Tom Holland is more than happy to gush about his sweet romance with Zendaya after years of keeping things low-key.
“Zendaya and Tom really did their best to keep their romance under wraps when they first started dating,” a source exclusively tells Us Weekly of the Marvel costars. “Before they began seeing each other, they had both always been very private when it came to their personal lives. It was something that bonded them in the early stages of their relationship because they were both on the same page when it came to avoiding public speculation.”
Their relationship was something both actors “preferred to keep to themselves” given their lives in the public eye, the insider notes — until now. “That has shifted over time and they acknowledge that everyone knows they’re together,” the source tells Us. “So Tom is proud to call Zendaya his girlfriend and express how much he loves her because he wants the world to know.”
Over the past month, Holland, 27, has shared new insight into his connection with the Golden Globe winner, 26. “I fixed my girlfriend’s door once really early on in our relationship,” Holland revealed in a June 23 interview with Unilad.
While his relationship with Zendaya didn’t go public until July 2021 — the twosome were photographed kissing in a car — fans were quick to point out that Holland’s carpentry comment was similar to one he made during a December 2019 appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live!. At the time, he told host Jimmy Kimmel that he “fixed a friend’s door once” but did not specify who the friend was, leading many to speculate it was Zendaya.
Though they initially remained out of the spotlight, the lovebirds have been spotted together in various places over the past few months, including spending a day at the Louvre in Paris, attending the opening of the Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Centre in India, walking Zendaya’s dog together in London and singing to each other at a Beyoncé concert in Poland.
In an interview with Buzzfeed earlier this month, Holland even admitted that he’s “locked up” and “happy and in love.”
He also thanked his partner for not judging the long locks he sported while filming his new Apple TV+ series, The Crowded Room. “Bless Zendaya, she had a lot to put up with, with me looking like that for 10 months, it was rough,” he told Radio Times.
Despite Holland’s slew of rare comments about the couple, he’s also been candid about why they previously chose to keep things private from fans. “One of the downsides of our fame is that privacy isn’t really in our control anymore, and a moment that you think is between two people that love each other very much is now a moment that is shared with the entire world … We sort of felt robbed of our privacy,” the Spider-Man: No Way Home star explained to GQ in November 2021.
Holland went on to note that he didn’t feel comfortable discussing his and Zendaya’s relationship without her permission. “It’s not a conversation that I can have without her. You know, I respect her too much to say … This isn’t my story. It’s our story. And we’ll talk about what it is when we’re ready to talk about it together.”
