In Luca Guadagnino‘s Challengers there is a magnetic, majestic power to personal intensity. We see it in the way people focus on their passion, their art, or goals, it can be an aphrodisiac. And we feel it in the way they approach love and desire, intensity becomes an advantage — even if we’re not sure who rises and who falls from it. Watching the volley between extremes can be mesmerizing. And watching one person exercise her power is seductive.
Tashi Duncan (Zendaya) is fueled by talent and intensity. The young tennis star’s ferocity in her sport matches her physicality, self-confidence, and inner power. When her tennis contemporaries Patrick Zweig (Josh O’Connor) and Art Donaldson (Mike Faist) see Tashi in action on the court early in her career, the two best friends are entranced — and though Patrick and Art have known each other since they were pre-teen roommates at a tennis academy, competition kicks in. Tashi, savvier than Art and Patrick though all three are just 18 years old, is aware of everything…even things Art and Patrick don’t see, or don’t want to see.
Thus begins a journey that takes Tashi, Art, and Patrick to places none of them expected to go, as Challengers bounces through a dynamic, interweaving storyline that travels back and forth in these characters’ lives, framed by a revelatory “challengers” tennis match between Art and Patrick that takes place 13 years since they met Tashi — after an injury changed her trajectory, after Art and Tashi married and had a daughter, after Patrick makes Tashi and Art reconsider everything. Through a narrative that volleys between the early aughts and 2019, we see the paths they took, the games they played, and the passion they followed. It’s Tashi’s power, emotionally and romantically, that both pivots and anchors the connection they all have.
To learn more about Challengers and the complexities of Tashi, The Koalition attended the press conference to learn more about bringing Tashi to life, using seduction as power, training like a tennis pro and more.
“I believe I was still shooting Euphoria at the time,” said Zendaya. “And it’s one of those things where everybody knows, especially when I’m working, it’s really hard to get me to do anything else other than focus on what I’m going to do tomorrow on set. So, we kind of had a mock table read at my agent’s house and I just fell in love with the script. I mean, it was brilliant, and it also made me very nervous as something to tackle because of how complicated these characters are.”
Zendaya, who also produced the film continued, “Luca has such a great way of looking at each character in
Challengers through such an empathetic lens, seeing them as human. He is so good at pulling nuances and
human aspects of a character out so they’re vulnerable and relatable. From the initial conversations I had with Amy [Pascal] and Luca, it was very clear we were all on the same page with our vision for the film — it should still be humorous and have a levity to it, even as it deals with life situations that are nuanced and characters who have pain inside of them.”
Zendaya ended up falling in love with the script because just like its characters, it couldn’t be defined. “I couldn’t define what kind of movie it was. It was funny. It was so funny, but I wouldn’t say it was a comedy. But there was drama. But I wouldn’t say it was just a drama. It had tennis, but it wasn’t a sports movie. It was just everything at once, and in this beautiful way it was terrifying, but equally exhilarating and exciting.”
The unexpected player in this movie’s dynamic is Tashi Duncan, a young tennis phenom who — in the tradition of the greatest love triangles — throws off the relationship between Patrick Zweig and Art Donaldson (the players meeting again in a Challenger event). In addition to sparking desire in both Art and Patrick, Tashi brings out emotions and attraction between them they’ve never truly acknowledged. Tashi is a strong, self-assured, forthright woman, even as a teenager; throughout the story, we see her overcome some setbacks while pivoting from others. Tashi’s sometimes mischievous demeanor coexists with the fact she demands the best from herself and others, especially when it comes to tennis.
It would be very easy to make Tashi into a one-sided character, simply a woman of strong will but Zendaya does the opposite — she brings a sense of control and a sense of power, while at the same time developing a lot of sense of fragility within that strength that Tashi exhibits. Tashi is a very powerful, fierce, uncompromising, competitive, ambitious woman, and Zendaya brought a humanity and relatability to Tashi. This was also the first time for Zendaya plays a mother and a wife. We see Tashi when she’s starting out as a teen and as she grows into a woman in her early thirties.
“Tashi’s first love is tennis — that was the thing that gave her strength and power and made her who she is,” continues Zendaya. “I can identify with that, because I have found so much of my identity through my work. The moment when, because of an injury, Tashi is no longer able to do the one thing she feels defines her, she has to find a way to redefine herself. She’s doing her best to control everything, and to be in control of her emotions, to get what she wants and needs out of life, but I’m not sure she knows what it leads to. I think there’s a lot of women that will see themselves in Tashi.”
“The moment when, because of an injury, Tashi is no longer able to do the one thing that she feels defines her, she has to find a way to redefine herself. She’s doing her best to control everything, and to be in control of her emotions, to get what she wants and needs out of life, but I’m not sure she knows what it leads to. I think there’s a lot of women that will see themselves in Tashi. It was a character I feel I had never read before, and never seen before. And she scared the shit out of me.”
“So, I was like, ‘Maybe I need to do this.’ I think being able to be a part of it in a creative sense, and hopefully be in service to the characters and our incredible team here and help in any way I can to help bring that to life, and then hearing Luca had read it and was interested in doing it was like a dream, because I was such a fan of his work for so long.”
“We had met once at a Fenty dinner, and he was so kind and so sweet to me. He helped me get vegetarian options ‘because I couldn’t speak Italian, and I loved him then. I had been hoping to work with him in some capacity. So, the idea it would be this was magical. We sat, and we talked over Zoom, and I understood he understood the kind of movie we wanted to create. He understood these characters in such a deep sense down to [the point where] we were joking about what kind of lotion she would use before she goes to bed at night. These are these little details that [make me say], ‘Oh my gosh, you know this woman. You get her. You see her.’ He had that same instinct for a lot of characters.”
Challengers has a nonlinear style, but that connection between the characters is clear and compelling. When we meet them, Patrick and Art are choosing between college and careers, having been roommates at a tennis boarding school since they were 12. Best friends and friendly rivals, the two are known on the tennis circuit as “Fire & Ice.” When they meet Tashi, she’s already a star ascending — fast — and her magnetism on the court precedes her.
The tennis matches in Challengers have constant movement, but movement is an evolution of the characters as they deal with change and power and passion. There is a moment when the camera is on Art and Patrick, though Tashi is watching from the stands during the final sequence in Challengers. The audience sees Tashi but also all the details of that match — the transparent court in which the audience watches them from under the ground, the numerous shots that go into a matter of seconds at the end — is told through an emotional geometry. The movements are intimate yet public. The whole process taking weeks to train for.
“I call it summer camp. It was great because essentially, we got about almost six weeks before we actually started production to just work on tennis and we were under the support and guidance of [tennis consultant] Brad Gilbert, who is incredible and an iconic person in his own right.” Gilbert previously coached Agassi to win six Grand Slam championships and an Olympic gold medal. According to Agassi, “Brad Gilbert is the greatest coach of all time.”
“Truthfully, I had no idea about tennis. I knew nothing. All I really knew of tennis was Venus and Serena. It was one of those things that was terrifying as a challenge to take on because you’re supposed to be a great tennis player and I’ve never been a great tennis player. I was incredibly nervous showing up. [In fact], we were all incredibly nervous showing up on that first day. We did tennis training beside each other, we worked out beside each other, and we also had rehearsal beside each other, which was such a privilege to be able to have that time to work on the script, to get to know each other. But during that tennis training time, I was driving myself crazy trying to become a tennis player. I was trying to learn the fundamentals. When I first started hitting the ball, it just would go off into trees. It was just never even close to the court. I was like, ‘Damn, I got a long way to go.'”
“It’s not a game you could just pick up unless you’ve been playing since [you were] four, it’s not happening for you. I would come in, and I feel like I would get it. I’m like, ‘Yeah, I got this.’ Okay, like something clicked and then you come in the next day, and you can’t do it, you can’t recreate it. You’re like, ‘Damn, back to square one. [One day] they’re feeding me balls [and I say], ‘I want to try to see what it feels like to return a serve. Hit me a real one.’ At the time, I still had glasses. I’ve since had LASIK, so I couldn’t even see the dang thing. At some point, I realized, ‘Okay, my approach has to be different because whatever this is, isn’t working. As soon as the ball’s flying at me, all of a sudden, my fundamentals and the form, everything is gone. Hit it or get out the way.”
“Eventually, Luca started to build these scenes and choreograph them because every shot in these tennis sequences was storyboarded. It was so thought out and it was so meticulous. I said, ‘Okay, well, maybe that’s how I need to approach it too. Let me approach it like choreography. I’m a dancer, so let me dance this thing out.’ I began to just focus. We [also] had amazing tennis doubles. I just wanted to sync up with her. I wanted to understand her footwork, her patterns, her movements, and just try to make it as seamless as possible. I wanted to look like her mirror.”
“Then I’d record myself next to her, and I’d watch it back. ‘Mm, I could do that a little better.’ She’s quicker on her feet.’ So that became my entryway into looking like a tennis player. I knew at some point I wasn’t going to be one, but I could fake it. The training was pretty intense, and it was great to do it beside them because I know they were just as committed as well. We were struggling together.”
Even though Zendaya was struggling through training she understood Tashi’s image was layered in the art of presentation and winning in that time period. Tashi becomes an incredible type of seducer, but it’s subtle and despite her questionable actions Zendaya will never judge Tashi.
“The refreshing nature [about Tashi is she is] a female character that doesn’t have to be likeable and doesn’t care about you liking her. [She] doesn’t ask for forgiveness. That is probably refreshing to some people, and I understand that. That was why I wanted to play her. I say that before screening sometimes because I feel like it’s our natural instinct to judge people in general. It’s easy to judge these characters and I understand that, because we all do. The beauty of this film is that your mind will change because I know mine has every time I watch it, every time I read it. I had preconceived notions about the characters, and then these guys came in, and with their performances alone and changed my perception of these characters [with] what they brought to them, how they embodied them, the life they gave them. My perception of the characters is everchanging.”
“Every time I watch it, and I made the dang thing, I’m still surprised that every time I go, ‘Oh, well, this time I’m kind of feeling for this character now,’ or ‘This time I’m Team So-and-so.’ You’re constantly living with them and learning something new about them. I say that only because I know that you’ll be wrong. You’re going to have an initial reaction, and then you’ll come back, and you’ll change it. That’s the beauty of it, you know?”
To learn more about Challengers, check out the video above from the press conference, the video below from the Los Angeles premiere and images in the gallery below that.
