Zendaya & BLM Patrisse Cullors Talk Where We Go From Here for InStyle September 2020

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Zendaya is styled by Law Roach in ‘Fashion Is Back’, lensed by AB+DM for InStyle September 2020. / Hair by Larry Sims; makeup by Sheika Daley

Zendaya speaks to Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors about activism, anxiety and why her teenage niece gives her hope. The actor recently invited Cullors to take over her Instagram, with a keen desire to have her millions of followers understand the BLM movement. Read on Zendaya on Where We Go from Here.

In describing Zendaya, Cullors says “she always champions the most vulnerable, and she doesn't pretend to be something she is not. ‘ Zendaya is first and foremost a creative, not an activist. The latter is too big a responsibility for her to wear, and she doesn’t take it lightly.

I'm just an actress, you know? And I don't pretend to be anything other than that. If I don't know something, then I ask people who are actually on the front lines doing the work. I'm up in the bleachers, not on the field. So I always think, "How can I cheer you on and be a part of something greater than myself?"

It’s while probing Zendaya’s quarantine experience, that Patrisse Cullors says “I think quarantine, especially for creatives, has forced us all to think about our work differently.” In that moment we remember that this multi-talents “Freedom Fighter” is herself a creative.

I think of her as a front-line activist, but Cullors completed her MFA at USC’s Roski School of Art and Design in May 2019 — exploring the intersection of art and activism. Read her rich life story here. Her thesis performance, ‘Respite, Reprieve, and Healing: An Evening of Cleansing’, explored themes such as exhaustion, restoration, and queer world building through ritual Black hair washing and procession movements as reviewed in a Los Angeles Times feature story. She exhibited this work at The Big House in South LA and as part of Highways Performance Space’s 30th anniversary arts festival, Behold!

The Times writes:

Although the USC Roski program had been wracked with turmoil — the entire class of MFA candidates withdrew from the university in protest in 2015 — Cullors says her experience was “really amazing” under its current leadership.

Zendaya uses the same word that’s on the lips of British Vogue editor-in-chief Edward Enninful and countless other activists.

We’ve moved beyond “cautiously optimist” in many cases to “hopeful” — standing alone with no qualifiers. Admitting that one is hopeful is like being naked in today’s world. But it is THE WORD I’m hearing and reading most often — almost as if to say “Hell, if we’re not hopeful . . . if we don’t again take the risk of believing that change is possible and acknowledging that we are in a unique time in the last 60 years . . . well then, what do these insistent young people think, when they look at us.” ~ Anne