The career regret that makes Zendaya wish she’d done differently, “enjoyed it a little bit more”
Now that Zendaya is the star of everything from the gritty teen drama Euphoria to recent cinematic hits like Challengers, The Drama, and Dune, it’s easy to forget that she actually started off prancing about on the Disney Channel.
The actor was just 14 years old when she bagged the leading role alongside Bella Thorne in Shake It Up, the 2010 hit show that ran for three seasons, and soon after, she was releasing music, appearing in Disney Channel movies, and even bagging a spot on Dancing With the Stars.
It might’ve seemed like an unfair advantage, considering that she was, until this point, best known for her dancing role on kids’ TV, but then again, she was only 16 and the youngest contestant in the history of the show, while the other competitors were all adults.
But she soon proved that age was no barrier, and she came in second place, while country singer Kellie Pickler took the crown, and to this day, Zendaya still can’t help feeling a little bitter that she didn’t win, telling W magazine, “Listen, I’m still harbouring a little animosity about that”.
Of course, it was all so long ago now, and she admits that she doesn’t even watch Dancing With the Stars, but she still thinks she was good enough to win. However, the whole ordeal actually proved to be a big moment for Zendaya, which took her straight out of her comfort zone as she’d never done anything like it before.
“I felt that loss. I was only 16 years old, and it was highly stressful. Being on live television every week? It’s so scary,” she explained.
With some distance from it all, as Zendaya reflected on that period of her life, she couldn’t help but wish she had lightened up a bit. Winning or losing wasn’t the be-all-and-end-all, but when you’re that young, of course, you’re going to put pressure on yourself; that’s what teenagers do best. It’s something we never really grow out of, but we learn to deal with pressure and expectation better as we get older, and only now can Zendaya look back with the experience of someone older and wiser.
“I took it very seriously, which, in retrospect, I wish I didn’t. I wish I’d enjoyed it a little bit more and just was like, ‘Eh, whatever’. You know what I mean? But I was stressing myself out. I really went through it on that,” the actor revealed.
Zendaya’s career has changed a lot since then, and while she admits that she loves watching reality TV as a “guilty pleasure”, I don’t think we’ll be seeing the Hollywood icon returning to Dancing with the Stars or anything of that calibre anytime soon. She’s got some big projects coming up, like Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey and even Shrek 5, so long gone are her days of competing against country singers and reality stars every week.
