New film serves up love
Zendaya, Josh O'connor and Mike Faist on movie's steamy triangle
How sexy can a qualifying tennis tournament in New Rochelle, N.Y., be? When the oncourt drama involves Zendaya, Josh O'connor and Mike Faist, the answer is surprising.
Director Luca Guadagnino's Challengers, based on a script by playwright Justin Kuritzkes, may seem like a sports movie. Much of the action happens in between baselines. There are break points and short shorts. But what's being volleyed isn't just a fuzzy yellow ball.
“The ball is the ephemeral, invisible force of desire,” says Guadagnino, the director of Call Me by Your Name and Bones and All.
“I wanted to show desire going back and forth.”
The result is the love triangle of the year. Challengers, which Amazon MGM Studios releases in theatres Friday, takes the melodrama of the threesome and gives it a breathless, bi-curious spin. That's especially due to the multilateral chemistry between Zendaya, O'connor and Faist — all actors in their late 20s or early 30s, all capable of smouldering when called upon.
It's a big-screen statement especially for Zendaya, who's also a producer on the film. She plays Tashi, the wife and coach of tennis superstar Art (Faist, the West Side Story breakout). Tashi was relegated to the sidelines because of a career-ending knee injury — though it did little to sap her ambition. When Art, whose passion for tennis is fading, is matched in New Rochelle against an old friend, Patrick (O'connor, star of Alice Rohrwacher's recent La Chimera), their complicated past is resurrected.
Zendaya gravitated to the project because it didn't seem like a natural fit for her.
“Because it sounded like a challenge. Because it is so different from me,” Zendaya said in an interview alongside her co-stars. “Sometimes when you're a little afraid to tackle something like that you, you're like, `Ooh, maybe I should do it.' I don't want to walk into something and be like, `I got this. This is going to be easy.”'
Challengers was originally set to open last fall's Venice Film Festival before it was postponed due to the actors strike. But the delay has given more time for its buzz to grow.
“What's special is that the three of us got to lead the movie. That is cool,” says O'connor. “An opportunity to do something like that is so rare.”
“Sometimes I've been a part of big ensembles,” 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 amazing actors that contribute, this is the core thing here. Tennis training and the rehearsal period, it was just us. So thank god that we like each other.”
Guadagnino spent weeks with the stars preparing in Boston. Though Faist has some tennis ability, the rest were hopeless. Famed tennis coach Brad Gilbert was brought in to help. But Challengers isn't really about tennis, that's just the arena where attraction and emotion in the film ultimately spills out. When it's pointed out to Guadagnino that the tennis scenes are essentially his movie's sex scenes, he responds, “Thank you.”
Producer Amy Pascal first brought Challengers to Zendaya, a fittingly full-circle moment considering that Pascal cast Zendaya in her big-screen breakthrough, 2017's Spider-man: Homecoming. Challengers, though, signals a shift into more mature screen roles for the 27-year-old who from a young age as a Disney TV star needed to navigate fame and provide for her family.
“Something I deal 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's playing for two people. He's not just selfishly playing for his own joy anymore, he's playing for someone else. Sometimes our work can feel like that, too. We're playing for the benefit of other people, what people want for us, rather than what really would just make you happy.”
For Zendaya, Faist and O'connor, Challengers allowed them to also wrestle with their own ambitions. O'connor, who portrayed Prince Charles on The Crown, shot La Chimera — playing a character he more closely identified with — in between a very different role in Challengers.
“He is front-footed, he's overly confident — all these qualities that I've always admired and always wanted that I've never quite been able to have. Just to play it and be in his shoes for a few months was bliss,” says O'connor. “That's what I'll hold on to with Patrick. I really like Patrick. I know he's problematic but I really like him. I find him hilarious and charming and he knows himself. And those are all qualities that I don't necessarily have but I admire in him.”
The connections and challenges each star brought to Challengers added up to a remarkably intimate drama and a potentially career-shifting experience.
“It was joyous and it was a nice and it was energetic,” says Guadagnino. “It was a good company.”
What's special is that the three of us got to lead the movie. That is cool. An opportunity to do something like that is so rare.