While many stars lost opportunities due to the epidemic in 2020, Emmy Award-winning actress Zendaya spent the most of the year saying no to them!

The 24-year-old revealed in February’s GQ cover story that she had been offered roles all year but turned them down because they were either too two-dimensional or would utilize her as a prop for the male protagonist.

Zendaya explained, “It’s not necessarily that any of [the scripts] were bad or something like that. 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.”

Zendaya noted that the rejected parts were too surface-level, without the intricacy of a developed character arc, in addition to functioning as a prop for the lead male actor. Despite the fact that she believed the parts were fantastic, she didn’t think they were enough challenging for her.

She went on to say, “They don’t really have an arc of their own. 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.”

She definitely has leeway to be picky, with an Emmy for Euphoria under her credit, a position in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and a leading role in the next Dune. However, actresses shouldn’t have to be fussy when it comes to finding sophisticated parts, as complex, nuanced female characters should be the standard (and hopefully will be in the future). It’s wonderful to see a young actress like Zendaya being as picky with her jobs as Hollywood heavyweights like Reese Witherspoon and Jessica Chastain have been for years.

The idea for her to be in the drama “Malcolm & Marie,” came from a conversation she had with the film’s director, Sam Levinson, who is also the creator of “Euphoria.”

According to Zendaya’s GQ feature, Levinson initially planned to make a thriller based on her Disney Channel series “K.C. Undercover” which she starred in for three seasons.

Zendaya told the magazine, “I was just on the pavement outside in my backyard talking to Sam because I didn’t have outdoor furniture yet. He’s like, ‘What if we did something almost like a horror movie where you’ve lost it because you still think you’re on K.C. Undercover? You could be in the house like dah, dah, dah, and you’re still stuck being this Disney Channel actress, and people are like, ‘No. You’re not K.C. [anymore].’”

Zendaya takes on one of her most complicated characters yet in “Malcom & Marie,” and it’s garnering her some of the highest reviews of her career as a result. Netflix will begin streaming the film on February 5th.