Bella Thorne and Zendaya: A Complete Friendship Timeline

Ever since Bella Thorne and Zendaya first showed off their dance moves on Disney Channel’s Shake it Up, fans have been obsessed with their friendship. Despite the fact that the actresses are still closer than ever, they weren’t always BFFs.

The actresses starred as CeCe Jones and Rocky Blue on Shake it Up together from 2010 until the show came to an end in 2013. While they’ve both since gone their separate ways to star in tons of other TV shows and movies, their both has stayed just as strong.

“Zendaya and I were put in a very unfortunate position where we were kind of forced to compete against each other [during Shake It Up], which made the whole first season of the show just very awkward for us,” Bella told J-14 exclusively. “We wanted to love each other, but yet we were constantly being put against each other. It was, ‘Who’s better at this?’ and ‘Who’s better at that?’ And then second season we kind of just had this tell-all talk where we started crying and really just put everything out there on the table, and that’s when we became best friends.”

Looking back at her time on the Disney Channel show, Zendaya shared some behind-the-scenes details about an Instagram photo she posted with her costar in September 2011. During an interview with British Vogue in September 2021, the Euphoria star gushed over an “old” photo of her and Bella.

“This is Bella and I, back in the Shake It Up days,” she recalled at the time. “I’m not sure where we are or what we were doing, probably on set shooting. We were so young. We were growing up together. We were like 13, 14, in this picture. We went to school together and it was really only us in the classroom. You know what I mean? We would have hourlong digressions and just talk. There was one time she came over my house and we made cupcakes. It was little things like that that were special. That was good times.”

Over the years, both Zendaya and Bella have gushed about their longtime friendship in various interviews and on social media. Now, J-14 is taking a walk down memory lane to relive Zendaya and Bella’s friendship from the beginning, including all the times they reunited and gushed over each other during interviews. Scroll through our gallery for a complete timeline, proving Bella and Zendaya are best friend goals.

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February 2017

After Bella guest starred on Zendaya’s show KC Undercover, she told J-14 what their reunion was like.

“We text each other all the time, and we’re always sending photos back and forth,” she said. “Being on set with her again was awesome, just to have my Z back, and to see how much she’s changed and how some of the things that I used to say, now she’s saying … It’s so weird, but yet I love it!”

September 2020

After it was announced in that Zendaya was nominated for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series at the 2020 Emmy Awards after she starred as Rue in Euphoria, Bella gushed over the nomination.

“My goodness, I just hope she f–king wins,” she told Entertainment Tonight at the time. “The show is amazing. I love [creator] Sam Levinson. I love her, so I’m gonna have my fingers crossed the whole entire time. I’m going to be waiting for this acceptance speech!”

February 2021

Bella looked back on her Shake it Up days during an interview with Us Weekly and looked back on her and Zendaya’s friendship.

“It’s like we said [in] a couple interviews when we were younger, how we explained how in the first season we weren’t friends and it took us those other two seasons of becoming so close,” she explained. “[It was hard] not having someone pitted against you [before] and then all of a sudden, now everyone is pitting you against each other. That fed into our heads. It made us not [be] friends in that first season.”

She continued, “Zendaya’s amazing, like I f–king love her. She’s always been amazing, and she’s always going to be amazing. I’m just happy that people see that. That she’s getting the recognition she deserves.