Zendaya has done a lot of soul-searching in the last year.

The 24-year-old Euphoria actor spoke openly about her experience in the midst of the current COVID-19 pandemic on the February cover of GQ, opening up about the new anxiety she felt about her identity when the following lockdown forced much of Hollywood to postpone productions and shoots.

“It was my first time just being like, ‘Okay, who am I without this?'” she recalled thinking. “Which is a very scary thing to confront and work through, because I don’t really know Zendaya outside of the Zendaya who works. I didn’t realize how much my job and my art were a part of my identity as a human.”

She later added, “I feel most like myself when I’m working. I felt like, when I wasn’t working, my powers had gone away, and I was like, ‘Who the f—’ I didn’t really know who I was and what makes me happy. What do I like to do? What else do I do? What is my value? What is my purpose now?”

While the answers to those questions are undeniably complicated, Zendaya claims that only she can learn to answer them for herself. She also stated that she is constantly learning to realize that she will not always be able to control how others view her.While the answers to those questions are undeniably complicated, Zendaya claims that only she can learn to answer them for herself. She also stated that she is constantly learning to realize that she will not always be able to control how others view her.

“I think…that me wanting to control everything is just not wanting to f— up. Not wanting to let anybody down,” Zendaya said.

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However, Zendaya is far from letting anyone down. Last year, she made history when she became the youngest person to ever win the Emmy for best lead actress in a drama for her role as Rue on HBO’s Euphoria — humble as she may be about the accolade.

“In a lot of ways it feels like proving something to myself personally, yeah, but I feel like, I feel good about it for all of us,” she said about the Emmy. “It feels like recognition that maybe we aren’t just like that little crazy show with the crazy kids, you know what I mean? To me, it’s like Mean Girls, when [Lindsay Lohan] breaks the crown. She’s like, ‘This is for you.'”

To help get through the stifling lockdown, Zenday turned to close friend and colleague Sam Levinson, creator of Euphoria, who told GQ she is unlike most artists in the industry.

“What I appreciate the most about working with Z is that there’s no ego and no bullshit,” Levinson said. “It’s about the work and how to make the work better. She’s also not myopic or unaware, and I think we share a similar degree of self-criticism, where we look at the work we’ve done and we discuss in brutal, painful f—— detail what we could have done better. I feel like that’s the key to longevity and growth as an artist: to keep learning, keep searching, and keep trying to do better. F— a victory lap.”

While they were unable to continue filming their blockbuster HBO drama, Malcolm & Marie, the pair did manage to come up with the upcoming project while in quarantine. The romantic drama was shot in two weeks and stars Zendaya and John David Washington in a gorgeous black-and-white film about a couple confronted with their relationship’s skeletons.

Zendaya praised the fact that her role, Marie, was not your traditional female protagonist, noting that she had previously turned down screenplays because she felt the character would not allow her improve as an actress.

“It’s not necessarily that any of [the scripts] were bad or something like that,” she said. “I just felt like a lot of the roles that I was reading, specifically female roles, were just like, I could have played them all as the same person and it wouldn’t have mattered, if that makes sense.”

“The best way to describe it is just like, they’d usually serve the purpose of helping the male character get to where they need to go, do what they need to do. They don’t really have an arc of their own,” Zendaya added. “And they usually feel very one-dimensional in the sense that there’s not a lot of layers to them, meaning they all seem very kind of like the same person over and over and over again. It would have been great and it would have been fine, but I wouldn’t have grown at all.”

Moreover, Zendaya said that Marie allowed her to dig deep and learn how to better convey her own emotions

“[Marie] gave me an opportunity to use these words in a way,” Zendaya said. “I don’t yell. I’m not a very argumentative person, but it’s nice to just release s— and be able to— I don’t know… I guess emote would be the word? To just use her as this vessel to just get shit out that maybe I had pent up or hadn’t said.”

If you’re wondering when you’ll see Zendaya as Rue again, HBO revealed last month that the second of two special episodes, titled “F— Anyone Who Isn’t a Sea Blob,” will air on Jan. 24. It will be the final of the standalone episodes shot during the pandemic, intended to tide fans over until the cast and crew can finish season 2 as planned prior to the COVID-19 lockdown.