Zendaya Reflects on Being Her Family’s ‘Breadwinner’ at an Early Age

Zendaya is reflecting on how she grew up — and how it is giving her perspective on her childhood now, as an adult.

“I don’t know how much of a choice I had,” the Challengers actress, 27, told Vogue and British Vogue for the magazines’ shared May cover profile. “I have complicated feelings about kids and fame and being in the public eye, or being a child actor.”

“We’ve seen a lot of cases of it being detrimental,” she continued. “I think only now, as an adult, am I starting to go, Oh, okay, wait a minute: I’ve only ever done what I’ve known, and this is all I’ve known.”

Zendaya — who got her start in show business on Disney’s Shake It Up before landing her breakout film role in 2017’s Spider-Man: Homecoming — went on to say she feels as if she’s “almost going through my angsty teenager phase now, because I didn’t really have the time to do it before.”

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“I felt like I was thrust into a very adult position: I was becoming the breadwinner of my family very early, and there was a lot of role-​reversal happening, and just kind of becoming grown, really,” she explained.

Zendaya told Vogue that she felt like she needed to be “this perfect being, and be everything that everyone needs me to be, and live up to all these expectations.”

“Now, when I have these moments in my career — like, my first time leading a film that’s actually going to be in a theater — I feel like I shrink, and I can’t enjoy all the things that are happening to me,“ she said. “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—.”

“And I wish I went to school,” the Euphoria star added.

Challengers presents a new landscape for Zendaya, as her character Tashi is in her early 30s. “I’m always in a high school somewhere,” she said in her interview with Vogue, speaking about past roles. “And, mind you, I never went to high school.”

Asked about her Hollywood peers, the Dune: Part Two star added that she has “a little bit” of a social circle in that regard, but “I think there could be more.”

“I don’t know. I keep to myself a lot, which is my own fault,” she said. “But also, I love and I’m grateful for my peers, but I would love to see more who look a little bit more like me around me. I think that that is something that is crucial and necessary.”

Challengers hits theaters April 26. Vogue‘s May 2024 issue is available on newsstands nationwide on April 23.