Zendaya: From Disney to Unstoppable
Written by Andreas Babiolakis
September 1st, 1996, Zendaya Maree Stoermer Coleman was born. The world knows her by the simpler name Zendaya now, and I won’t pretend to be the biggest expert on the mononymous it-girl, but I do find it fascinating how she has been able to blossom from a child star into one of the most successful people in the entertainment industry today. She’s cherished now, but I honestly feel like her present dominance clashing with where she started is particularly why she stands out so much. Of course, her origins lay within the realms of a Disney’s tween-serving television sitcom. Typically entertainers have found it rough to get out of these contractual clauses, or to separate themselves from these pasts as individuals: completely free of their upbringings. Not Zendaya, who is as far away from being linked to a youth comedy for a major corporation as she could ever be. If anything, she is more pivotal as the face of the Gen Z movement now than she ever was; she is relatable as she is, and not as the machine tried to make her when trying to win over the kids of America.
The kid-com in question is Disney’s Shake It Up, where Zendaya starred alongside Bella Thorne; the former acted as Rocky Blue. In typical Disney-youth-programming fashion, the show was safe, bland, and a juxtaposition of mediocre acting and musical capabilities (here, dancing took the forefront). Once Shake It Up concluded, Zendaya was onto the next Disney project: K. C. Undercover. She was a teen spy ready to kick butt and take names, and the series went on just as long as Shake It Up: seventy five episodes, over the course of three seasons. This time — and this is the key — Zendaya was also serving as a co-producer at times: a huge leap for someone her age (although the teen-producer thing is a little less rare than impossible nowadays, if you look at someone like Millie Bobby Brown, for instance; this is still quite an impressive achievement). This was a better show overall, and a comedy that wasn’t completely uncomfortable for all ages. More importantly, it had Zendaya calling the shots, and this would lead her to other projects that would begin to change her legacy as a performer.
However, behind these television series came Zendaya’s guest spots on other shows, first as a dancer (Dancing with the Stars, where she came in second place with dance partner Val Chmerkovskiy) and SWAY: A Dance Trilogy (with The Making of SWAY to accompany it). He was becoming a recognizable face, and thus she appeared as herself additionally as a guest on America’s Next Top Model and Lip Sync Battle. She also had a short role as an actual character in the popular series Black-ish, but her time to shine was just around the corner. It’s also worth noting that her sole album as a singer, eponymously titled Zendaya, came out right at the end of Shake It Up’s run, and it did pretty reasonably for an album connected to a teen star associated with then-family-friendly projects; while we haven’t heard her musical side much since, this was enough of a deviation from what she was previously perceived as to show that she was on her way out and heading into her own lane.
Now, where do most discovered, English-speaking on-screen talents (of young and old) wind up in this day and age? That’s right: the Marvel Cinematic Universe (and I’m not even saying this facetiously). It was time for her to continue being the forefront of a new, young generation, yet in a different capacity. As Michelle Jones-Watson (MJ for short, but not to be confused with Mary Jane Watson), Zendaya was a part of the most recent iteration of Spider-Man films, alongside the current Peter Parker himself Tom Holland (the two would begin to date afterwards, which isn’t really important when it comes to her rise, but I do think it’s romantic, and we need a little more positivity nowadays). We got to see Zendaya become the performer we’re more familiar with in recent memory in these films, starting with Homecoming back in 2017. Add another Spidey film in 2019 (Far From Home), and you’ve got a young star that is ready to go the distance.
She was slated to make that mark that same year with the Netflix series The OA in its second season, but the series was cancelled shortly afterward, and that catapult into the upper echelons of fame didn’t go according to plan. Never fear, as she was also attached to another series that same year, and you may be a little more aware of this one: HBO’s Euphoria. As teen addict Rue Bennett, Zendaya was able to take her talents further than she was ever allowed to before (there’s nothing reserved about Euphoria; if anything, the show is known for its heightened taboo and raw sensibilities). Zendaya won an Emmy for the first season of Euphoria, and she was now in a completely different league; it was astonishing already how young she was when she won (twenty three: the youngest winner of this award in Emmy history), but this was the polar opposite of what the previous phase of her career looked like, and her range was quite surprising.
Now’s the perfect time to remind you that Zendaya has experience as a producer, and this was starting to transition into her next iteration of herself. While it didn’t make the biggest splash, Malcolm & Marie was a wise choice for Zendaya, both as a performer (she would accrue some nominations that awards season) and as a producer (the film was a Netflix success; we won’t consider the theatrical run, since it was released during the pandemic, and that’s never a fair way to gauge anything nowadays). She is currently co-producing a Luca Guadagnino vehicle titled Challengers, due August 2023 (she is also starring in this film as well), so she is clearly continuing to guide her career down interesting terrains. This is where she’s at as a filmic presence.
But what about that it-girl side of her? Well, while she was guest appearing in various reality shows, she was also popping up in a couple of fairly massive music videos (there’s where that side of her really comes in handy). Once you’re featured as a member of Taylor Swift’s squad in the video for “Bad Blood”, you don’t go back. Then again, you could always be a part of Beyoncé’s Lemonade film (specifically during the “All Night” portion), and continue to be asked about; both videos came out before Homecoming, so she had yet made that transition yet as an actress (and yet she was still one of the most recognizable faces in pop culture, simply because she was being associated with the right projects at the right times). While she is making waves as a performer, I feel like it is these parts of her oeuvre that lead to her brief-yet-affective part in Denis Villeneuve’s Dune because she has a striking-and-familiar demeanour about her (her part as Chani will be significantly larger in Dune: Part Two). This is pure strategy, considering that she is now a part of this side of cinema (Dune may be a huge theatrical success, but it’s still quite artistic through and through).
This is where we’re at with Zendaya, who didn’t just try to defy her good-kid image to become her own person. She cleverly made the most of her opportunities, including establishing herself as the next-best-thing in pop culture slowly but surely, whilst carefully picking works that would lead to better and more challenging material. She’s now working with directors that can absolutely push her to new extremes, is a part of a highly successful HBO series (which she is the main event for), and is even testing her producer skills before she begins financing and operating on bigger projects. I don’t think much of her success has to do with luck. I fully am under the impression that this is someone that fully understood the entertainment business from the get-go, and knew how to leverage her current predicaments at any given time. Have we seen young stars turn into tours-de-force? Time and time again. However, there’s almost a story to Zendaya’s global takeover, and I think it’s kind of remarkable to reflect upon. If anything, this only feels like a checkpoint. I feel like Zendaya will continue to take on more daring projects and grow as a performer. I guess we will have to see if this is true, but you cannot deny that what she’s accomplished in her brief career has been quite something.
Andreas Babiolakis has a Masters degree in Film and Photography Preservation and Collections Management from Toronto Metropolitan University, as well as a Bachelors degree in Cinema Studies from York University. His favourite times of year are the Criterion Collection flash sales and the annual Toronto International Film Festival.