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Zendaya is giving fans a glimpse at her upcoming sports drama, Challengers, and posed in a series of unique outfits for her latest Vogue photo shoot. The fashion pieces featured different themes — the cover image is the 27-year-old covered with a large rose, while she lounged on a bed of leaves, and another shot is a bridal-themed gown complete with a floral veil.
Other pictures from the shoot included Zendaya wearing a yellow strapless maxi dress and one of her climbing an artistic sculpture wall, wearing a gold number.
While speaking with the publication in its cover story that was published on Tuesday, April 9, the Dune: Part Two star opened up about the character she is playing in Challengers: Tashi Duncan.
“I mean, listen, she takes the s**t to a whole new level,” Zendaya explained while recalling how she trained for the part. “[But] I’d say, yeah, I’m competitive, in the sense that I want to work hard. and I try to not be competitive with anyone else. I try to just be like, I already did that, OK, so now I got to do better.”
The movie star related to her character through their similar competitiveness, which is “sometimes” a “bit crippling” for her in reality.
“I guess where I was trying to empathize with my character — because it’s my job, even though I think she does some s**t that I would absolutely never do — is in how nobody’s like, ‘Tashi, are you OK? What do you need?’” Zendaya pointed out. “She’s just always running s**t, and nobody is taking any of that off of her shoulders. … She’s making all the decisions. She is doing all the stuff. So, I imagine that she’s really just calling all the shots. She’s, like, everybody’s mom.”
Since fans know her from roles that aren’t as controversial as the character of Tashi (since Tashi uses sex and some manipulation to pit two male athletes against each other), Zendaya admitted that she thought the character was a “little crazy” after first reading the script.
“Typically, I play the person that ultimately is easier to empathize with,” she said. “There was something about her that felt very, ‘Oh, damn.’ Even I was kind of scared of her.”