Zendaya — star of the upcoming film “Spider-Man: Homecoming” and current Vogue cover girl — knows what she wants and isn’t afraid to ask for it.
Case in point: The 20-year-old actress recently shared a sweet story with Vogue about walking into a room full of Disney Channel executives at 16 and pretty much owning the meeting.
At the time, Zendaya had just wrapped her first Disney show, “Shake It Up,” where she played an aspiring dancer alongside Bella Thorne. The heads of the Disney Channel now wanted her to do a show called “Super Awesome Katy.” Zendaya did not think the name of the show was so awesome.
“The title is whack,” Zendaya recalled telling the execs. “That’s gonna change.”
She also nixed the character’s name, telling them, “Do I look like a Katy to you?”
The star then made a few more requests. Zendaya wanted to be a producer and made sure that the show featured a family of color. But it didn’t end there.
“I wanted to make sure that she wasn’t good at singing or acting or dancing. That she wasn’t artistically inclined,” she told Vogue of her character. “I didn’t want them to all of a sudden be like, ‘Oh, yeah, and then she sings this episode!’ No. She can’t dance; she can’t sing. She can’t do that stuff. There are other things that a girl can be.”
The show eventually became “K.C. Undercover” — a show about a confident teenage math whiz who becomes an international spy.
Sounds like girlfriend got exactly what she wanted.
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