NEW YORK –
How sexy can a qualifying tennis tournament in New Rochelle, New York be? When on-court drama involves Zendaya, Josh O’Connor and Mike Faist, the answer turns out to be a championship one in Luca Guadagnino’s “Challengers.”
The film, directed by Guadagnino from a script by playwright Justin Kuritzkes, could have the appearance of a sports film. Much of the action occurs between the baselines. There are break points and serves. But what is being volleyed is not just a little yellow ball.
“The ball is the ephemeral, invisible force of desire,” says Guadagnino, director of “Call Me By Your Name” and “Bones and All.” “I wanted to show the desire to come and go.”
The result, for a score of approximately six loves, is the love triangle of the year. “Challengers,” which Amazon MGM Studios releases in theaters Friday, takes the trio’s melodrama and gives it an exciting, bi-curious spin. That’s especially due to the multilateral chemistry between Zendaya, O’Connor and Faist, all actors in their 20s and 30s, very capable of burning when called upon.
It’s a statement on the big screen, especially for Zendaya, who is also a producer on the film. She plays Tashi, the wife and coach of tennis superstar Art played by Faist, the breakout of “West Side Story.” Tashi was relegated to the background due to a career-ending knee injury, although she did little to undermine her ambition. When Art, whose passion for tennis is fading, confronts an old friend in New Rochelle, Patrick, played by O’Connor, star of Alice Rohrwacher’s recent “La Chimera,” his complicated past is, delightfully, resurrected.
Zendaya leaned into the project not because it seemed natural to her, but because it wasn’t.
“Because it sounded like a challenge. Because she is very different from me,” Zendaya said in an interview with her co-stars. “Sometimes when you’re a little afraid to tackle something like that, you think, ‘Oh, maybe I should do it.’ I don’t want to go into something and say, ‘I got this. This is going to be easy.’”
“Challengers” was originally set to open last fall’s Venice Film Festival before its premiere was postponed due to the Hollywood actors’ strike. But the delay has only given more time for expectations around the film to grow. That has a lot to do with the attention paid to everything Zendaya does, but it also has to do with the way the film puts three exciting young actors in the spotlight, and doesn’t let go.
“What’s special is that the three of us got to star in the movie. That’s great,” O’Connor says. “An opportunity to do something like that is very rare.”
“I’ve been part of big ensembles at times,” adds Zendaya, who co-starred in the recent “Dune: Part Two.” “But it’s just the three of us. We are the cast. While we obviously have other incredible actors contributing, this is what’s at the heart of it here. The tennis training and the rehearsal period, it was just us. So thank God we like each other.”
Guadagnino, known for his organic way of working, compares the weeks he and the three leads spent together preparing in Boston to “kids on the beach creating sand castles.” Although Faist has some skill, the rest were hopeless at tennis. Guadagnino had never touched a racquet in his life before stepping onto the set in “Challengers.” Famed tennis coach Brad Gilbert was brought in to help.
But “Challengers” isn’t really about tennis, it’s just the setting where the attraction and excitement in the film finally spills over. When it is pointed out to Guadagnino that the tennis scenes are essentially the sex scenes in his movie, he responds, “Thank you.”
Faist, O’Connor and Zendaya connected in different ways, not only with the way desire ebbs and flows, but also with the way the characters juggle their fluctuating passions with their careers.
“It’s this constant navigation in what we do. Once a project ends, you’re in a bit of limbo. You’re always trying to find that thing that awakens something inside you,” says Faist. “It was something I really resonated with, that idea of falling in and out of love with your craft.”
For Zendaya, the idea of having your craft taken away from you, as it was for Tashi, fueled arguably her best film performance yet. “Challengers” is also the first time she is the protagonist of a film.
“I am grateful to have chosen a career that I can continue doing as long as I want. “I can be 80 years old and still make movies if I’m lucky enough to be able to do it or if that’s something I still want to do then,” Zendaya says. “I can’t imagine that idea of that life or thing that makes you happy or gives you power being taken away from you. I deeply empathize with that.”
Producer Amy Pascal first pitched “Challengers” to Zendaya, a fitting moment to come full circle considering Pascal cast Zendaya in her big screen breakthrough, “Spider-Man: Homecoming.” Homecoming”) from 2017. However, “Challengers” signals a shift toward more mature on-screen roles for the 27-year-old, who from an early age as a Disney television star had the responsibility of fame and maintaining his family on his shoulders.
“Something I struggle with personally is the idea of what I should want, or what people want for me,” Zendaya says. “I empathize with that in Tashi, but also in Art because he is playing for two people. You’re no longer just selfishly playing for your own joy, you’re playing for someone else. Sometimes our work can feel like that too. “We play for other people’s benefit, what people want for us, rather than what would really make you happy.”
For Zendaya, Faist and O’Connor, “Challengers” allowed them, when they weren’t busy on screen, to wrestle with their own ambitions. O’Connor, who played Prince Charles in “The Crown,” filmed “La Chimera,” playing a character with whom he most closely identified, amid a very different role in “Challengers.”
“He is frontal, he is too confident, all these qualities that I have always admired and always wanted and that I have never been able to have. Just playing him and being in his shoes for a few months was a blessing,” O’Connor says. “That’s what I’m going to stick to with Patrick. I really like Patrick. I know he’s problematic, but I like him a lot. I find him hilarious and charming and he knows himself. And all of those are qualities that I don’t necessarily have, but that I admire in him.”
The connections and challenges each star brought to “Challengers” added up to a remarkably intimate drama and a potentially career-changing experience. Even Guadagnino, who generally prefers editing to shooting, found his time on the court with Zendaya, O’Connor and Faist fascinating.
“It was joyful and it was nice and energetic,” Guadagnino says. “He was good company.”
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