Zendaya dropped out of the Aaliyah biopic for unknown reasons

These are photos of Zendaya at the BET Awards last night. She’s wearing an Emanuel Ungaro ensemble that’s both funky and somehow age appropriate. Her belly’s showing, but it’s not scandalous. She wore a really pretty Peter Pilotto asymmetrical dress to a pre-awards event on Saturday. It’s a stunning design on a beautiful girl, and I’ve included photos at the bottom of this post.

Until a few weeks ago, 17-year-old Zendaya was best known to Disney audiences and DWTS addicts. Then she landed the lead in an Aaliyah biopic. A Lifetime project hasn’t received so much buzz since the halcyon days of Liz & Dick. Some people were upset about Zendaya’s casting, and she issued a response (a classy one) about the criticism that she’s “not black enough” for the role. Aaliyah’s family added to the negative chatter, probably because they were upset that Baby Girl’s life was being summed up by freaking Lifetime.

Z has now dropped out of the entire project for unknown reasons. Here is the Lifetime tweet that prompted “Zendaya why” search term to trend like crazy on Sunday:

We are sad Zendaya will no longer portray Aaliyah. Production is currently on hold.

— LifetimePR (@LifetimeTV_PR) June 29, 2014

Zendaya’s team tweeted a brief acknowledgement of the news as well:

"Aaliyah has always been a source of inspiration to Zendaya. She was honored to portray her and pay tribute to her…

— Zendaya (@Zendaya) June 29, 2014

…if she is going to do it, she wants to do it right." pic.twitter.com/SSVYpA3SrK

— Zendaya (@Zendaya) June 29, 2014

Zendaya’s people are keeping things simple and not giving an exact reason for the dropout. Maybe the script was awful. Maybe Aaliyah’s family made good on their promise to keep the film from recording any of Aaliyah’s music. Or maybe Zendaya decided all of the criticism she was receiving wasn’t worth a freaking Lifetime movie. Onto bigger and better projects, I say.

Here are some photos of Aaliyah in 2001 shortly before her death.

Photos courtesy of Fame/Flynet, Getty & WENN

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