Zendaya: how the Challengers star went from painfully shy child to this generation's leading lady

Once upon a time, the Disney channel was something of a boot camp for future megastars. It felt like virtually every Noughties icon got their start there. Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake, Lindsay Lohan, Zac Efron, Shia LaBeouf, the list goes on.

But there was a good while when it felt like the Disney machine had stopped spitting out fresh A-listers. Until now, that is. Alongside the likes of Sabrina Carpenter and Keke Palmer, a new Disney queen is taking centre stage. In fact, she may just be *the* leading lady of her generation. And like Britney before her, she’s already a mononym: Zendaya.

That former Disney star is now making the big leap with her most recent release, the sexy tennis drama Challengers, directed by Luca Guadagnino (Call Me By Your Name, Susperia) and produced by Zendaya herself.

It’s a maturity jump many have tried before: an adult role, and what she sees as her first time leading a major film. Though Euphoria certainly featured plenty of sex, it lived firmly in the realm of hedonistic teen drama. But here, alongside the raunchier moments, her character is an actual mum, with grown-up responsibilities. A lot of Disney kids don’t stick the landing. But Zendaya has.

Mike Faist, Zendaya and Josh O’Connor in Challengers (Warner Bros)

How? A meticulous work ethic and sense of self belief, the kind that comes from an observant, shy child who had to force themselves into confidence. Here’s how Zendaya forged herself into a formidable leading lady.

A shy Oakland girl descendant from Black Panthers 

Born in Oakland, California, on 1 September 1996, Zendaya is a Virgo – like her hero, Beyoncé. Much like the award-winning singer, Zendaya was incredibly shy in her youth. So shy that her parents attended classes for raising introverted children.

“She would sit in the circle with the other kids and be totally silent,” her mum recalled in an interview with Vogue. Zendaya was even forced to repeat kindergarten due to her shyness. She has five half siblings, but is the only child of her parents, Claire Stoermer and Kazembe Ajamu Coleman.

Zendaya in 2010 (Getty Images)

Her parents, both teachers, eventually helped to bring Zendaya out of her shell by introducing her to the performing arts. At age six, Zendaya and two friends from her school performed a play for Black History Month. Age eight, she joined a hip-hop dance troupe called Future Shock Oakland (the YouTube videos of which are still online, much to Zendaya’s embarrassment) and she was a member of the group for three years.

Her links to the performing arts were strengthened by her mum’s summer job as house manager at the California Shakespeare Theater in Orinda, California, where Zendaya would help out seating patrons and selling fundraising tickets.

Zendaya at a Disney premiere in 2010 (Getty Images)

Growing up, Zendaya was also surrounded by politics and activism. Her aunties were members of the Black Panthers, and her father used to rub shoulders with the African-American activist Huey P Newton back in the day, when their house was used as a Black Panther meeting place. “Everything sprung out of Oakland from a hard place, and it turned beautiful,” Zendaya said in an interview with Vogue in 2017.

Zendaya attended the same private school where her father taught as a PE teacher, and has reflected upon being one of the only Black children enrolled there. She remembers the first day she straightened her hair, and how many compliments she got. “That made me feel weird,” she told Vogue.

The birth of a Disney star – and a red carpet icon

Aged 13, Zendaya was scouted by a Los Angeles manager. Six months later, in 2010, Disney offered her the role of Rocky Blue in Shake It Up, so she and her dad moved to Los Angeles for filming. Stoermer stayed back in Oakland and worked two jobs to support the family.

In a 2011 interview with The Dream Magazine, a 14-year-old Zendaya effused: “Rocky and I are similar in so many ways. We’re both the shy and more reserved ones of the bunch and we also are both total school girls; nothing less than an A plus! And we are both vegetarians.” She added: “My dream guest star would be Beyoncé because she is such an inspiration for me, and an amazing performer.”

Bella Thorne and Zendaya in 2010 (Getty Images)

Once based LA, Zendaya got to work. In 2011, she released the singles Swag It Out and Watch Me, the latter being a collaboration with Bella Thorne, her Shake It Out co-star. In 2012, she finished Dancing with the Stars as a runner up, and in 2013, she released a debut album, which was met with moderate success. But none of these musical exploits are as significant as the friendship she forged during this time with the ‘image architect’ and longtime stylist, Law Roach.

Zendaya in 2011, wearing the first outfit Law Roach styled for her (Getty Images)

The two first met when the stylist was visiting Los Angeles on a personal shopping job for a family friend of Zendaya’s. Zendaya needed help getting ready for the premiere of Justin Bieber’s film Never Say Never, so Roach helped style her.

“When she was 14, she didn’t know much about fashion, and we were starting to learn about each other. And I think I had a little bit more say-so in the look,” Roach told WWD in 2021. “And she came in and we spoke and then we just made this really beautiful connection. We went shopping, and we’ve been together ever since.”

With rumoured first boyfriend, Trevor Jackson, in 2014 (Getty Images)

While aged 17 and still filming Shake It Up, Zendaya is also rumoured to have begun her first relationship with the singer-songwriter Trevor Jackson, though the pair kept it very under wraps.

A teenage producer endures *that* Oscar’s hair comment

Aged 18, Zendaya moved from Shake It Up to another Disney show: K.C. Undercover, which premiered in 2015. Originally titled Super Awesome Katy, Zendaya had a big say in how the show turned out. “I got in a room with the heads of Disney Channel,” she told Vogue, saying she would be a producer and the name had to change. “I was like, ‘The title is whack. That’s gonna change.’ […] Do I look like a Katy to you?” And, finally, she insisted that the show feature a Black family.

Zendaya wins a Kids’ Choice Award for K.C. Undercover (Getty Images)

There was more, too, as Zendaya first flexed her producer muscles. Now, these talents are fully developed and launching power-serves in 2024’s Challengers. “I wanted to make sure that she wasn’t good at singing or acting or dancing,” Zendaya told Vogue, speaking about her character K.C. Cooper. “That she wasn’t artistically inclined. I didn’t want them to all of a sudden be like, ‘Oh, yeah, and then she sings this episode!’” Plus, some final requirements: “I want her to be martial arts–trained. I want her to be able to do everything that a guy can do.”

A month after the premiere of K.C. Undercover, she attended her first Oscars ceremony, where Fashion Police presenter Giuliana Rancic remarked that Zendaya’s hair looked as if it smelled of “weed and patchouli oil”.

Zendaya attends the 2015 Oscars (Getty Images)

Zendaya recalls being so angry at Rancic’s comments that she shouted at the television. Then she got it together and wrote an informed, measured response to Rancic. “There is a fine line between what is funny and disrespectful,” she wrote. “To say that an 18-year-old young woman with locs must smell of patchouli oil or ‘weed’ is not only a large stereotype but outrageously offensive.” Rancic has since apologised for her comments.

Zendaya worked on K.C. Undercover until its final series in 2018, where she was heavily involved in production the whole time. By the last series, she was tackling difficult storylines on issues like stop-and-search in a way that children could understand.

But before that, she landed a pretty major role. She was going to be Spider-Man’s new MJ.

Becoming MJ and falling for Tom Holland

Being a Disney kid may seem like the perfect prep school for becoming a Sony/Marvel adult, but Zendaya’s character in Spider-Man: Homecoming was far from the high-saturation pep of K.C Undercover. This MJ, Michelle Jones-Watson, is a reclusive, studious loner. “My frame of reference was Ally Sheedy in The Breakfast Club,” director Jon Watts once said of the character.

And though Watts had seen Zendaya’s Disney show, the Zendaya he saw on the Spider-Man audition tape “looked like a completely different person,” he recalled. Fresh-faced and remarkably more MJ-like, Zendaya landed herself the part.

Meanwhile, she was also winning over another filmmaker. Michael Gracey, director of Hugh Jackman-led musical film The Greatest Showman. “She blew me away,” Gracey told Vogue. As well as using her own singing voice for the score, Zendaya called on her practical stunt skills from K.C Undercover to do the trapeze work herself.  “I would shout out a direction or give the slightest adjustment, and while flying through the air, she’d do it,” Gracey said.

Zendaya at the premiere of Spider-Man: Far From Home (Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)

Around this time, Zendaya was living in her first solo home, a Mediterranean-style house in the Valley, where she lived with her dog Noon – a gift from her first boyfriend for Christmas. Her relationship had recently ended (by the rumoured Trevor Jackson) and she was learning to get over the heartbreak. “It was my first love,” Zendaya told Vogue at the time. “It wasn’t a good ending.”

Zendaya and Tom Holland (PA)

It was around this time that Zendaya was first romantically linked to her Spider-Man co-star Tom Holland. To begin with, it was mostly rumours, fuelled by the fact that every other on-screen Spider-Man and MJ have also dated off-screen. Both denied it. But then the mum of fellow Disney star Skai Jackson randomly weighed in, answering a fan’s question on Instagram in September 2018 with: “Yes. It’s true. They been on the low for a while.”

In 2018, Zendaya filmed the second Spider-Man film, Far From Home, as well as a mysterious HBO project that stirred up a lot of industry interest. Somewhere between these projects, she and Holland called it quits for a while, as the pair were both romantically linked to other actors by 2019. But to talk about that, we need to talk about Rue.

From tween icon to portraying a teen drug addict

In summer 2019, HBO premiered its newest flagship show: Euphoria, a no-holds-barred TV series about messy teens having sex, doing drugs, and committing crimes. Like Gossip Girl but grittier, and with glossier production value. Zendaya was chosen to play the main character and narrator, Rue, a teen drug addict.

In case it’s not immediately obvious: this was miles away from any Disney show. Produced by Drake and filled with profanity, the first episode alone shows Rue’s overdose, revenge porn, non-consensual choking during sex, a transgender woman being raped, and over 30 shots of male genitalia.

Zendaya as Rue Bennett in Euphoria season one (HBO)

But something about Zendaya spoke to the show’s creator Sam Levinson, whose own life and experiences as a teen drug addict acted as principal inspiration for the series. “To be honest, I had this mood board that I brought into HBO and I had her face on it,” the showrunner told Entertainment Weekly. “There’s just something that I couldn’t get over. She had this real vulnerability to her at times, and then a real toughness to her.”

Just as Levinson was set on Zendaya, she was set on him. “I had a lot of fears, prior to even knowing that this script existed, about what I was gonna do next, what I should do next, and what I was looking for,” she told Collider. “Everything was just not going right. And then, Euphoria came along. When I read it, I immediately just loved it.”

Zendaya as Rue Bennett in Euphoria season one (AP)

But making such a sharp jump to R-rated status did make her anxious. “Even though Euphoria coming out was amazing and exciting, it was also extremely stressful,” Zendaya told Elle in 2019. “It gave me a lot of anxiety every week. That’s something I deal with; I have anxiety.”

Luckily, it was all overshadowed by the show’s success. Euphoria was awarded instant cult classic status, and Zendaya’s performance was at the core of it. She was rewarded with an Emmy for Lead Actress in a drama series in 2020, the youngest recipient ever at age 24, and went on to win the same award for Euphoria’s second season in 2022.

Euphoria stars Storm Reid, Jacob Elordi, Sydney Sweeney, Zendaya, and Maude Apatow (Getty Images)

Meanwhile, in the background, Zendaya appeared to have moved on from Tom Holland by getting close with her co-star Jacob Elordi, of Saltburn fame. The pair actively denied any dating rumours, but pictures of them on holiday together in Greece, as well as him kissing her head while sat on the sidewalk in New York, made fans think otherwise. But the rumoured fling was a short one – over by December 2021, by which time the Australian actor was linked with Olivia Jade, and Zendaya had reunited with an old flame.

Graduating fictional high school to become a leading lady

In the summer of 2019, just before Euphoria hit TV screens, Zendaya was busy traversing the dusty landscapes of Jordan and Abu Dhabi with Timothée Chalamet, as the pair filmed the first instalment of the Dune franchise. The pair became close friends, and their press tour ahead of the film’s release in 2021 spawned a thousand memes. “She’s really become a sister. I’m so grateful to count her as a partner and a sister and a friend,” he said of his co-star in a 2022 interview with Variety.

This also saw the first instances of Zendaya and Law Roach’s specific breed of “method dressing” on the red carpet with a slew of Dune-inspired outfits, something the actress has since become famous for.

Zendaya and Timothée Chalamet (Getty Images)

Dune was a success, and the hype around Zendaya’s career was only getting bigger and bigger in the lead up to Spider-Man: No Way Home, as well as Euphoria season two. Between the two (released in December 2021 and January 2022 respectively), Zendaya’s career suddenly went stratospheric.

It was helped by the obsession over her and Tom Holland’s relationship, accidentally been confirmed by a paparazzi picture of the two of them kissing in a car. This made for a very effective press tour, and clips of the two extremely loved-up co-stars answering questions in unison still do the rounds on social media to this day.

Zendaya and Tom Holland (Yui Mok/PA) (PA Archive)

Shortly after Euphoria season two was released, it emerged that Zendaya had signed on as producer and lead for romantic tennis drama Challengers, and enlisted Luca Guadagnino to direct, as well as Mike Faist and Josh O’Connor to co-star. Filming happened around the exact time that Zendaya’s fame reached its record level, so she would swerve cast nights out in order to avoid further attention.

“Grocery shopping for me has gotten difficult,” she joked in an interview for Challengers. “My life was starting to change a little bit more while we were shooting. And I remember everybody was going out, and I was like: ‘You know what, I’m not gonna join you because I think it might make your night not so fun, you know?’”

Zendaya promoting Challengers (Getty Images)

Amid all this attention, there’s still that shy little Oakland girl, and she doesn’t know if she wants to be famous for her whole life.  “Because I don’t necessarily want my kids to have to deal with this,” she told Vogue. “And what does my future look like? Am I going to be a public-facing person forever?”

But she’s also still learning how to be shy and famous at the same time. “I also have learned that I can say no, and I can say kindly that I’m having a day off, or I’m just trying to be to myself today, and I don’t actually have to perform all the time,” she told Vogue.

Ultimately, her biggest fear is that people will get sick of her. “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.’”

But from what we’re seeing now, we don’t think the world is going to get sick of Zendaya any time soon.

Challengers is in cinemas now

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