Hollywood Flashback: Teen Zendaya Served Up Comic Charm in ‘Frenemies’

Twelve years ago, Zendaya netted her feature debut in Disney Channel’s Frenemies.

The actress had been starring opposite Bella Thorne on the Disney series Shake It Up, about performers on a Chicago-based TV dance show. Zendaya was 14 when she and Thorne filmed the anthology comedy for director Daisy von Scherler Mayer, who had helmed the 1995 Parker Posey indie Party Girl and the 1998 feature Madeline. One of Frenemies‘ three connected storylines saw Zendaya and Thorne as aspiring magazine editors competing for a gig with an NYC publisher.

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“Zendaya really wanted to have fun with the comedy and lean into it,” von Scherler Mayer says. “She chose to wear big glasses and be goofy, and it impressed me that she wanted to show off her comic chops and has such great timing.”

The film shot in Toronto, and the director recalls the lead actresses having slumber parties during production: “All those teenagers were true teenagers.”

Zendaya, who went on to star in Marvel’s Spider-Man franchise, HBO’s Euphoria and the Dune films, next takes center court as a former tennis prodigy caught in a love triangle with Josh O’Connor and Mike Faist in Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers, out April 26 from Amazon/MGM.

Says von Scherler Mayer of Frenemies‘ cast — which also included Nick Robinson (Jurassic World; Love, Simon) — “They were so sweet and young, and to see the huge careers they’ve had since then just makes me so happy.”

This story first appeared in the April 24 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.

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