Zendaya Admits She’s ‘Still Harboring a Little Animosity’ About ‘DWTS’ Loss

Zendaya is gracing one of the covers of W magazine’s first issue of 2025, Volume 1, Best Performances.

In the issue, Zendaya opened up about a health scare that she faced while filming “Dune: Part Two” and reflected on her “Dancing with the Stars” loss in 2013.

Years ago, Zendaya was shooting “Dune: Part Two” in Jordan when she suffered a heatstroke.

She recalled, “It was very hot, and I remember thinking, ‘Oh, man, the bathrooms are so far away,’ because we had to hike to the locations. If you have to pee, you need at least 10 minutes to get out of the costumes. I was like, ‘Damn, I don’t want to drink too much water.’ I had such a fear of peeing myself or sh*tting myself, honestly, in the suit on set. One day, I didn’t drink enough and I had a heatstroke. I felt so barfy. I remember calling my mom on the bathroom floor, saying, ‘I feel terrible.’ She was like, ‘Did you drink water today?’ I said no. I thought I was being smart, but you can’t do that. So, lesson learned.”

Zendaya has become a household name in Hollywood since competing on “Dancing with the Stars” more than 10 years ago.

Despite her high scores on “DWTS,” Zendaya didn’t win the Mirrorball Trophy.

She admitted, “Listen, I’m still harboring a little animosity about that. I felt that loss. I was only 16 years old, and it was highly stressful. Being on live television every week? It’s so scary. I took it very seriously, which, in retrospect, I wish I didn’t. I wish I’d enjoyed it a little bit more and just was like, ‘Eh, whatever.’ You know what I mean? But I was stressing myself out. I really went through it on that.”               

Zendaya is still using her ballroom skills for her acting jobs like “Challengers,” in which she played a tennis player.

She shared, “I’m like, ‘If I could do a foxtrot, I think I can learn tennis footwork.’” 

Portraying a tennis player wasn’t an easy feat for Zendaya, who got “really frustrated” that she couldn’t master the sport.

She elaborated, “There would be some days where I would feel like, ‘Okay, I’m starting to get the hang of this,’ and then other days where I couldn’t get a ball over the net. Then I realized we were going to be filming without a ball. Every tennis sequence was thought through and choreographed, so I said, ‘Well, maybe I should learn the choreography. That’s something my body has experienced.’ I started shadowing my very talented tennis double. I thought that may have worked, but it didn’t trick Serena Williams. She was like, ‘I could tell there were not real balls. But you did all right.’”