Zendaya Opens Up About Her Buzzy Spiderman Role, Cultural Appropriation, and Her Future With Disney

The first thing you need to know about Zendaya is that you’re saying her name wrong. It is not zen-DIE-uh. It’s zen-DAY-uh. Maybe you could be forgiven when you consider the fact that she just turned 20 and you’re probably rusty on your Disney Channel cast members. Then again, she’s a legit red-carpet favorite, an accomplished musician, and oh my God, she just turned 20.

---

More of the latest on our January 2017 cover star:

1. Meet Daya by Zendaya, the 20-Year-Old's Inclusive Clothing Line
2. 21 Times Zendaya's Hairstyles Absolutely Slayed
3. Yet Another Reason Zendaya Is So Damn Inspiring

---

Before we met, I had my theory about Zendaya all fleshed out and ready to prove. First of all, she is one of the rarest breeds of celebrity—the kind who find their way through the public eye while smack in the middle of the public eye. We didn’t meet Zendaya as a woman; we’re watching her become a woman. Being famous invites scrutiny, and growing up as you’re getting really famous invites the most intense kind of scrutiny. It’s got to be a little jarring for the celebrities being watched. Or so you’d think. But so far, from everything I’ve read about her, Zendaya is handling her fame and newfound adulthood with dignity and grace and a distinct lack of DUIs. Look for a paparazzi picture of Zendaya giving someone the finger—it doesn’t exist. Her lack of a privileged, obnoxious Hollywood demeanor makes you root for her. It makes you want your daughter to listen to her music. It makes you happy that she’s on the cusp of something really big. Figuratively, yes, but literally, too.

Zendaya just moved into a house with three balconies, five bedrooms, five bathrooms, a three-car garage, and one truly massive kitchen. This is where I met her recently on one of those very sunny, very optimistic, very California type of days.

“Sorry, he’s putting up my security camera,” says Zendaya, nodding toward the man installing a device on the side of her house. We settle down on the ledge of her hot tub, having come outside for purely practical reasons (“I don’t have any furniture yet”). But even over the sound of drilling and construction, she isn’t shouting to be heard. On the contrary, her voice is calm and steady.

Zendaya, born Zendaya Coleman, is poised and measured, almost serious. She’s not like any 20-year-old I’ve ever met. “I [dropped my last name because I] just thought it was cool, like Cher or Prince.” The woman, you could say, is driven, ambitious, precocious—and she has very specific plans.

Cotton dress by Mugler.

Jason Kibbler

A lot of them. She tells me that she might also want to be a teacher. Or possibly the next Oprah (“Zoprah!”). As we sit overlooking her pool, an inflatable frosted doughnut and a giant white swan drift by. “It’s the ghetto off-brand swan, not the fancy one that was all over Snapchat and Instagram. I don’t have the Rihanna swan—but I’m getting there!” she says, almost apologizing. Zendaya’s wearing her high school sweatshirt, basketball shorts, and socks that read “Team Fuck You” in big black letters.

On second thought, maybe the kid inside isn’t all that hidden.

In case it’s not clear, Zendaya is going through a transition in her life. There’s the no-furniture thing. There is the framed artwork waiting to be hung and the front door standing wide open. The windows have no signs of curtains, the walls haven’t been painted, and the kitchen reminds me of a model home where the sink isn’t actually connected to plumbing and the refrigerator isn’t plugged in (for the record, I’m sure it is; it just looks really unused).

It’s exactly the kind of house—down to the floating doughnut and sterile white walls—you’d use in a movie about a young star just starting to learn about the trappings of superstardom. This is the blank-slate house.

So it’s especially fitting that Zendaya is making her major big-screen debut in a little production you may have heard of, Spider-Man: Homecoming. Sony and Marvel are keeping the details of her role secret, but it’s rumored to be a good one. “Plenty of people are like, ‘Why is she still on Disney Channel?’” says Zendaya, who stars in K.C. Undercover. “Well, I waited and waited for the right part, and now I get to be in Spider- Man.” She leans forward in case I didn’t totally catch that. Spider-Man. She gives me an arch look. Doesn’t get any bigger than that.

Cotton top and skirt and mesh shoes by Emilio Pucci.

Jason Kibbler

“Everything has been a climb,” says Zendaya. “And I’ve been able to take my family and friends with me. I came from humble beginnings.” Her eyes go wide and she looks around her backyard, at the pomegranate and lemon trees, the wooden swing, the inflatable toys. “I’ve never had a pool before,” she says, making a grand, sweeping gesture with her arm that takes in the newly planted baby palm trees and all of the unfurnished rooms inside. “I’ve never lived in a house this beautiful. I appreciate everything so much more because everything I have has been worked for.”

When she was a regular kid with two names, Zendaya Coleman lived in Oakland in a “not-so-amazing neighborhood.” She was the youngest in a big, happy family (“my support system”): two sisters, two brothers, and her parents, both teachers.

She played basketball. She coordinated clothes with her niece. “The shirts with graffiti [Alexander] Wang just did? We had those made for us in the hood. Mine was pink and had ‘Daya’ on the back.” In other words, she was a good kid.

During the summers, she was dragged to her mom’s second job at a local theater. Sounds miserable. But not for Zendaya—she was paid in chocolate-chip cookies and Snapple. She watched every play from the wings. The vast majority of the performances were Shakespeare— and most of the lines sailed over her four-year-old head. Didn’t matter. Zendaya knew she wanted to be a part of this world.

Eight years later, the desire was still very much there, and Zendaya’s parents drove her to a Disney audition. “I just popped up out of nowhere,” she says. “And I was kicking ass. I came. I knew what I wanted. I think they saw that.” They did. The audition was for a show called Shake It Up, and she landed one of the leads, Rocky Blue. Zendaya packed up her 12-year-old belongings, said good-bye to her big, happy family, and moved with her dad to Los Angeles to enter one of the most bizarre professions in the world: child acting. “It was really difficult,” she says, “and I was used to having my mom.” (Two years later, Zendaya was making enough that her mom could join them in L.A.)

Silk satin dress by Dior.

Jason Kibbler

Zendaya never went to high school in the traditional sense. Though you could argue she grew up in a place where the cliques are much worse. “I’m nice and cool with everybody, but not a lot of people know me very well,” she says. She keeps to herself—a defense mechanism in a town where everyone wants something. “I have a very tight-knit circle.”

You won’t find her out spraying Dom with models or crashing at Taylor’s for the night. And— amazingly—her goodness has been a point of some controversy. “I’m just not a social butterfly,” she insists. It’s been suggested that Zendaya has manufactured a squeaky-clean image that panders to her fans’ parents (and their wallets) and Disney’s vision for her as a wholesome role model. Her defense? “I’d rather be home with my family,” she says, adding, “I’ve never had a desire to drink.”

That’s not to say she pretends to be perfect. “There is so much stress in my life,” she says. “I’ve got family, a lot of people that depend on me and need me. I try to take care of everybody and sometimes that drives you crazy—you want everybody to be OK, and you’re like, Jesus, am I OK?”

Being a 20-year-old breadwinner is exciting—and stressful. Sometimes she feels “like an old lady.” And talking to her, I have to wonder: Does she even want to be famous? “Eh, I don’t know. Sometimes I do; sometimes I don’t.” And then in a characteristically honest moment: “You just see so many people who are miserable here. It’s like, Why?” She leans forward so her hair falls in her face—a habit of hers—and plays with her curls while she talks. “It’s OK to be focused, but I can’t get to a point where I don’t like what I’m doing. It’s gotta be fun and creative and good.”

Plus there are real upsides. “I love to slay a red carpet. When I step on one, I’m a different person,” she says, “like Sasha Fierce and Beyoncé.” She pops up from the ledge of the hot tub and starts clomping around, shoulders hunched. “Honestly, I walk like an old man—the Coleman Trudge.” A second later, Zendaya’s smiling, strutting, and waving coolly for imaginary cameras. She’s five foot nine and rail thin. If she weren’t already an actress, she’d be a supermodel. “On the red carpet, I’m this dainty, slow, elegant gazelle.” She’s enamored with her stylist, Law Roach (“we’re family”), and they have their own mantra of sorts: “We don’t do pretty. Pretty is boring.”

And pretty isn’t getting Zendaya the kind of attention she’s after. “When young women see me go out, with an entire world to criticize what I put on, and do whatever the hell I want? It’s empowering [for them],” she says. “It’s not just about clothes. It’s never been just about clothes.” She stops talking for a second to push the hair out of her face. “We do what we want,” she says slowly, emphatically pausing between every word.

Case in point: the incident of February 2015. It was Zendaya’s first major red carpet. She wore an off-the-shoulder Vivienne Westwood gown and her hair in locs. She arrived at the Oscars looking like a million bucks. And then this happened: “Like, I feel like she smells like patchouli oil. Or weed,” said E!’s Giuliana Rancic. Many saw it as a moment of casual racism—one that shocked the country. “This is way bigger than a beef between us,” says Zendaya. “I heard about the comment through Twitter, and my first reaction was angry—I got really mad. Then I realized this has nothing to do with us. It was one small look into an overall misconception about a large group of people.”

Zendaya sat in her room and fought the urge to post an angry tweet right away. She mulled things over, wrote about prejudice, and posted it on her Twitter and Instagram pages. It was heartfelt. It was well researched. It was the opposite of Rancic’s off-the-cuff remark. “I gave it to my mom to proofread—I literally can’t spell to save my life—and that was it.” Up it went. And by the next morning, everyone was talking about Zendaya, and The Washington Post was asking the question on all of our minds: “Who is Zendaya?”

A relative unknown, Zendaya was steering a national dialogue about race with poise and tact. “I got all of these pictures from women wearing locs. I made it my Twitter header, and that became empowering,” she says. “It became something very positive. It allowed us to talk about things that make us uncomfortable.” Rancic issued an apology. “There was a little girl for Halloween last year that was me from the Oscars,” Zendaya says proudly. And the world got Zendaya Barbie. “I think that was a big moment not just for me but for women of color,” she says. “It’s a step in the right direction. But we have a long way to go.”

Even now, Zendaya is grappling with guilt about her fame and has mixed feelings about her success. “I ask myself, Would I get the same opportunities—would I have this role or that role—if I were a darker- skinned black women? And the answer is no,” she says. “But the real thing is how do you take what you’ve been given and use it to better the situations of people that are your peers, your brothers and sisters?”

Right now, Zendaya is filming a second movie, The Greatest Showman on Earth, about a circus, with Hugh Jackman and Zac Efron. She has a new clothing line called Daya by Zendaya. She’s a face of CoverGirl. And she’s recording a second album. “I want people to be impressed.” One thing’s for sure. We’ll all know how to say her name.