Zendaya offered up a rare interview to Entertainment Weekly on Challengers as awards season campaigning begins.
In the discussion, she touched on playing a character her age who has achieved personal milestones, like marriage and having kids, that she looks forward to having later in life. (Zendaya has been dating Tom Holland for years.)
She began by saying that before Challengers, she was playing roles that were “quite young,” like high schooler Rue on Euphoria. “I say I’ve been playing a 16-year-old since I was 16. [Sitting here right now,] I probably look a little bit like a child because I’m not in hair and makeup,” she said. “And I get that, I get the Rue of it all, and that totally works and has worked for me, but also I am not a child.
And at some point you have to play characters that are your own age and have experiences that you don’t have—for example, having children or getting married. While those are all things I want and I’m looking forward to, they just haven’t happened quite yet.”
She added that the public’s reaction and connection to Challengers has “been wonderful, and I’m just so happy that people have enjoyed it.” She had hoped to see mixed reactions from the audience, as she often changed her own opinion on the characters after watching the film several times.
“Every time my perspective changed and I was in the dang movie, so I thought I had a clear idea of what I was doing. So I’m so grateful that so many people have found all the little moments and are questioning the reason why these characters make their decisions and have picked up on little things, all the clothes kind of pass between all of them.
It was so fun and smart of them to incorporate. So I’m just grateful that people get it. They totally get it. Not only did they have fun and enjoy it, but they actually dug into it in a cool way,” she said.
Zendaya was also asked about Euphoria’s third season and its time jump. She revealed, “I don’t actually know much about what is happening. I don’t quite know exactly what the season is going to look like, but I do know that the time jump is happening and I know it’s important because there’s only so much high school drama you can deal with—‘and then she cheats on her boyfriend again!’ To me, at least, it is [exciting], and it will be fascinating to see and understand these characters outside of the context of high school and how all the stuff that we saw when they were kids and they were in high school affects the kind of adulthood they have and who they become in a much bigger world. I’ll be interested to see what happens too.”