Zendaya reveals she spent 2020 rejecting roles that just 'help the male character to get where they need to go'
Zendaya has recently upped her profile in a major way thanks to her dynamic Emmy-winning performance on "Euphoria" and her upcoming Oscar-baiting role in Netflix's "Malcolm & Marie." But the actress revealed that she hasn't stopped getting offered parts that don't challenge her.
In February's GQ cover story, the 24-year-old said that through the last year she was constantly offered roles, but rejected them all because they were too two-dimensional, or would cast her as a prop for the male protagonist.
"It's not necessarily that any of [the scripts] were bad or something like that," she said. "I just felt like a lot of the roles that I was reading, specifically female roles, were just like, I could have played them all as the same person and it wouldn't have mattered, if that makes sense.
"The best way to describe it is just like, they'd usually serve the purpose of helping the male character get to where they need to go, do what they need to do," she continued.
"They don't really have an arc of their own. And they usually feel very one-dimensional in the sense that there's not a lot of layers to them, meaning they all seem very kind of like the same person over and over and over again. It would have been great and it would have been fine, but I wouldn't have grown at all."
Starring in the drama, "Malcolm & Marie," was actually an idea that sparked from talks she had with its director Sam Levinson, who is also the creator of "Euphoria."
Zendaya said in the GQ profile that at first Levinson wanted to create a thriller that played off her "K.C. Undercover" role, which she was the star of for three seasons on the Disney Channel.
"He's like, 'What if we did something almost like a horror movie where you've lost it because you still think you're on 'K.C. Undercover'?" she recalled. "You could be in the house like dah, dah, dah, and you're still stuck being this Disney Channel actress, and people are like, 'No. You're not K.C. [anymore].'"
Zendaya admits she wasn't feeling it, which led to what eventually became the chamber piece drama about a couple dealing with relationship troubles that "Malcolm & Marie" became.
It has resulted in some feeling that Zendaya is now an Oscar frontrunner in the best actress category.
"Malcolm & Marie" is available on Netflix beginning February 5.
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