Zendaya went viral with a grimace on her face when Channel 7’s Edwina Bartholomew asked which of her ‘Challengers’ co-stars was a better kisser, Mike Faist or Josh O’Connor – in front of both of them!
It’s already an inelegant thing to do as part of the show, but here come the press with questions about every kiss scene. Nothing less has been Zendaya experience, which she describes as “very strange”.
O Challengers star has been hit with the question throughout her career, and positively with this latest project, but no moment better captured her feelings about it than her viral response last week on Australia’s Channel 7.
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Zendaya and her co-stars Mike Faist and Josh O’Connor were downstairs doing the promotional portion of the film when announcer Edwina Bartholomew left her and everyone else cringing when she asked her co-stars “who’s a better kisser.”
Zendaya just stated “Hm?” suggesting she hadn’t heard the question, while Faist quickly stepped in to stop any possible pressure with a joke, responding: “Josh!”
Minimize it for her to look with Jake Hamilton in his Jake’s takes YouTube channel and Euphoria star definitely seems to be alluding to this strange encounter. Hamilton was definitely talking about all the attention to the kissing scenes.
“I feel like for 100 years actors have been kissing other actors on screen,” he told the visitor. “In fact, it’s part of your job. You do a job that requires kissing, it’s something you have to do.”
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“But I feel like when you do that, because I watched the interviews from these press tours,” he continued, “while you do that, there’s an irregular amount of attention.”
Zendaya immediately agreed, calling it “really weird.” Hamilton was puzzled if this wasn’t just presented as an excuse “to get you to talk about kissing.”
“I don’t know. I don’t know if it’s because they want it to be a viral thing, I don’t know,” she replied. “But I’ve seen it, especially with myself. I feel like other actors haven’t — if you were with someone else here, you probably wouldn’t would ask this question.
“However, yes, it is part of my job, and it is a totally normal part of the job, I feel, regardless of other people’s perceptions of our work,” Zendaya added, thanking Hamilton for bringing the matter to light as a result of she discovered that she was asked about it in a very “bizarre” way.
And there have been tremendously awkward questions about the film’s kissing scenes, with O’Connor experiencing one at the London premiere where he was asked how “weird” it is to kiss “Spider-Man’s girlfriend.” Zendaya and Tom Holland have been dating for years.
Like Zendaya on Channel 7, O’Connor seemed briefly taken aback by the question before responding: “Oh, nothing weird! She’s cool, she’s sensible, she’s an incredible actress, and yes, it was lovely to work with her.”
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During promotion for your Dune films, both Zendaya and Timothée Chalamet have faced questions about these kissing scenes, for The wrap, with Chalamet once again buying into the fact that this is just part of the show. “That was the nature of the work on this film and the nature of the script,” he said at the film’s premiere in Paris. “It doesn’t get more sophisticated than that.”
Zendaya has even had to deal with kissing scenes since the beginning of her career as a child actress, admitting in 2021 that she put her foot down and refused to kiss a Disney Channel co-star. Shake it because it could have been her first kiss.
Now, it feels like every second is being scrutinized on-screen and off, with hypotheses running wild after she stopped following everyone from her Instagram. When asked, if they had broken in January, Holland said TMZ“No, absolutely not.”
Sometimes people just do something, for personal or professional reasons, and it doesn’t always need to have a deeper meaning. Most recently, the couple was seen participating in a tennis match together last month, as reported by People. It seems that everything is simply advantageous on all fronts.