Custom shirt, hand-painted jeans and a seat in the Dog House — Zendaya skipped the Hollywood script and showed up as the world’s most famous auntie.
By Emily Sinclair — “The Insider” — CelebnMusic247
Forget the red carpet. On Friday night, the best seat in California wasn’t at a premiere — it was behind the end zone at Folsom High School, where Zendaya sat in the “Dog House,” the family-and-friends section, and watched her nephew play his Senior Night game like any other proud aunt. The difference: this aunt is one of the most famous women on the planet, and she dressed for the occasion.
The Oakland native, 30, wasn’t hard to spot in a fluffy jacket and sunglasses for the night game — and she didn’t try to hide. She posed for photos with Folsom’s cheerleaders and half the student section, and when “Wonderwall” rolled over the stadium speakers, she sang along with everybody else. But the real statement was the outfit: a custom shirt printed with her nephew E.J. Coleman in his Folsom uniform, and jeans she had decorated by hand with “EJ” and Bulldogs logos down the legs. That is not stylist work. That is auntie work.
The nephew earned the fuss. Coleman, a senior linebacker for the Bulldogs, is third on the team in tackles with 42, tied for second in tackles for a loss at 5.5, and he scored on a fumble return in a September win over Sacred Heart Cathedral in San Francisco. He’s a three-star prospect committed to Washington State next fall — and on Senior Night, with his auntie in custom gear in the Dog House, Folsom delivered the game to match: a 42–41 win over rival Del Oro that went down to the wire.
Coleman posted the photo of the two of them to his Instagram (@ej_cole007) with the caption “Stamped🕷️ #7 #familyovereverything” — and “family over everything” is exactly the brand here. Zendaya, the youngest of her family with five older half-siblings on her father’s side, has taken her nieces and nephews to Hollywood events for years and talks openly about wanting to be a role model for them. Friday night was the flip side of that coin: no cameras arranged, no premiere — just a bleacher seat, a one-point rivalry win, and a shirt with her nephew’s face on it.
KCRA’s cameras caught her in the crowd too, and the clips did the rounds all weekend, because the internet never gets tired of this particular genre: the megastar doing something completely normal, completely on purpose.
The 247 Take — Plenty of celebrities perform “family first.” Zendaya sewed it onto a pair of jeans and sat in a high school end zone on a Friday night. E.J. Coleman got a win, a memory, and the best Senior Night photo in Folsom history — and somewhere in Los Angeles, a thousand publicists just took notes.
Sources: SFGATE
