The Tragic Truth About Zendaya

Zendaya had a bad experience with Disney before she seized control of her future and transformed herself into an Emmy-winning actor. While she successfully convinced producers and casting directors that she was ready to shed her image as a cherub-cheeked child actor, Zendaya had to endure a lot of adversity to become the sought-after star that she is today.

So many eyeballs have watched Zendaya command the screen in "K.C. Undercover," "Euphoria," the "Spider-Man" franchise, and the "Dune" movies, making it hard to believe that she ever struggled with shyness. However, her parents told Vogue it was something that affected her deeply in kindergarten — it made it so difficult for her to learn that she needed to repeat the grade. 

During her school years, Zendaya also began experiencing anxiety. "I remember panicking, and my teacher had to walk me out of the room and say, 'Calm down, deep breaths,'" she recalled to InStyle. The anxiety subsided for a while but returned once acting opportunities outside of the House of Mouse started coming her way. Upon witnessing the internet's reaction to one of her career moves, Zendaya was so distraught that she wanted to shut herself off from the world. "I think a lot of it stems from the pressure I put on myself, wanting to do my best and not make a mistake," she said of the potential cause of her anxiety. On top of having a stressful career, she's been tested by several upsetting experiences.

Zendaya proudly rocked her artfully styled locs at the 2015 Academy Awards, and she looked stunning. However, "Fashion Police" panelist Giuliana Rancic almost killed her own career by roasting the hairstyle. "This hair overwhelms her. I feel like she smells like patchouli oil," Rancic said, per Glamour. The comment reeked of racism and didn't escape Zendaya's notice. In a lengthy Instagram post, she decried Rancic's remark as "outrageously offensive" and explained why it was disrespectful and hurtful. She pointed out that Rancic wasn't just relying on a stereotype to get a laugh but unfairly scrutinizing something that so many Black women are made to feel insecure about. "My wearing my hair in locs on an Oscar red carpet was to showcase them in a positive light, to remind people of color that our hair is good enough," she wrote.

Zendaya recalled how she initially felt about the insult in a 2016 interview with Allure, saying, "My first reaction was angry — I got really mad." However, she gave herself some time to chill before jumping on social media.

According to Zendaya, she doesn't just have to worry about people making snooty comments about her hair because of her race. "What my white peers would be able to get away with at this point in their career is not something that I will be able to do. ... I am not allowed the room to mess up," she told Marie Claire in 2018.

Zendaya's parents sacrificed a lot for her career, which was hard on all parties involved. In a 2011 tweet, Zendaya revealed that she could only see her mom, Claire Stoermer, once every two weeks because she was busy teaching while Zendaya was filming "Shake It Up." So, Zendaya had to turn to her dad, Kazembe Ajamu Coleman, for help at an awkward time. "I remember getting my period and him not knowing what to do," Zendaya told Glamour.

After TMZ reported that Stoermer and Coleman were divorcing in 2016, Zendaya took to X, formerly known as Twitter, to assure fans that her family remained a functioning unit, despite her parents' separation. "They still homies," she wrote. It seemed she was able to shake off media outlets digging into her parents' personal lives, but what she would not tolerate was the behavior of an internet troll who called her mother and father "ugly." She responded to their since-deleted tweet by writing, "First I'm gonna pray for you. While you're so concerned about what my parents look like, please know that these are two of the most selfless people in the world." She educated the troll on her parents' roles as educators, making the point that what they have to offer to society is far more valuable than physical attractiveness. She also suggested that the troll needed to focus more on enhancing their own inner beauty, writing, "Such hateful things only stem from internal struggles."

Zendaya discovered that it can be difficult to put distance between herself and a character who is in a dark place when she began playing Rue in the HBO series "Euphoria." Because Rue struggles with addiction, Zendaya has had to film some emotionally taxing scenes. She revealed that this can be a frightening experience, explaining to Elle Australia, "Your body is a person, it doesn't know that what you're doing is not real. My brain can say 'ok I'm pretending' but when I'm doing it, my body and my heart don't know that it's not real."

The cast of "Euphoria" has become well-versed in the many ways that drug use can devastate lives, but there was no reassuring themselves that it wasn't their reality when they had to bid a sad farewell to one of their co-stars. After Angus Cloud died at age 25, Zendaya paid tribute to him in a moving Instagram post. "I'm so grateful I got the chance to know him in this life, to call him a brother, to see his warm kind eyes and bright smile, or hear his infectious cackle of a laugh," it read in part. In a 2022 interview with The Face, Cloud had similarly described Zendaya as his "sister." His cause of death hadn't yet been revealed when Zendaya shared her post, but it was later reported that he accidentally overdosed on a lethal mixture of drugs.

Zendaya kissed any chance of being anonymous in public goodbye after she entered the Spider-verse and signed on for "Euphoria." She told Elle that her involvement with these projects raised her profile so significantly that she had to start turning down offers to hang out with friends in public places. "I'd be like, 'I'd love to, but I think I could ruin everybody's night. Because it's just not going to be fun once I'm there,'" she said. When she did try to go out, the experience could be so overwhelming that she'd give up on having a good time and leave.

It also proved impossible for Zendaya to keep her relationship with Tom Holland under wraps when they weren't ready for the public to know about it. In 2021, a photographer captured a moment on film that the couple thought was private: a sweet kiss in a car. Zendaya later described what it was like finding out that she was being so closely surveilled without her knowledge. "It was quite strange and weird and confusing and invasive," she told GQ.

Zendaya has discovered that being stuck indoors away from those prying paparazzi lenses is no fun, either. She told British Vogue that she experienced day-long bouts of feeling sad and miserable during the pandemic. This was new to her, and she recalled thinking, "What is this dark cloud that's hovering over me and I don't know how to get rid of it?"

In a 2016 Snapchat video, Zendaya recounted a negative interaction she had with a cashier at a Vons supermarket. All the "Dune: Part Two" star was doing was trying to purchase a few hundred dollars worth of gift cards when a female cashier treated her disrespectfully, leading Zendaya to believe that she and the friend accompanying her had been racially profiled by the woman. "I don't think she was a huge fan of our skin tone," she said. According to Zendaya, she was ready to pay for the cards and had her wallet out. However, the cashier didn't just refuse to sell the cards to the actor — she purportedly grabbed her wallet and tossed it. "'You can't afford this' is how she looked at me," Zendaya continued, [1:04] ending her anecdote with a remark that was seemingly about racial discrimination remaining a prevalent problem. "There's so much progress to be done," she said.

Amid the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020, Zendaya told InStyle that seeing the harm that racial injustice can cause is difficult for her. "This time is very hard to talk about. It's painful," she said. She also recalled how the 2016 fatal police shootings of two Black men, Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, made her upset and worried about her father. "I didn't want him to go out and do anything. ... He knows what he knows. But I still had that fear, and that scared me."