allowed to do, or can do. As a Black woman, what I can do as an actress,” she adds. And she appreciated how the plague of school shootings in this country is handled in the film. “It’s sick. Sometimes when reality feels so disturbing, the only way to deal with it in an artistic way is through humor,” she says.
Photographer: Norman Jean Roy
Stylist: Law Roach
Writer: Alexis Okeowo
Hair: Coree Moreno
Makeup: Ernesto Casillas
[Photo Credit: Norman Jean Roy for ELLE Magazine]
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