While Zendaya may have shot to stardom on the Disney channel, the 18-year-old star has no desire to follow in the footsteps of Miley Cyrus.
Instead, the Shake It Up beauty, who flaunts her edgy style on the February cover of Teen Vogue, is working with the network on a new series, K.C. Undercover, for which she serves as coproducer.
"It was going to be called Super Awesome Katy, but I changed it," the young star tells the publication. "I don't look like a Katy, and I wanted something a little more mature. It wasn't really right for the demographic that I'm trying to reach now."
Which is? "Well, the majority of my fan base are young girls, and I don't want to leave that world forever," she explains. "But I also want to reach the preteens, the teenagers. A lot of college students watch the Disney Channel in their dorms, actually."
Despite her fame, Zendaya is a self-professed introvert—"When I was younger, my parents had to go to a seminar about shy kids"—but acting helped pull her out of her shell and became her passion at an early age.
"My passion was always in the arts," she says. "I was that weird 8-year-old who was into Shakespeare."
After appearing in a children's theater presentation of James and the Giant Peach, the Oakland native went on to pursue professional acting gigs. She admits the environment in Los Angeles was tough, and she often felt bullied by other aspiring actresses.
"There was this kind of energy, particularly among the other girls, of, like, 'Oooh, I'm going to get you,'" she recalls of her early auditions. "A lot of the kids who were auditioning had been doing it since they were, like, 2. They were these purebred Hollywood children, and I was this random chick from Oakland just doing my thing," she explains. "They're always onstage, and I was just so not into it. Like, you're 12. Chill out. It's not the end of the world. I'd literally sit there before auditions with my headphones on, listening to Michael Jackson."
Safe to say her laid-back attitude has served her well!