Zendaya discussed her “complicated feelings” about growing up in the spotlight after being chosen to play Rocky Blue in the sitcom Shake It Up on the Disney Channel.
After being placed in a’very adult position’ as her family’s breadwinner before becoming a legal adult, the Oakland native—who has now won two Emmys at the young age of 27—reflected on her anxiety difficulties.
In an interview with Vogue, the Euphoria star said that she finds the topic a little “funny” because “it’s something that” she’s still trying to figure out now. The question concerned her childhood aspirations.
How much of a choice I had is unknown to me. She said, “I have conflicting feelings about children, fаme, the spotlight, and being a child actor.” “We’ve observed numerous instances where it has been harmful.”
I’ve only ever done acting; nothing else that I’ve ever done.
“I didn’t really have the time to go through my angsty teenage phase before,” she thought, approaching the end of her phase.
“I felt like I was tҺrust into a very adult position: I was becoming the breadwinner of my family very early,” Zendaya remarked, reflecting on her adolescence.
According to her, “there was a lot of role-reversal and just kind of growing up.”
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She also had intense pressure to live up to and transform into “this perfect being, and be everything that everyone needs” her to be.
She still finds it difficult to appreciate her current achievement or to live in the present due to the pressure and expectations.
“Now, in my career, I feel like I shrink, and I can’t enjoy all the things that are happening to me because I’m like this,” she added, balling up her fists. “This is like my first time leading a film that will actually be in a theater.” “I’m really nervous.”
She continued by saying she thinks her tension stems from “never really having an opportunity to just try s**t” as a child, when there was no feаr of not succeeding.
The actress also acknowledged that attending classes virtually ‘just barely’ worked and that she still sincerely wishes she had “gone to school.”
Both of Zendaya’s parents, schoolteachers Kazembe Ajamu Coleman and Claire Stoermer, split in 2016.
From her father’s first marriage, she has five elder stepsiblings: brothers Austin and Julien, sisters Katianna, Annabella, and Kaylee.
She told Glamour in 2017 that her father ‘left his job as a teacher’ in order to fulfill her ambition of becoming an actress.
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Her mother stayed in Oakland and supported the family by working two jobs as a teacher and employee of the California Shakespeare Theater while she went on auditions with her father.
“All of our round-trip car rides during the year I was auditioning were covered by those two jobs,” she remarked.
Zendaya has praised her mother’s professional accomplishments throughout the years and called her a role model.
I grew up seeing my mother work as an inner-city teacher in Oakland, California, at underfunded inner-city schools. In 2016, the performer told Teen Vogue, “My mom went above and beyond, working constantly to open her students’ eyes to an education that could lift them far beyond their current circumstances.”
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“She would expose them to the arts, mentor them through Shakespeare’s language, and show them the wonders of nature outside of city life—all things that they wouldn’t have experienced otherwise,” the speaker went on.
Prior to beginning her career as a Kidz Bop child and backup dancer for Selena Gomez in a Sears commercial, she appeared in the sitcom Shake It Off on the Disney Channel, which aired from 2010 to 2013.
Since then, the Golden Globe winner has starred in movie office smashes including Spider-Man: Homecoming, The Greatest Showman, and the Dune film franchise in addition to HBO’s popular series Euphoria.