Zendaya Explains Her Decision To Side-Step Tom Holland Marriage Rumors

Zendaya wants to maintain privacy in her personal life despite public fascination.
She feels peaceful and calm with Holland, who made her comfortable from their first meeting.
Zendaya and Holland have grown up together over nearly a decade, fostering a deep connection.

Zendaya knows just how invested fans are in her relationship, but that doesn’t supersede the fact that she wants to maintain some level of privacy in her personal life.

The actress and her The Drama costar, Robert Pattinson, appeared on an episode of The New York Times’ Modern Love podcast released on Wednesday, April 1.

During their interview on the relationship-based podcast, Zendaya opened up about why she hasn’t confirmed or denied her rumored marriage to Tom Holland. Though the pair went public with their engagement in January 2025, Z’s longtime stylist Law Roach claimed a month ago the pair secretly got married–which neither party has directly commented on.

“I just feel like for me there is a level of a parasocial investment in my personal relationship, which I understand,” Zendaya told Modern Love host Anna Martin. “I’m aware that I’m a public person and so is he, and I’m also aware that we’ve grown up in front of people and we’ve done movies where we fall in love with each other, so I really do understand that, and I don’t want to dismiss that like, ‘Stay out of my business’ or whatever.”

She continued, “In a lot of ways, I’m also a very private person and I try my best to be able to have things for myself and for him as well.”

The actress went on to explain that she and Holland are not trying to “hide [themselves] from the world,” but rather, trying to “preserve things” for themselves in order to “maintain that joy” between the two of them and their families.

Zendaya, who has been further fueling the marriage speculation by wearing a wedding band, insists that she gets why there’s a lot of public interest in her relationship, but she still refuses to share some details with fans.

“I hear it, but I also [have] my own little boundaries of what I like to bring up and talk about, but then also what I’m also willing to share, you know?” she said. “I just try to find the balance in the middle there.”

Despite wanting to keep more intimate details of her relationship under wraps, Zendaya did get deeper about their connection during the podcast.

“I knew this is my person because I don’t feel nervous around them,” she explained. “I feel really peaceful, and I feel really calm like, oh, I actually feel more nervous when I’m away from you than when I’m with you.”

While talking about how she “first met” Holland at an audition, Zendaya went on to say, “I was pretty nervous anyway, but he did make me feel calm… Just by being a nice person, you know? By making me feel comfortable. I mean, it’s like having to do a chemistry read for a big movie like that. It’s like, oh, you really want the job, and all these kind of things. And yeah, he was really lovely then.”

She gushed over Tom further while talking about growing up with one another, referencing the fact that they first met while auditioning for 2017’s Spider-Man: Homecoming, going on to reprise their roles in 2019’s Spider-Man: Far From Home and 2021’s Spider-Man: No Way Home.

“I feel like I’m biased because I’ve been able to grow up with the person that I love and get to know them through being literally a teenager to now,” Zendaya said of knowing Holland for nearly a decade. “So it’s like, of course we’re going to change and we’re going to grow and life is like whatever, but I still feel like there’s a bond or a connection that you feel like you know someone, at least enough to feel safe with them.”

Check out the full episode of Modern Love with Zendaya and Tom Holland up above.