For anyone who’s obsessed with Zendaya and Tom Holland’s relationship in 2024, where have you been since 2017? As someone who’s been in the trenches defending Tomdaya since they were rumored to have started dating during the Spider-Man: Homecoming era, I can confidently say we’re experiencing a version of Tomdaya I never believed we’d get to see. Both celebs have historically kept their romantic lives pretty private, but they’ve been ramping up the PDA ever since they soft-launched their relationship in September 2021. We’ve graduated from subtle set pics to name-drops in interviews. The latest name-drop featured Zendaya saying the absolute sweetest things about Holland that the internet is swooning over.
Buzzfeed interviewed Zendaya ahead of Dune: Part Two as part of their Puppy Interview series, where celebrities attempt to answer questions and inevitably get distracted by puppies climbing all over them. It’s the best, most wholesome interview series of all time, and Zendaya had an equally wholesome comment to make about Holland during her session.
She was asked, “Who from the Dune cast has the most rizz?” Her answer: “I think someone who has beautiful charisma, not on the Dune cast, but I personally… works for me, is Mr. Tom Holland.” Leave it to Z to bring up her man whenever she gets the chance (I would too if my man was Tom Holland!).
She could’ve left her answer at that, but as a mother to many Tomdaya stans, she knew she had mouths and pop culture social media accounts to feed. “I’m more shy and kind of quiet, so it takes a little bit more to pull me out of my shell. But he’s great at talking to people and getting to know people. Like, you see him on talk shows and stuff like that. He’s just naturally very good at that, whereas for me, I’ve definitely had to pull it out of me a little bit. He’s got that natural gift,” she explained.
Tomdaya is the gift that keeps on giving to veteran stans like me who can’t quite believe the couple is officially and openly together. The X/Twitter reactions to the clip are exactly where my head’s at.
But is Holland really the rizz king that Zendaya makes him out to be? Not according to him. “I have no rizz whatsoever. I have limited rizz,” Holland told Buzzfeed in 2023. “I need you to fall in love with me, really, for it to work. So: long game, probably making a movie with each other… [it] definitely helps when the characters you’re playing are falling in love with one another. You can sort of blur the lines a little bit. That’s kind of where my rizz is at.”
If it worked for Zendaya, it definitely counts as rizz. That’s my Peter and MJ!