ZENDAYA

BY: Amanda Jane Stern

Recently, we profiled former Disney Channel star Bella Thorne, now we want to turn our attention to her Disney co-star, Zendaya. Born Zendaya Maree Stoermer Coleman on September 1, 1996, Zendaya got her acting start on the Disney Channel Original Series Shake It Up. The show followed the misadventures of best friends Rocky Blue (Zendaya) and CeCe Jones (Thorne), who were backup dancers on a local Chicago TV show. Zendaya did not part ways with the Disney Channel after Shake It Up ended in 2013, she partnered with them to not only star in, but produce as well K.C. Undercover, which ran from 2015-2018. The show followed the titular K.C., a teenage girl from a family of undercover spies, who becomes a spy herself.

While still starring in K.C. Undercover, Zendaya was also cast in her feature film debut as Michelle “M.J.”, opposite Tom Holland’s Peter Parker, in Marvel’s Spider-Man: Homecoming, a role she reprised in the sequel, Spider-Man: Far from Home. She was also cast as trapeze artist Anne Wheeler in the P.T. Barnum musical film, The Greatest Showman. And of course, in 2019 she returned to her television roots when she took on the lead role of Rue, a 17-year-old drug addict, in the HBO teen drama Euphoria. She went on to win the Satellite Award for Best Actress for her work on the series.

Zendaya currently has several exciting projects underway. HBO confirms a second season of Euphoria, expected to return in 2021. She is in pre-production on a third installment in the Spider-Man franchise. She is also set to star alongside Jake Gyllenhaal and Ansel Elgort in the upcoming crime drama Finest Kind. However, what we are most excited about is Denis Villeneuve’s remake of Dune. Zendaya will be Chani, a mysterious young woman who is also the love interest of Timothée Chalamet’s Paul. We’ll see this sci-fi epic by the end of the year. Its release date is on December 18, 2020.

We can’t wait to see what projects Zendaya takes on next.