Zendaya was excited to play something beside a high schooler in Challengers
After a decade playing high schoolers, Zendaya is finally getting closer to her own age
Aux News Zendaya
Zendaya is one of the biggest names in Hollywood right now, but outside of her work with Sam Levinson, she hasn’t had much chance to prove her versatility as a serious actor. 2024 has finally provided the opportunity for her to prove herself as an artist and a movie star with Dune 2 and Challengers. What sets the films apart is that she actually gets to play a grown-up: “I’m always in a high school somewhere,” she says in a new interview with British Vogue. So Challengers “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.”
The 27-year-old—who also produced Challengers—expressed a similar sentiment in a recent Vogue “get ready with me” video: “People see me as a teenager, since I was a teenager for so long. This is really finally me being able to play a woman closer to my own age,” she said. “Well, technically I do still play a teenager at some points, but then she grows up.”
This isn’t to say Zendaya is contemptuous of her past work as a child actor—at a recent press conference, she joked that her Disney Channel series K.C. Undercover prepared her for Challengers. “No, I’m kidding. You know, listen, the Disney stuff really does… it’s a good training ground.” Still, her adult perspective on child stardom is not wholly positive. “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,” she tells British Vogue. “And I think only now, as an adult, am I starting to go, ‘Oh, OK, 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.”
The young star admits she can’t fully enjoy an accomplishment like leading her first truly adult film because of the constant pressure she’s been under for years. “I’m very tense,” she says, “and I think that I carry that from being a kid and never really having an opportunity to just try shit. And I wish I went to school.”
51 Comments
It it flops the critics can say “Obviously a major malfunction.”
This means she’s about 5 years away from too old for Hollywood.
You had me at “Zendaya is in an adult film”
“And I wish I went to school.”
And I thought school sucked, the grass is always greener.
Maybe it was your attitude?
Or maybe it was because kids called me stupid for liking to read books and that physical, mental and sexual abuse by teachers upon students was not looked on as a bad thing?Naah, wasn’t kids getting molested by teachers, choke slammed, jacked up against lockers, desks chucked at them…etc…definitely my attitude.
Oh, is this about our personal experiences now? I wasn’t aware that I had to have a trauma pissing contest to make a pithy remark.So as long as this is a big ol’ anecdotal argument festival: While I did eat a little shit in one of the several high schools I attended (we moved around a lot in my teen years) for being a goth-lite kid who wore a pentacle, mostly kids in my schools stayed in their cliques and didn’t mess with each other. The teachers in the city schools struggled to keep student attention but nobody was molested or choked or whatever Class of Nuke’Em High shit you went through. The teachers in the small town school where I graduated were friendly and I maintain friendships with several to this day! I even became a professor largely because of them. School, for me, was a great experience. And while I recognize that it’s not the same for everyone, I also don’t try to fucking pretend that it is and then get shitty with someone online about it.
“I wasn’t aware that I had to have a trauma pissing contest to make a pithy remark.”Well maybe don’t make asshole comments and then you won’t feel obligated to have a trauma pissing contest, whatever the hell that means.I can believe you’re a teacher too, lots of teachers think ‘pithy’ comments like that are a good thing to throw at students, not realizing that what they think is ‘pithy’ is really ‘shitty’. Do better.
Zendaya expressed a desire to have had the school experience and you greeted that with your own pithy remark. YOU started this shit, bud. Sorry you have to reap what you sow.
Dude, you don’t even know what ‘pithy’ means. Get a fucking dictionary and an attitude adjustment before posting in the future.
Tell you what, I’ll grab a dictionary and you can grab a thesaurus. Unless you just want to keep replying “attitude adjustment” at me?
Great idea! Learning what words actually mean is the first step in a lifetime of learning!And then you can start in on changing the way you talk to people: Hopefully you’ll learn to interact in a more civilized, less assholish manner. I bet your students will appreciate a teacher who both uses words correctly and doesn’t make asshole comments!
This is not the first time and you’re not the first person to make the weird mistake of thinking that I interact with students the same way I interact with you, a random idiot I don’t like on the internet.And for all your continued insistence that I used a word incorrectly you haven’t actually said HOW I used it incorrectly. Have fun with that!
I don’t believe that at all: If you treat people badly in one venue, that makes it highly likely that you treat people badly in multiple venues. Do better.
I thought you were gonna look in the dictionary? I guess you can’t be assed to do that. You’re the teacher here, fuckin learn something.
You’re free to believe or not believe whatever you want. But I find it pretty consistent with my biggest issue with you over many interactions and readings of your responses on these sites, which is a complete inability to perceive outside of your own sense of self. Because you don’t believe that I’m different with students than I am with internet randos it MUST be true. Your posted insistent statements are never at all in doubt. Your perspective is the only perspective. The most recent examples are just the most recent but they’re consistent. YOU had a shitty experience in high school (or witnessed several, it’s not entirely clear) so EVERYONE must have had a shitty experience and it MUST be the only possibility for anyone else. YOU have seen secondary education used primarily as a means of profit so that must be the ONLY purpose it serves. You have a bubble of you.And no, I was being sarcastic. I can’t be “assed” to follow through on a sarcastic remark. Not that it matters because I guarantee that even if I posted the dictionary definition on here and it agreed with how I used it you’d find some other way to bitch at me about nothing.
“Because you don’t believe that I’m different with students than I am with internet randos it MUST be true.”If you gleefully act like an asshole to some people, odds are that you gleefully act like an asshole to others. Since you’re an asshole, you don’t recognize this. How about trying ‘not acting like an asshole to anyone’ for a while?
“YOU had a shitty experience in high school (or witnessed several, it’s not entirely clear) so EVERYONE must have had a shitty experience and it MUST be the only possibility for anyone else”Go ahead, quote me saying that everyone had a shitty experience. Oh wait, you can’t, because I didn’t say that at all. You taking my recounting of my experience as me saying everyone had that experience is all on you, because I know it’s not the truth.“YOU have seen secondary education used primarily as a means of profit so that must be the ONLY purpose it serves.”I mean no, it’s pretty obvious throughout the whole system, but go ahead and be ignorant of what’s going on around you.“You have a bubble of you.”Man, every accusation is an admission applies 10x to this one.
If only I had student evaluations and recommendation letters and faculty peer reviews to support my contention that I don’t treat students the way I treat internet randos…You: “Or maybe it was because kids called me stupid for liking to read books and that physical, mental and sexual abuse by teachers upon students was not looked on as a bad thing?Naah, wasn’t kids getting molested by teachers, choke slammed, jacked up against lockers, desks chucked at them…etc…definitely my attitude.”The first part is about you. But then “teacherS” upon “studentS”. Not you. “kidS” “THEM”. Not you. Granted, not everyone. Fair! But more than you. Combined with the initial “grass is greener” comment (which fucking duh, of course the grass is greener, what an unnecessary response), you’re clearly using anecdotal arguments to support having snarked about Zendaya’s desire to have had a school experience. I don’t think it’s at all necessary to comment on her desire by pointing out that some school experiences are awful. I’m pretty sure that’s taken as fucking read.JFC, it’s not like I *ignore* the profit motive of the American education system. The fact that conversations about education in this country frequently/fucking always involve the letters ROI is depressing as shit. In the article relevant to THIS bit of back and forth you responded to ivy league students with “let them fight”, which is a class warrior way of talking about rich college kids. And while I obviously won’t deny that rich college kids are annoying and go to ivy schools, I ALSO think it’s important to recognize that SOME kids who go there are NOT rich. As a dude in a mountain of debt because he went to an expensive school I’m sure I took that comment more personally than I probably should have. Mea culpa on that one. (Did I use mea culpa right? Please inform me, oh wise master!)
I have no reason to believe you have any of that. You represent yourself via asshole comments online. Odds are very good that you represent yourself the same way IRL. If that actually isn’t the case, you should definitely stop making asshole comments to randos online. It’s a shitty thing to do and doesn’t help a single person.
“you’re clearly using anecdotal arguments to support having snarked about Zendaya’s desire to have had a school experience”Yes, I was! What I wasn’t doing was trying to claim that everyone had that experience. And you jumped to her defense with asshole comments for…well, asshole reasons. Then you made up things I didn’t say so you could continue to argue with me.
“In the article relevant to THIS bit of back and forth you responded to ivy league students with “let them fight”, which is a class warrior way of talking about rich college kids.”Yep and that’s 100% how I meant it, glad you picked that one up!Stop picking online fights, stop making up things to fight with people about and stop randomly defending celebs against snarky remarks in order to get your internet argument hardon.
Nah.
Meanwhile, a 35 year old Michael Cera despondently lowers his head directly on to his cafeteria lunch tray.
ironically he starred in a movie literally called ‘the adults’ last year.
Odd sonce in Dune 2 she was supposed to play something other than a high schooler yet read her lines like a snotty high schooler.
“Zendaya was excited to play something beside a high schooler in Challengers”She just really wanted to be next to a high schooler? That sounds strange.
A 20-something professional tennis coach? Uh, well, it is a movie, I guess.
A 20-something professional tennis coach? Uh, well, it is a movie, I guess.
This is not a criticism at all so I hope it isn’t taken as such.The reason Zendaya keeps getting cast as a high schooler is because *she looks like a f’ing high schooler*. I’d say the same thing about her beau. I don’t buy Tom Holland in any of his “adult” roles because the dude looks 12.When you make your name professionally on the fact that you look young you can’t be salty about the fact that nobody sees you as an adult.
I don’t know that she made her name on looking young.She was young. She was 13 on her first Disney show. Even Euphoria Season 1, she was only 21.
And continued getting cast or offered roles as a high schooler. Because she looks like a high schooler. The claim that she’s ONLY offered high schoolers because of her resume ignores this fact. (I’m not arguing that her resume is NOT a factor, just that it’s not the reason this article seems to forward.)
Iiiiii’m not sure I buy this. She doesn’t *look* like a high schooler, exactly. She looks like a young woman, and she looks like what Hollywood has been selling us as high schoolers because they can’t put actual kids in shows and films with teenagers doing adult things like sex. So I think we might have a somewhat warped view of what high schoolers actually look like. She looks young. She could *pass* for a high schooler I guess if she wanted to, but if you saw her working a regular job you wouldn’t be like “hey why is this teenager working as an engineer!” She doesn’t look anymore like a teenager than dozens of other 27 year old actresses.
I think you’ll find if you Google other actresses her same age several of them do look like they could pass for teenagers.I’m not sure why I’m getting so much flack for this. Nowhere did I suggest that she’s a bad actress or that she CAN’T play someone her actual age. Just that she looks young and I don’t think the fact that she’s *played* high schoolers is solely responsible for the fact that she keeps getting offered those roles. What is the big deal with me saying that?ETA: I just looked back at the original comment and I can see where I didn’t make the hyperbole obvious enough. Although I also was pretty clear about not meaning anything critical. So…. (shrug)
I said she could pass for a teenager, but being able to pass for one isn’t the same as just looking like one in general. She’s an actor—she can pass for a lot of things, but, again, any 27 year old actress could pass for a high schooler in the right clothes and hair. The fact that she’s done it convincingly is why they think of her rather than other 27 year old actresses who could also pass. I think of course the fact that she can pass plays a role–I’m just saying that’s a criterion that applies to most actresses her age, so there’s another reason those roles keep getting offered to her in particular.
It’s a fair point and based on some of the pushback I’m getting maybe this is a blind spot for me.
You are so embarrassing goddamn
Now say it even more like Napoleon Dynamite.
Holy shit I forgot euphoria is that old!
“Jackie Chan made his name onbeing a Chinese man who does martial arts” – possibly because he is, indeed, a Chinese man who does martial arts.
I’d argue she looks like what Hollywood casts as a high schooler.
But in reality the only thing she should be doing in a high school is being a substitute teacher. She doesn’t look like an actual teenager. Neither does Tom Holland.
So you’re saying Tom Holland is this generation’s Seth Green?
Either him or Ben Platt.
I would not have guessed she’s 27. Not in a bad way, but yeah.
Yeah. Before I looked up that fact if you had told me “Zendaya is just a few years away from 30″ I would’ve been taken aback. Not floored or anything, but surprised.
Nah she can actually be salty about whatever she wants, you pathetic fucking turd.
And I for sure literally meant she can’t! Good call on fighting my oppression.
You fucking Complaint Police are the goddamn worst
Oh, I don’t know. I’m thinking maybe unnecessarily aggressive AV Club commenters with insipid screen names are slightly worse.
But will she stop casted in a movie with white twinks as her lover? Because this one she got TWO, instead of the regular one per movie.
I wanna see Zendaya kiss a brown boy for once too! It is weird she’s always the light skinned half black gf for some little white boy.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: this movie should have been called Ballplay.
How old is Zendaya’s mom?