Zendaya Says She’s Grown Up Enough To Play John David Washington’s Girlfriend In “Malcolm & Marie”

January 28, 2021 / Posted by:

Earlier this month, Netflix dropped the trailer for their film Malcolm & Marie, starring 24-year-old Zendaya and 36-year-old John David Washington. We can’t be certain how everyone responded to that trailer. Maybe some people came away from it feeling deeply lazy for not being nearly as productive in quarantine as Zedaya and John had been. Others possibly thought, “Shoot, what was the fake cigarette budget on this movie?” (there’s a lot of smoking). But it sounds like there was a bunch of people who got outraged over Disney Channel kid star Zendaya kissing, smoking, swearing, and appearing in various states of underwear-wearing. Because apparently there are people out there who refuse to accept that Zendaya isn’t a 14-year-old girl on a Disney sitcom anymore. Zendaya has a message for those people, and it’s that she’s absolutely grown-up enough to be kissing, smoking, swearing, and getting romantic on-screen with an adult like John David Washington.

The plot of Malcolm & Marie is about a filmmaker and his girlfriend who return home from a movie premiere. And thanks to the clips used in the trailer, it looks like Malcolm and Marie spend a bunch of time fighting and fucking and living the complexities of a relationship. It’s also shot in black and white, which is pretty much a perfect recipe for awards buzz.

But, as Zendaya tells People (the TV show!), she was forced to defend her age after some people on social media chirped about how they felt that she, at 24, was way too young to be playing the girlfriend of 36-year-old John. She tried to argue that a 12-year age gap is probably very weird when you’re talking about an 18-year-old and a 30-year-old. But at 24, she’s very much an adult and everyone should calm down.

“People often forget – which is understandable because I’ve been playing 16 since I was 16, you know – I am grown. I knew that, as I grow and as I evolve, there would be that moment where I could play someone my own age.”

To be fair to the haters, and yes I hate myself for phrasing it that way, Zendaya has sort of been playing a teenager for almost her whole career. She started by playing Rocky on Disney’s Shake It Up when she was 14. Then she played a high school math genius on K.C. Undercover, which premiered in 2016 when she was 20 years old. She made the leap from Disney kid shows to HBO’s Euphoria, where she plays high school student, even though she’s in her early 20s. On film, she played MJ in Spider-Man Homecoming and Spider-Man: Far from Home. MJ is in high school in the films, whereas Zendaya was actually 21 and 23 when both films premiered. So there are likely a lot of Zendaya fans who shouted at John David Washington to leave that poor high school girl alone when they saw the trailer for Malcolm & Marie.

John himself has addressed the age difference, telling Variety that there isn’t the typical Hollywood power imbalance, because Zendaya isn’t some wide-eyed ingenue who just stepped off the bus from the midwest. She may be younger than him by over a decade, but she clocked more hours on set. via People:

“She has far more experience than I do in the industry. I’ve only been in it for seven years. She’s been in it longer, so I’m learning from her. I’m the rookie.”

And what Washington is “really excited for people to see when the film is released” is “how mature she is in this role.” He said, “We’re talking about versatility, and [director Sam Levinson] and Zendaya brought both.”

You’re so mature for your age” is the kind of thing that either comes off as flattering, or it makes your skin crawl, depending on your own personal experience with it. But personally, I think we all just need to accept that Zendaya is not a kid star anymore before she feels like she has to prove that. What creative options does she even have for that at this point to convince people that she is absolutely no longer a Disney star? Miley Cyrus didn’t leave much left when she took both twerking on live TV in plastic underwear and public weed consumption, and OnlyFans is kind of Bella Thorne’s turf.

Pic: Netflix

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