Zendaya spills the beans on being a ‘Disney kid’: 'I get scared'

Given her age, Zendaya truly has achieved a lot professionally and in an effort to reflect back onto her not-so distant past the actor addressed her long-term label as a ‘Disney kid’ and her lack of shame over it all.

The Emmy award winning actress discussed her thoughts regarding her label as a “Disney kid” during an interview with Caret Mulligan for Variety's Actors on Actors.

There she was quoted saying, “The thing is, I am. And to a degree, I am grateful for that. That's where I started, and I learned so much from that experience."

"It's just kind of been this slow progression, and I am happy that it's all been to prove it to myself and not to anybody else, you know?" she continued. "I embrace it a little bit. It's part of my heritage to a degree."

At the same time, even though Zendaya never felt the pressure of limitations due to her past choices, Sam Levinson’s decision to cast her in Euphoria shocked her. "He must have seen something in me,” the actor admitted.

"I've always felt that I could bring things to the table: that I could be creative and free to try things, and put out bad ideas," she explained. "Because of the Disney kid thing, I get scared of that kind of thing."

"But it stuck with me, because I think it's these kind of every day moments that add up—that mean that we start to edit the way that women appear on screen, and we want them to look a certain way. We want to airbrush them, and we want to make them look perfect.” (sic)

“Or we want to edit the way that they work, the way they move, and the way that they think and behave. And I think we need to see real women portrayed on screen and in all of their complexity."