Zendaya’s face as Tashi Duncan dominated the posters for Luca Guadagnino’s erotic tennis drama Challengers. The former prodigy, now wife and manager of fading champion Art Donaldson (Mike Faist), with her purple reflective sunglasses. Art and his once closest friend, Patrick Zweig (Josh O’Connor), and once again rival images inside the frames. She hovers, and she watches. It’s Tashi who is watching years after the men watched her at the beginning of her career.
There have been many arguments about who is playing whom in the love triangle and what the game and goal are. Is Tashi a ‘home wrecker’ when she starts dating Patrick? What about when she eventually coaches and marries Art?
Is she the spark who challenges exactly how much Art and Patrick care about tennis and how much they care about each other? Is she the boss? The excuse? The person holding things together? The… villain?
Insession Film‘s Nadine Whitney asked the question of Zendaya at a November 23 press conference for Challengers with co-star Mike Faist in attendance.
Nadine Whitney: People have called Tashi a villain because of her will. Do you believe that is a double standard, considering how men in sports are treated?”
Zendaya: (Laughs) I just want to say, don’t get me started on this. Mike knows I’m a Tashi advocate, okay? She’s not a villain. Even if you are the villain, you’re not really supposed to look at your character that way. My job is to empathize with her, to understand where she’s coming from, and to humanize her.
What I think was interesting to me is, although I think she can be quite harsh and unapologetic in the way she goes about things, it was my job, again, to find where her pain is stored and, to me, the trauma of losing your career. The idea of never allowing yourself the time to grieve, and then also, I think, being in a marriage where I think, at least this is how I perceived it, she’s in charge all the time, she’s making all the decisions, answering all the things, and being accountable for two people, and vicariously living through them as well. Her life, since she was a kid, has felt soincomplete because this one true love, which is tennis, has been ripped away from her.
It is different for us as actors; we can continue to work however long we want to, and if we’re lucky, we can keep doing it. Whereas an athlete, there’s a limit to how much you can put your body through, and especially if you get an injury. I empathize so deeply with this idea of loss because I love my job, I love what I do, and I couldn’t imagine it just all being taken away from me, and then someone being like, “Well, the only way you can do it is if you vicariously live through someone else.” or, “You can only direct and you can never play a character again,” or, “You can only be a DP, you can never play a character again.”
I tried to put myself in her shoes in that way and put myself also in a marriage that ultimately isn’t equal. They don’t feel like partners; it feels like one person telling another person what to do, and that’s pretty much it, and someone else is okay with that. That works for some people, but I don’t think it necessarily is healthy for these two people. It’s just this deeply codependent feeling of needing the other person to fulfill something that you can’t fulfill on your own. Does she do some things that I wouldn’t necessarily do personally? Yeah, but at least I can understand where it’s coming from.
Ultimately, I think what’s really beautiful about this is everybody is deeply flawed and makes mistakes, and I don’t think you can say that one person is the quote, unquote, “villain” or the “bad guy.” They’re all making decisions, they’re all hurting each other, they’re all unhealed and lost and just trying to get through, and they do about it in just the messiest ways. So, I don’t know, that’s my more mature answer.
But then, my other answer is the real villain is Art. Next question? No, I’m kidding, but not really, if I had to choose a villain!
It’s a debate, and that’s what I appreciate honestly about making this film. I think something that makes me so excited, even when I’m at the grocery store, and people come up to me, and they’ll be like, “I just saw Challengers; what happened?” And they want to talk to me and discuss the characters and who they feel was in the wrong, who they feelwas treated the worst, or who really won in the end, and what were their intentions.
And truly, while I think I have some answers, I also don’t. I think there is an open-ended nature to it that allows for conversation, allows for people to make up their own ideas, and upon second and third watch, your opinions will change, and I appreciate that because that’s the reason why we make things, so people can enjoy it and take it home with them and make decisions for themselves about the characters.
(Mike Faist reacts) Damn!
Damn! Indeed. Zendaya says the ball’s in your court. At least one thing is for sure – with Challengers, you get great tennis. That much we told ya!
