MAKING OF CHALLENGERS
Zendaya, Josh O’Connor and Mike Faist play tennis and wicked games in Challengers, Luca Guadagnino’s sensual study of fierce friendship, competition and messy love triangles. Total Film sits down with the three champs as they serve up on sex scenes, tennis camp and Ratatouille.
When Total Film meets Zendaya and The Crown’s Josh O’Connor in London in June they are good-naturedly trash-talking their third wheel, Mike Faist, who can’t make this chat due to his commitment to West End stage show Brokeback Mountain. ‘Oh, you heard? Terrible!’ Zendaya – or ‘Zee’ as her co-stars call her – jokes with a laugh before talking proudly of her absent colleague’s performance as Jack Twist, which she, her boyfriend Tom Holland and O’Connor had seen the night before. Faist, when we meet a few days later between shows, keeps up the banter and teasing when he laughs about O’Connor’s preparation (or lack thereof) for playing a champion tennis player.
The dynamic between the three is very much in keeping with the chemistry and vibe at the heart of Luca Guadagnino’s follow-up to cannibal romance Bones and All, a switch in direction that he describes as ‘a fairly fizzy, sexy movie about the world of tennis’. Written by playwright turned screenwriter Justin Kuritzkes, Challengers charts the relationship between best-friend players Patrick (O’Connor) and Art (Faist) as they meet tennis prodigy Tashi (Zendaya) in their training teens and interchange as her boyfriend/friend. Years later, when Art is a top seed in a crisis and Tashi now his wife and coach, the duo run into Patrick again, who’s struggling to make ends meet but still has fire in his game – in every way. As Art and Patrick compete in a lowranking challengers match (Art to flex, Patrick to win cash), old resentments and attractions come into play…
Zendaya produces as well as leads on the project – all the push-pull of the men’s achievements, psychological warfare and heartbreak revolves around her queenly Tashi who witheringly comments that she is ‘taking such good care of my little white boys’ – and felt that the script spoke to her immediately after Spider-Man producer Amy Pascal brought it to her. ‘It felt like the right fit,’ she says, snuggling in her Challengers-logoed sweater (‘from the wrap [party]’). ‘Spider-Man was a big thing for us, and it’s been hugely a part of my life. But it was very different in the sense that I was definitely just an actor in that, and in that world. I think her bringing this to me in the capacity of being collaborative was very exciting. It was special to start putting something together. The first person, and only person, that we really talked to was Luca, because I was so excited by the fact that he felt what I felt about what I had read, and wanted to have a conversation with me about it. I felt
