On a grey April morning in Brooklyn, Zendaya is curled into a small beige couch at an art gallery and café, dressed in a pale yellow knit sweater, white trousers and a khaki trench coat, looking far more relaxed than her schedule has any right to allow. She has been in the middle of a relentless press tour for The Drama while simultaneously preparing for the final season of Euphoria, a summer release of The Odyssey, Spider-Man: Brand New Day and Dune: Part Three arriving in December. It is, by any measure, a staggering year.
She is the first to acknowledge it. She says she is proud of everything she has put out and genuinely loves the work, but she also admits a break is coming whether she plans for it or not. The complication, she laughs, is that the moment she stops, she immediately wants to start again.
Zendaya and the old soul she has always been
Zendaya turned 29 this year, but people have described her as an old soul since childhood, and she does not entirely disagree. She grew up as the youngest by a significant margin, with siblings much older than her and a brother who was 16 when she was born. That meant most of her formative years were spent around adults, working professionally from a young age and learning the rhythms of sets and crews long before most of her peers.
Her grandmother played a significant role in shaping her. The two spent the first several years of Zendaya’s life together while her parents worked, passing the time with afternoon television, root beer floats and bus rides for ice cream. She credits those quiet, unhurried hours with instilling the contemplative quality that people now read as wisdom.
She is amused by how that perception has followed her. She feels, she says, like she still has the interior life of a kid, even as the industry treats her like a veteran. The idea of turning 30 genuinely surprises her. It does not feel like a number that applies to her yet.
Zendaya takes on Athena and everything the role demands
In The Odyssey, directed by Christopher Nolan, Zendaya plays Athena, the goddess of wisdom and war. She considers it a natural fit in some ways. Wisdom, she suggests, is something she has always been quietly associated with. The weight of the war aspect of the character sits differently though, particularly given the current state of the world.
She speaks with real feeling about the tendency people have to stop seeing others as fully human, especially in times of conflict. That erosion of empathy concerns her deeply. For Zendaya, the work she does has always carried a sense of responsibility to counter that, to remind audiences of shared humanity rather than reinforce division.
Nolan pursued her specifically for the role, drawn to a quality he describes as grace that remains intact regardless of the circumstances around her. On set, with weather and logistics conspiring against the production, she would arrive from her other commitments and bring a stillness that steadied everyone. He gave her a rare single-word note of praise after one take, the kind he almost never offers, which became a running joke among her castmates including Matt Damon and Tom Holland, who spent the rest of the shoot marveling that she had earned it.
Zendaya on The Drama, fear and creative risk
The Drama was a script that unsettled her when she first read it. She brought her mother and a niece into the process, wanting other perspectives before committing. What ultimately drew her in was the difficulty of the character and the challenge of earning an audience’s trust for someone morally complicated.
She has been deliberate about expanding the range of roles she is considered for, pushing past the boundaries that can quietly narrow what a Black woman is expected to do on screen. Fear, she says, is not a reason to walk away from a project. A little of it means the work is worth doing.
Zendaya on Tom Holland, family and what rest actually looks like
She is producing and starring in a film about Ronnie Spector, the lead singer of the 1960s girl group The Ronettes, with Barry Jenkins directing. She has wanted this project for a long time and describes Spector as an icon who never received the recognition she deserved. She wants the film to feel experimental rather than conventional.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day brought her and Holland back together on set daily, their dogs in tow, working alongside someone she describes as both her closest friend and the person she loves most. They also recently adopted a third dog during a visit to her hometown of Oakland, a decision she admits was not logistically wise but emotionally felt completely right.
When she eventually gets her break, she plans to be fully present for her nieces and nephews. School plays, football games and hands-on family projects are what she is looking forward to most. Her family tracks her location since she travels so constantly, which she finds practical and grounding. She also unwinds with painting restoration videos, carpet cleaning content and reality television. No press tours, no Chakobsa vocabulary drills, no Iceland shoots. Just her family, her dogs and something resembling ordinary life.
She will get there eventually. But first, she has a very long year to finish.
