Zendaya reveals how she made a secret quarantine movie with John David Washington
Zendaya has opened up about shooting new film Malcolm & Marie during quarantine with Tenet star John David Washington and Euphoria creator Sam Levinson.
Very little is known about the plot for Malcolm & Marie. According to Deadline, it’s in the same vein as Netflix’s Marriage Story, in that it revolves around a couple in the middle of a divorce. However, it will also deal with various themes and issues regarding the Coronavirus pandemic, too.
Zendaya told InStyle that making Malcolm & Marie was “an incredible experience,” one which began during her many conversations with Levinson during quarantine.
Read more: Zendaya and John David Washington ‘secretly filmed a movie during pandemic’
“I’d been talking to Sam often during the quarantine. Sometimes he’d just call to shoot the s*** and chat about life. And eventually I said to him, ‘I need to do something creative.’ So we bounced ideas back and forth, and then he started writing.”
It was Levinson who reached out to Washington, who was free because he now didn’t have to do press for Christopher Nolan’s repeatedly delayed Tenet.
Rather than waiting for a studio or production company to back the production of Malcolm & Marie, though, Zendaya says that she, Levinson, and Washington “fronted [their] own money” and put it together themselves, with help from a “very small” crew from Euphoria.
But once shooting began Zendaya says that the “number one thing was safety.”
“Everyone had to quarantine and get tested in order to shoot in isolation. We created our own little bubble and made sure that once we were in, we couldn’t leave. We were able to workshop and rehearse together — it was very much like a play.”
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“I did my own hair and makeup and dressed in my own clothes. And then we shot in black and white on film, so we’ll see how it turns out. I think we were able to create something really special. And I’m grateful that we learned how to do it on our own.”
Unfortunately, but unsurprisingly, we still don’t know when Malcolm & Marie will actually be released.