Tomdaya Are Not Your Friends

No couple is easier to like than Tom Holland and Zendaya when they’re in movie-promo mode. Whether they’re sitting in an armchair on a late-night talk show or talking to children or standing on a red carpet, the newlyweds are consistently funny, amiable, and seemingly approachable. They seem normal, despite being two of the most famous people in the world. It is remarkable, in part, to remain charming after so many years in the spotlight, especially as onetime child actors, but also because of their enduring commitment to privacy. They seem like people we know, but we really know very little about them at all.

Their back-to-back press tours, however, for The Odyssey and Spider-Man: Brand New Day have put them in the spotlight together in a way they’ve not had to be in five years. A Tomdaya press tour is a compelling event, if only because it’s just about the only time in which we learn anything about either of these people and their relationship to each other — especially now that they are married, something only one of them will really discuss. When Nick Grimshaw of Dish asked Holland who from the cast of The Odyssey he’d most like to go on a vacation to Greece with, Holland said, without missing a beat, “I think probably my wife would be pretty good for that one.” He makes it sound obvious — who wouldn’t want to go on vacation with their spouse? — but this was new information for us. We barely had any sense when they got engaged, and their marriage was only speculated, never confirmed. When speaking to Seth Meyers this week about internet habits, Meyers confesses that his wife is not especially patient toward his Spider-Man–related deep dives because he has no real connection to the material. “Well, my wife is in the film, so…” Holland says, to a round of enthusiastic applause. Rather than continue the train of thought, however, Meyers and Holland instead talk about the latter’s co-star and friend Jon Bernthal. Holland doesn’t necessarily need to expand on the concept of having a wife — just the fact of her existence, that he’s willing to identify this one thing about her life in a public setting, is enough for fans and viewers alike. That’s not to say that Holland is necessarily always comfortable using the phrase my wife. When speaking to a group of children on Celebrity Substitute, he deflected the question of whether or not he was married, as if, perhaps, children would leak a truth that’s publicly available.

The accidental small snippets we get of their shared life are the most telling. When Holland and Grimshaw discuss Odyssey superlatives and the topic of dinner parties cames up (Holland said his co-star Anne Hathaway is the best host), he then jokes, “I don’t think I have two of the same plate in my house.” Something about that odd mishmash of dishes is where a couple like Holland and Zendaya feel suddenly relatable, if not fully regular. When speaking to a duo of polite British children on their Spider-Man press tour, Holland eggs Zendaya into doing her British accent. “Go full Love Island,” he says, conjuring the image of the two on a couch discussing that week’s bombshells. That they’ve made this part of their lives no one’s business is a skill unto itself.

Part of what makes a Tomdaya press tour feel like an exercise in exposure is that they both keep especially polished social-media accounts, singularly focused on their work. Yes, there are behind-the-scenes snippets from their projects with candid photos, but the chances of us seeing the inside of one of their houses feels slim to none. The most intimate moment we’ve seen between them might be the smallest, when Holland forgets the name of a gelato place the two of them like and shouts “Maree!” — Zendaya’s middle name — across a carpet. She shifts almost immediately, as though he were trying to get her attention from across the house. When Spider-Man: Brand New Day comes out on Friday, it will mark the end of this summer sprint for the two of them — back to their privacy, back to the unknown, back to a life we won’t see and maybe never will — until promo starts up for Dune: Part Three.