John Bankston - Zendaya: Actor

Shake It Up's Bella Thorne and Zendaya

Source: Newscom.

Not long after Shake it Up ended, she was asked to star in a new Disney Channel show. Unlike the first one where she'd co-starred with Bella Thorne, she would have the starring role. It was a huge opportunity. Zendaya turned it down.

Zendaya knew finding acting work could be tough for teenagers who became famous as younger actors. It didn't matter. She wanted more than a starring role on another Disney show. "I got in a room with the heads of the Disney Channel," Zendaya explained to Vogue. She was 16 years old. It didn't matter. She wasn't going to be intimidated. She listed her problems with Super Awesome Katy, the show she'd been asked to star in. "I was like, 'The title is whack. That's gonna change,'" she remembered in her Vogue interview. She didn't just hate the title, she hated her character's name, asking "Do I look like a Katy to you?"

On Shake it Up, she and Thorne had played aspiring dancers. Young people watching shows on Disney often dreamed of being dancers or singers. Zendaya didn't think there was anything wrong with that, but as she told Vogue, "I wanted to make sure that she wasn't good at singing or acting or dancing. That she wasn't artistically inclined She can't dance; she can't sing. She can't do that stuff. There are other things that a girl can be."

Instead, of performing, her character would be a math wiz and talented martial artist. Zendaya wanted to play someone both smart and awkward. She wouldn't be the most popular in school, but she could hold her own in a fight. Most of all she wanted to play a normal teen with an extraordinary life.

Zendaya wasn't just thinking about how to change her character. She was thinking about how to change Disney. Growing up, she'd loved watching Disney. In fact, she told Toronto's Flare magazine that it motivated her to pursue acting. "I remember Hannah Montana came out, and I was so depressed I started crying because I was like, I want to do that."

Despite her love for the channel, Zendaya, who is biracial, noticed early on that there weren't families on Disney that resembled her own. "A lot of people who aren't people of color can't quite understand what it's like to grow up and not see yourself in mainstream media," she pointed out to Blackish star Yara Shahidi in an interview with Glamour magazine. "And you know, there is so much work left to be done. I've talked about this before, but can I honestly say I would be in the position I'm in if I weren't a lighter-skinned black woman? No."

When Shake it Up ended, there weren't any families of color on the channel. If she came back, that needed to change. To make the type of show she wanted, she knew that being the star wasn't enough. She wanted to be a producer. Although she wasn't legally an adult, she didn't just want the title. She wanted the power that came with it. She wanted to be a boss.

Among their many jobs, producers have a say in casting. She wanted to be part of a show that "not only allows for representation but sees girls in a powerful and strong position," she told Variety. For many top actors, earning a producer credit is just an extra perklike a larger trailer or a personal trainer. For others, it means getting involved with the direction of the show.

Instead of Super Awesome Katy, Zendaya's new show would be called K.C. Undercover. And instead of just a starring role as K.C., Zendaya would also be a co-producer. The show's executive producer, Rob Lotterstein, told Flare that although "[s]ome actors get a producer title as part of their deal Zendaya takes her role as a producer very seriously. She's been a real partner to me, coming up with ideas for everything from how to film a scene to story fixes."

For Zendaya, getting the chance to help craft the show she starred in was just part of her journey, one that began in Oakland, California as a shy, non-athletic girl with two sports-obsessed parents.

Zendaya's famous name blends a traditional language with her father's unique interests. An African American, Kazembe Ajamu Coleman used a word from Zimbabwe's Bantu people that meant "to give thanks" in their Shona dialect. As she told Marie Claire in 2016, "The original word was something else. My parents found it in an African name book, then switched up the pronunciation and changed the first letter. It became Zendaya because my dad is a martial artist and he was studying Buddhism at the time. I definitely embody the Zen thing."

Coleman and his wife Claire Stoermer wanted to give thanks and express their joy at the arrival of a daughtertheir first child together. Zendaya Maree Stoermer Coleman was born on September 1, 1996. "I started off literarily from birth knowing who I am, it's all in my name," she explained in Z is for Zendaya, a video filmed as part of Immigrant Heritage Month in June 2015. A fifth-generation Californian, Stoermer can trace her roots to Germany and Scotland. Her grandfather worked in Hollywood as a photographer and cameraman. Zendaya's dad explained during the video that, "I was born Samuel David Coleman, and I reclaimed my African name Kazembe Ajamu." His parents moved from Arkansas to California. Besides roots in Nigeria, a recent DNA test traced his father's side of the family to Iceland. "For me, I get like a mixture of all the worlds," Zendaya explained in the video. "I have my African first name, I have a middle name that's [my mother's name] which is French I literally have a timeline in history in my name I have roots in Africa, like I'm from Africa, as well as I'm from Germany, and I'm very proud of that."