Zendaya and boyfriend Tom Holland are the presidents of one another’s personal fan clubs. The actors can’t help but gush about one another, including a recent interview in which Zendaya mentioned her spider-boyfriend and his charm.
In a teaser clip posted by Buzzfeed for an upcoming Puppy Interview (what is a puppy interview, you ask? The interviewee cuddles puppies while answering questions), Zendaya was asked who in the cast of her most recent movie, Dune: Part Two, has the most “rizz.”
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“Me,” she answered with a laugh. “Hello?”
Then, a swift clarification, a little side mission to Urban Dictionary: “I don’t know. Rizz is short for charisma, right?” she asked. “Everybody’s kind of got their own.”
Is now when we talk about Timothée Chalamet, her newly minted jumpsuit twin? Surely experiencing South Korea while wearing matching pastel-hued leather jumpsuits still means something, like it did in the old days. Or did Austin Butler climb the Rizz-ter Scale when he disposed of his eyebrows to play the film’s unsettling-but-sexy villain? Javier Bardem has a little something-something, no? Christopher Walken? Walken around with a boatload of charm?
None of the above. As it turns out, Zendaya’s rizz-o-meter needed to scan beyond the bounds of Arrakis to hone in on who had the most rizz of all.
“I think someone who has beautiful charisma, not on the Dune cast, but personally works for me, is Mr. Tom Holland,” Zendaya said.
She described Holland as having “that natural gift” in interviews, in contrast to her own “more shy and kind of quiet” vibe.
“It takes a bit more to pull me out of my shell,” she said. “But he’s great at just talking to people, getting to know people.”
Holland himself discussed his fabled rizz—or lack thereof—in his own Buzzfeed interview (no puppies involved) in June 2023.
“I’m happy and in love so I’ve got no need for rizz,” he said. “I have no rizz whatsoever; I have limited rizz.”
He joked that a great way to forge a bond, fall in love, and create the perception of rizz, was to co-star in a movie and essentially fake it ‘til you make it. (He and Zendaya star opposite one another in the latest iteration of Marvel’s Spiderman series.)
“I need you to fall in love with me, really, for it to work,” Holland said of his charm. “So, long game. Probably making a movie with each other—it definitely helps when the characters are falling in love with one another, you can sort of blur the lines a little bit.”
Rizz or no rizz, Holland is committed to publicly hyping his partner. On Wednesday, he took to his Instagram Story to share the trailer for Zendaya’s upcoming leading role, Challengers, alongside the caption, “You ain’t ready for this one!”
Game, set, they seem like a good match. Good for them.