Guadagnino, known for his organic way of working, compares the weeks he and the three stars spent together preparing in Boston to “kids on the beach creating castles of sand”. Though Faist has some ability, the rest were hopeless at tennis. Guadagnino hadn’t picked up a racket 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, 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.”
Faist, O’Connor and Zendaya all connected in different ways not just to how desire ebbs and flows but to how the characters are each juggling their fluctuating passions with their careers.
“It is this constant navigation in what we do. Once a project is over then you’re kind of in limbo. You’re always trying to find that thing that sparks something inside of you,” Faist says. “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 ripped away, as it did for Tashi, fuelled arguably her finest film performance yet. Challengers is also the first time she’s leading a theatrical release.
“I’m grateful that I picked a career that I can keep doing for as long as I want to. I can be 80 years old and still be making movies if I get lucky enough to be able to or if that’s something I still want to be do then,” Zendaya says. “I can’t imagine that idea of that life or thing that makes you happy or gives you power being ripped away from you. I deeply empathise with that.”
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 had the responsibility of fame and providing for her family on her shoulders.
“Something I deal with personally is the idea of what I should want, or what people want for me,” Zendaya says. “I empathise 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, when not busy steaming up the screen, 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. Even Guadagnino, who generally prefers editing to shooting, found his time on hard court with Zendaya, O’Connor and Faist to be enthralling.
“It was joyous and it was a nice and it was energetic,” says Guadagnino. “It was a good company.”
