'Don't Get Sick Of Me.' Zendaya Has A Big Year Coming Up, And She's Taking A Note From Jennifer Lawrence's Playbook

Zendaya is poised to dominate the 2026 movie calendar. Between the upcoming The Drama, Spider-Man: Brand New Day, The Odyssey and Dune: Part III, she’s anchoring three major franchises while also taking on a more grounded, performance-driven new A24 project. That’s all before you factor in Euphoria Season 3 arriving soon. It’s the kind of run most actors spend a decade trying to build, and she’s doing it all in a single stretch. But she’s also taking a note out of Jennifer Lawrence’s playbook, as she’s all too aware of what that kind of visibility can do.

During the Fandango Big Ticket interview for The Drama, Zendaya addressed what comes next. Seated alongside Pattinson, Mamoudou Athie, and Alana Haim, she spoke openly about her plans after this high-profile run. She shared the following:

It might sound like a passing comment, but it reveals much about her approach to this next career phase. She isn’t worried about workload; she’s weighing the risks of becoming too familiar to audiences—overexposure can shift public perception and make new projects less anticipated.

There’s a clear example of that kind of thinking. Jennifer Lawrence hit a similar point in the late 2010s. After leading The Hunger Games and appearing in a string of high-profile projects, she entered a stretch where the results didn’t match the exposure. Films like Passengers, Red Sparrow, and especially X-Men: Dark Phoenix underperformed, and the conversation around her began to shift. So she stepped back.

Lawrence later discussed that time away pretty candidly. She explained that it wasn’t only about the movies. The unrelenting pace, the pressure to say yes, and the sense that audiences had seen enough—these all played a role.

That break ultimately did what it needed to. When she returned with projects like Don’t Look Up, the conversation reset for Jennifer Lawrence. The time away gave her space to recalibrate both her choices and the audience's response to her.

Zendaya’s situation is different in one key way. She’s not coming off a string of misses. If anything, she’s entering this run with strong momentum and a deliberately built reputation. But the volume of what’s ahead still raises the same question: how much is too much, even when everything is working?

If overexposure becomes a concern, Zendaya seems to have a simple strategy: get ahead of it and disappear for a bit. For now, she’s staying center stage.

The Drama, premiering on April 3, pairs Zendaya and Pattinson in a darker, more character-driven story than audiences might expect. She plays Emma, a bookstore clerk engaged to Pattinson’s Charlie, a museum director whose relationship is already starting to crack. Athie and Haim round out the cast as friends watching things slowly unravel.

As for her television run, Euphoria Season 3 lands on the small screen and streaming for everyone with an HBO Max subscription beginning April 12, 2026.