When everyone else spent their confinement watching Netflix and baking banana bread, Zendaya shot a movie behind closed doors! The coronavirus lockdown forced the 23-year-old actress to halt production on HBO’s Euphoria season two, which was scheduled to begin in March 2020. Our sister site Deadline writes that Zendaya urged Sam Levinson, the show’s creator, to create and direct a movie that they could work on while quarantine, rather than just waiting around. Within six days, he wrote the script for Malcolm and Marie, and they cast John David Washington, the star of Black Panther, as Zendaya’s romantic partner. Z’s casting of a Black actor in a romantic comedy has fans jubilant.
Fans were ecstatic when Zendaya posted a still image of herself giving John a passionate kiss on July 7 to Twitter. She only included the title of the movie as a message. Fans gushed over how hot she and John looked together in the black-and-white photo, sending her name skyrocketing to the top of the US Twitter trends.
Sam managed to assemble a few key members of his Euphoria team, such as the production designer and director of photography. To keep everything as limited as possible, it was filmed in one place, the Feldman Architecture Caterpillar House in Monterey County. According to Deadline, another benefit was that the house’s 33 acres allowed for optimal social separation for the June 17–July 2 filming. Although the website stated that the film’s plot is still being kept under wraps, it is said to be comparable to Netflix’s Marriage Story with social and pandemic elements reflecting current events in the world.
According to the website, Zendaya’s latest movie met with every COVID-19 production regulation issued by the many Hollywood guilds and unions. After traveling to Monterey County in the north, the actors and crew had a two-week quarantine before the start of filming, during which they practiced remotely in parking lots. The movie had a skeleton crew on site at all times, no more than 12 people at a time, after action was called.
With her white pseudo-love interests in Zach Efron from The Greatest Showman and Tom Holland from Spider-Man: Homecoming and Spider-Man: Far From Home, Zendaya has thrilled fans with her casting opposite John, 35, while some were miffed at their 12-year age gap. Some, like Twitter user @cooljulian5, expressed happiness with the arrival of fresh movie content, saying, “@Zendaya Ma’am thank you for saving our 2020’s!!!!”
With Hollywood as a whole under lockdown, @dayahubb was ecstatic that Z kept a complete movie shoot under wraps, adding “@Zendaya This has the same spirit as when Kylie Jenner had her baby and kept it a secret for nine months. As co-host of YouTube’s Beyond the Trailer, Grace Randolph, tweeted, “Also, I want to say that I not only love this cast, but @Zendaya deserves a ton of credit for being the one to think of doing this movie in the first place.” Zendaya received praise for her ambitious career. Business acumen abounds. Is that not the case? Along with John David and rapper Kid Cudi (Scott Mescudi), who was one of the project’s backers, Zendaya was also given executive producer credit.