Pedro Almodóvar Fanned Out Over Zendaya at an Oscars Party

Spanish auteur Pedro Almodóvar is no stranger to hobnobbing with celebrities, especially on occasions like this past Oscars weekend. But at Saint Laurent’s pre-Academy Awards party on Friday, the Parallel Mothers director found himself starstruck. “I come across Zendaya and I behave like any fan,” he shared with IndieWire in a recap of his trip to L.A. “I ask her for a photo and am surprised at how tall and beautiful she is. I am used to seeing her with her neglected complexion in Euphoria, and I’m surprised by the splendor of the actress’s natural beauty.” (Zendaya is 5’10”, meaning around 6’ in the right heels, like the ones she paired with her perfectly tailored Sportsman suit.)

“I tell her, and it’s true, that I’m longing to see her in films with real characters where she can develop what she has already demonstrated, that she is a great actress, an adult actress,” Almodóvar continued. “As proof, you have her performance in the very uneven Malcolm and Marie.”

Apart from being delightful, there’s something more to his description of their encounter: Almodóvar just so happens to be shopping around for actors to join Cate Blanchett in the cast of his next film, an adaptation of Luca Berlin’s 2015 short story collection A Manual for Cleaning Women. And if there’s anyone who knows how to craft “real” characters that give actors—most notably Penélope Cruz—the opportunity to shine, it just so happens to be him. For the sake of humanity, let’s pray he connects the dots; after all, as a Euphoria fan, he knows there’s a rare break in Zendaya’s schedule now that she’s finished with season 2.