102
The Euphoria role
scared her. “It’s a
totally different thing
than being the star
of K.C. Undercover,”
she says, referring to
her final Disney
project. “That first day
on set, I was honest-
to-God terrified”
F
ourteen year-old Isys is more voluble than her
sister. With exceptional poise, she discusses
the report she’s writing for English class about
police brutality, as Zendaya navigates stop-
and-start traffic along the road back home.
Earlier, I’d asked Zendaya whether she’d asked
Isys questions about high school life, given that Rue is only a
little older than her niece. “Not really,” she told me, and now,
with Isys in the car, it’s clear why: This is a girl with her head
firmly affixed to her shoulders. What would she know about
a character set to self-destruct?
Upon arrival at Zendaya’s spacious but sparsely furnished
home, aunt and nieces discuss the usual family things: home-
work and what we should all have for dinner. Zendaya doesn’t
really cook, but she’s contemplating roasting some vegetables,
a plan they scrap in favor of ordering Thai food. It’s easy to
imagine that this was what life was like for Zendaya when
she was growing up on the Disney lot; her parents, who
once watched over her career like hawks, made an effort to
keep home a place where she could let her hair down and be
a “normal” teen. Now that Zendaya has broken free from
them a bit (though her mother recently seeded her house
with crystals, she shows me), she enjoys taking on a kind
of parental role—nodding along in bemusement as Imani
reels off the names of her favorite K-pop stars, and smiling
as Isys pokes fun at her aunt’s endless love of Harry Potter.
(“So much Harry Potter,” Isys says.) Zendaya quizzes her
niece for more details on her English paper. Police brutality is
something the actress knows about: Zendaya was still living
in Oakland on New Year’s Day, 2009, when a young black
man, Oscar Grant, was shot by a transit cop, not far from
the elementary school where Zendaya’s mother taught. (The
shooting was dramatized in Oakland native Ryan Coogler’s
first feature film, Fruitvale Station.) The city erupted in
protest, a preview of Black Lives Matter protests to come.
“You know, Oakland’s got a history,” Kizzi explains to
me later, “and there’s a consciousness that comes along with
that, if you grew up there.” Kizzi describes a warm childhood
where their grandmother made peanut butter–and–jelly
sandwiches after school, and “everyone pitched in,” including
’Daya, as the baby of the family is known (Zendaya has four
older half-siblings). “But I think ’Daya was also influenced
by seeing the differences between her mom’s public school
and the private school where our dad was teaching. Like,
‘OK, there are some discrepancies here... .’ ”
Though Zendaya hasn’t lived in Oakland for nearly a
decade, she still feels very connected to the place—and to
its radical past. At one point, she turns over an unframed
portrait of a black man above her fireplace to reveal the
mug shot of firebrand academic Angela Davis collaged on
its opposite side. “A friend of Law’s made it,” she explains,
referring to her longtime stylist Law Roach. “I definitely
want more work by young black artists,” she adds, gesturing
at the house’s empty walls. “And yeah, maybe I wouldn’t
mind playing Angela Davis in a movie one day.” She turns
the painting back over, with a wink.
An Angela Davis biopic starring Zendaya makes terrific
sense. She’s one of the most politically vocal among a crop of
“woke” young stars, posting to Instagram in support of Colin
Kaepernick, urging her fans to take action when she picked
up a Teen Choice Award the day after the deadly alt-right
