Zendaya Offers Rare Insight Into Relationship With Tom Holland, Family, Fame, and Anxiety

The pair are known to keep their relationship private, despite their millions of fans waiting — like eager puppies — for even the smallest look into their love.

Speaking to Vogue ahead of the release of her new film Challengers, Zendaya gave a very candid look into how the pair handle their public relationship, praising Holland for how he handled his life dramatically changing following Spider-Man: Homecoming in 2017.

“We were both very, very young, but my career was already kind of going, and his changed overnight. One day you’re a kid and you’re at the pub with your friends, and then the next day you’re Spider-Man,” she told Vogue.

Holland, like Zendaya, started in the entertainment industry at a young age. His first role was on London’s West End, starring in Billy Elliot: The Musical as a child.

“I definitely watched his life kind of change in front of him. But he handled it really beautifully,” said Zendaya.

Holland will be returning to the West End, the heart of London’s theater district and where he began his career, to star in a new production of Romeo & Juliet, and Zendaya says she “could not be more proud.”

“I’m going to try to see as many shows as I possibly can,” she insisted.

However, everywhere the pair go together (and separately), they are met with hundreds of fans taking photos and asking for selfies. In the same interview, Zendaya recalled a trip to Paris in the fall of 2022 where they wanted to visit the Louvre. For weeks following the pair’s excursion to the landmark, it became a social media extravaganza.

“You just kind of get used to the fact that, ‘Oh, I’m also one of these art pieces you’re going to take a picture of,'” Zendaya said. “I just gotta be totally cool with it and just live my life.”

Then, of course, fame also has its little benefits. The Louvre remained open after hours to allow for the A-listers to enjoy the museum without being gawked at.

“It was one of the coolest experiences ever,” she said. “It was like Night at the Museum.“

Zendaya and Holland met while working on 2017’s Spider-Man: Homecoming. The new couple avoided confirming their romance for a long time. It wasn’t until they were spotted kissing in a car in July 2021, that their relationship was out in the open.

Being famous is something Zendaya says she needs to tackle on a day-to-day basis. However, the 27 year old has changed her perspective on the idea of fame and being “grateful” for it from when she was younger.

“I think growing up, I always felt like when someone asks for a picture, I have to do it, all the time. You have to say yes, because you need to be grateful that you’re here,” she said. “And while I still feel that way, I also have learned that I can say no, and I can say kindly that I’m having a day off, or I’m just trying to be to myself today, and I don’t actually have to perform all the time.”

It’s something she has come to realize as she gets older and the idea of having a family of her own becomes more prevalent.

“Because I don’t necessarily want my kids to have to deal with this,” she told the publication, referring to her own fame, before adding that being in the public may not be her entire life down the road. “And what does my future look like?” she mused. “Am I going to be a public-facing person forever?”

The Challengers star revealed the dream scenario for her future self is to “make things and pop out when I need to pop out, and then have a safe and protected life with my family.”

However, there she finds herself being “worried” of what will happen to her career if she is “not delivering something all the time” that everything — fame, career — will fade away. So, while she may be long limbed, physically stunning, exude a warm and bubbly persona and of course, be insanely talented — she still has her everyday human anxieties.

“I think that’s always been a massive anxiety of mine: this idea that people will just be like, ‘Actually, I know I’ve been with you since you were 14, but I’m over you now because you’re boring.'”

Zendaya is definitely not boring as she graces the cover of Vogue’s May 2024 issue, available on newsstands nationwide on April 23rd.