ZENDAYA

Zendaya was born in Oakland, California, on 1 September 1996. Shake It Up and K.C. Undercover introduced her to television audiences before her film career expanded. Moving from a sitcom ensemble to feature films brought changes in pace and scale, while keeping interaction with other performers central to her work.

As Rue in Euphoria, she won the Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series in 2020 and again in 2022. The role also brought the 2023 Golden Globe for television drama actress. FLM.RED’s reading of the performance attends to the distance between what a character tells us and what her behaviour reveals; certainty in a voice does not always make the experience straightforward.

Her films include MJ in Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017) and its sequels, alongside Tom Holland, as well as Denis Villeneuve’s Dune (2021) and Dune: Part Two (2024). These ensemble films give her different relationships to the main action. Watching how a look or a short response changes a conversation is one way into performances that do not need to occupy every scene to affect a story.

Challengers (2024), directed by Luca Guadagnino, casts her as Tashi Duncan, whose tennis life is intertwined with her husband and a former boyfriend. Here, competition and relationships keep reshaping each other. FLM.RED reads her attention to the other players as part of the drama: assessing someone can be as consequential as taking an obvious action.