Why actress Zendaya wants to become a movie director

Zendaya’s goal is to become a filmmaker who creates the kind of roles she wants to see black women in.

The 24-year-old actress recently helped produce Netflix’s Malcolm and Marie in which she stars alongside John David Washington. She has revealed that the romantic drama’s director, Sam Levinson, who is also the creator of Zendaya’s HBO teen drama series Euphoria, has offered to teach her the ropes of directing.

Zendaya wants to create better roles for black women

In an interview with the New York Times, Zendaya was asked if she was interested in photography and cinematography.

Her response was: “Hugely. I mean, I’d love to be able to be a filmmaker. I don’t know when that’ll happen.

“Sam [Levinson] is always like, I give you a year until you’re directing something, and I’m like, all right, well, that means you got a year to teach me. So I don’t know what that looks like personally, but I really enjoyed being a producer,” Zendaya said.

“And I enjoy this idea of hopefully one day being able to make the things that I want to see, the roles that I want to see for black women. That would be exciting and a goal of mine.”

How ‘Malcolm and Marie’ came about

The Greatest Showman star also revealed she and Levinson had created Malcolm and Marie amid the coronavirus pandemic because she was itching to be creative again. She said she needed to find her purpose again after quarantine had stalled her work.

“I think it’s often forgotten because obviously we were able to sell it to Netflix, but it really started as this very, very small thing that we were doing,” Zendaya said.

“And it was my first time not really having my 9 to 5, which I’ve had since I was 13 years old. The last project that I technically did before Euphoria was KC Undercover. So it was my first time being without it — because I’ve never had to know who I am without my work.

Zendaya ‘itching’ to find her purpose

“I would talk to Sam a lot and I was itching to be creative in some form and find my purpose again. And I was like, What if we just shoot something, you, me and Marcell [Rév, the cinematographer who worked on the movie and also on Euphoria]?” Zendaya said.

“And if there was a world where we made something we were proud of and we could sell it and hopefully get everybody paid and take care of our crew in that way, that would be the ultimate winning goal for all of us.”

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