Zendaya Takes Home the Emmy for Best Actress in a Drama Series for Rue in ‘Euphoria’

If there’s one person in this world who I think deserves an Emmy award, it is Zendaya. Her work on Euphoria is one that leaves us on the edge of our seats and keeps us clutching our blankets tighter in our hands in hopes that Rue (her character on the Sam Levinson series) is okay. Struggling with addiction, Rue finds herself constantly in a battle between trying to embrace her love for Jules (Hunter Scafer) while also finding a way to get clean to keep herself alive. The series is, often, hard to watch and it boils down to Zendaya’s incredibly raw performance.

And so it is with utter delight that she won her second Emmy for Rue at the 2022 Emmy Awards and it is so deserved! And in her speech, Zendaya showed her love and apprecation to Levinson for sharing Rue with her (Levinson has been very open about his own drug addiction as a teen) and went on to share that she continues to appreciate those who tell her that they’ve loved a Rue or that they are a Rue.

Zendaya has proven herself time and time again with her talent. While she is our MJ Watson in the Tom Holland Spider-Man films, it is her portrayal of Rue in Euphoria that really showed the world just how connected she is to her work and the power that holds.

The struggle of Rue

One of the things about Euphoria that’s hard to take in is Rue’s relapsing. Time and time again, we think she’s on the mend and she’s working towards getting clean and then someone like Ali (played by Colmon Domingo who also won an Emmy for the series) will point out to her that getting clean needs to be for her and not someone else and we see how that mentality does become her downfall.

In season 2, there was an episode where Rue was running through town and stealing from people, trying to find money to pay off a drug dealer who gave her drugs that her mother found. That fear and that nervousness we all felt for Rue in that episode came because Zendaya made us love her. We wanted to root for Rue and protect her despite knowing that it wouldn’t be an easy journey for her and so it is no surprise that Zendaya took home the Emmy.

(image: Kevin Winter/Getty Images)