Zendaya 'never thought' about being taller than boyfriend Tom Holland: 'I didn't know that people cared'

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Zendaya is setting the record straight about the stereotypes of being a tall woman.

The actress and singer attended a SiriusXM Town Hall panel alongside her boyfriend and costar Tom Holland, who stands at 5-foot-8, to discuss the release of Spider-Man: No Way Home. It didn’t take long before the conversation turned to discuss the stigma tall women who date shorter women face.

NEW YORK, NEW YORK - DECEMBER 10: Tom Holland and Zendaya attend SiriusXM's Town Hall with the cast of Spider-Man: No Way Home on December 10, 2021 in New York City. (Photo by Cindy Ord/Getty Images for SiriusXM)
Zendaya may be taller than her boyfriend, Tom Holland, but she says it's one of the last things on her mind. (Photo: Cindy Ord/Getty Images for SiriusXM)

“[She’s] not that much taller,” Holland told co-host Jessica Shaw. “Maybe like an inch or two at best.”

“My mom is taller than my dad,” added Zendaya, who stands at 5-foot-11, according to IMDB. "My mom is taller than everyone."

“I remember when we were doing the Spider-Man screen tests,” Holland continued. “Every girl that we tested for both roles was taller than me. And I wonder whether … that was a decision that Jon [Watts] had made. There was no one that tested that was shorter than I was. To be fair, I am quite short. So maybe that was a decision Jon Watts made and something he was aware of and wanted to break the stereotype. I think it’s great.”

“It’s a nice sweet moment between them,” Zendaya said, referencing a moment in No Way Home when she and Holland’s character kiss, further highlighting their height difference. “I hate having to cheat it and pretend, like, why not just let it be what it is?”

“Put me on an apple box,” Holland joked.

“I honestly never thought of it as a thing,” Zendaya added. “Because my parents were always that way. So I didn’t know that people cared until life, you know, but before that I had no construct of it.”

The couple joked about it in another appearance on the Graham Norton Show earlier this month, when Zendaya shared that the height difference has only been an issue for them when it came to doing a particular stunt on set.

There's a moment in No Way Home when they're supposed to land together on a bridge, but because she's taller, her feet were hitting the ground first.

“I would land before him,” she told Norton.

"Zendaya would land," Holland explained. "And I'm the superhero, I'm supposed to look cool. And I would land and my feet would swing from underneath me and then she would catch me.”

Before giving a little demo, Zendaya praised Holland, saying, “You were actually very lovely about it. You would be like ‘Oh my gosh, thank you.’”

Discussions about height aren’t exactly new for Holland, who opened up to GQ last month about dealing with insecurities growing up, which still show up from time to time.

"I'd do this thing on red carpets where I would stand closer to the photographers than the people behind me [to look taller]," he explained, adding that he's learned to focus on what he can control. "I cannot do anything about my height. [But] I can put on more muscle."