If she isn’t already, then Zendaya is fast becoming one of the top actresses in the entire Hollywood. The young superstar is not only known for her incredible acting talent but also for her singing prowess, personality, and fashion choices, which have significantly contributed to her rising popularity and success within the industry.
From starting as a Disney star to becoming a Marvel actor, the actress already has several accolades to her name that set her apart from her contemporaries. But part of her success also comes from her meticulous role-choosing process, where she takes extra care to choose roles that are not just one-dimensional side characters in a script centered around the male protagonist.
How Zendaya Meticulously Chooses Her Acting Roles
To say Zendaya must be among the most sought-after actresses in the film industry would not be an understatement. The youngest-ever-two-time Emmy-winning actress has been making history ever since she stepped into the world of cinema.
Becoming a household name through her Disney roles, the actress is now best known for starring in projects like Euphoria and MCU’s Spider-Man movies. And more recently, it is her role as Chani in Dune: Part Two that is making the headlines (see Vulture).
However, it is not just her luck that lands her incredible roles, but also the efforts she puts into finding the right ones. Back in 2021, the actress had revealed to GQ how she had been receiving roles that all seemed similar in the sense that they were made to serve the journey and growth of male characters or protagonists.
“The best way to describe it is just like, they’d usually serve the purpose of helping the male character get to where they need to go, do what they need to do. It would have been great, and it would have been fine, but I wouldn’t have grown at all.”
And so as a result the actress ended up rejecting a lot of roles and movies for over a year despite the scripts offered to her being okay.
Zendaya Does Not Want To Play One-Dimensional Characters
Zendaya while talking to GQ revealed how a lot of roles that she had been getting were one-dimensional female characters without an arc of their own. Feeling like she would have been playing the same character over and over again but just in different stories, did not make sense to her.
And so one wonders, if she had been majorly getting similar kinds of roles and one-dimensional female characters, how did she manage to get her award-winning and praise-accumulating roles? The answer is simple, she auditions, even for roles that are reserved for ‘white actresses’.
In an interview with Marie Claire, Zendaya made this revelation and even mentioned that this was how she had bagged the role of MJ in Spider-Man opposite Tom Holland. A feminist at heart, the actress does this to further the opportunities and chances of ‘ethnic’ and ‘colored’ actors like herself.
Her latest flick, Dune: Part Two is in cinemas now.
