Zendaya And Val Chmerkovskiy Discuss Their Strategy For DWTS Week 9 (Rehearsal Interview)

Finally, a rehearsal interview!!! Below is Val and Zendaya with Access Hollywood. Zendaya is hoping to make their Quickstep strong since Val might be weak for their Hip Hop dance. Val says Week 9 is the hardest. With both dances (creative and traditional), they hope to satisfy all three judges. Val thinks Hip Hop is going to be more challenging than many think being it’s hard to make it a ‘production’ versus the other style of dances picked. We will see, but, I bet they kill it. Lots more below…..

Also, if you’d like to read Zendaya’s latest blog, you can do so here. In this take, she defends herself for how she is not a professional dancer. She also talks of how hard it is to take criticism since she is a perfectionist. More at the link.

I am the kind of person who really keeps emotions hidden, and I rely on my acting skills to cover up some of the frustrations and negative thoughts I may have. I have read mostly positive things on blogs, Twitter and various social media but sometimes the criticism can really get to me. One of the ones that frustrated me the most is people calling me a professional dancer. I am an actor, but I have never been paid to dance! I danced in a local hip hop troupe when I was 8 years old!! I am grateful for that experience but I can hardly call it a professional one!!

I remember some of the very first questions I was asked when I agreed to be on “DWTS.” They asked me what would be my biggest challenge… and I talked about how I am such a perfectionist that criticism is hard to take. After our Paso Doble when Len told me that my chin needed to be up, it was like a knife in my gut… I tried to hide my feelings on national television. But I was SO upset! I thought that I had done my best performance yet. On Wednesday, when we started working on our new dances, I was still irritated and not a good student. I couldn’t get past it. But Val helped me to refocus on the dances we had to do. And 48 hours later as I was getting over it (yes, us teenagers hold on to things a long time!), I realized that I still had to get that perfect score and I would stop at nothing to get it (including dreaming the dances at night, and waking up thirsty at 2 AM from dancing in my sleep!).