During a panel at a screening of Dune: Part Two in NYC on September 22, Zendaya admitted she might not be “cut out” for the life of a celebrity. “I love doing the work, I love being on set…but I am terrified of that [fame] part of it,” she said. “I was a shy kid, always have been, and so this part isn’t natural…. Some people…they enjoy the power that comes from it, and I don’t know if that’s for me.”
Whether or not she wants it, the two-time Emmy winner, 28, has been in the public eye since she was a tween on Disney Channel’s Shake It Up. “In a lot of ways, Zendaya says she’s not who people think she is,” an insider exclusively tells Life & Style. “She may project confidence on-screen and on red carpets, but Zendaya has really struggled with the negative side of being in the spotlight, especially with losing her privacy. That’s something she’s had to come to terms with.”
One of the ways she copes is by dressing the part. The Greatest Showman actress, who is a staple on “best dressed” lists, calls fashion her “armor to pretend to go out and do the job.”
She’s also got great support from boyfriend Tom Holland, 28. “Zendaya doesn’t want to complain too much, it’s just that she does have regrets about how some things have played out,” notes the insider. “As a child actor himself, Tom has experienced a lot of the same things, though, so he can totally relate. She really credits him with helping her find peace amid the show-business chaos.”
The duo met on the set of 2017’s Spider-Man: Homecoming. When they were first photographed smooching in 2021? Both Zendaya and Tom felt “violated,” she has said. “Some moments or things, you wish were your own.”
Still, she has learned to find strength where she can. “I do have control over what I choose to share,” Zendaya explained to Elle. “It’s about protecting the peace and letting things be your own, but also not being afraid to exist.”
In the past, it was because of others’ expectations that Zendaya felt she missed out on experiences like attending a traditional high school. “I’m very tense, and I think that I carry that from being a kid and never really having an opportunity to just try s–t,” she told Vogue. “I’m almost going through my angsty teenager phase now, because I didn’t really have the time to do it before…. I was thrust into a very adult position: I was becoming the bread-winner of my family very early, and there was a lot of role-reversal.”
Now that she is an adult, Zendaya has been sifting through her childhood and deciding what’s next. That includes more mature roles, like her recent flick Challengers, but also growing herself. As she told the NYC panel: “I would like to be a person and for people to see me as that first.”
