MGM<\/a><\/p>\nProduction Co<\/strong> : Pascal Pictures, Frenesy Film Company<\/p>\nRating<\/strong> : R (Some Sexual Content|Language Throughout|Graphic Nudity)<\/p>\nGenre<\/strong> : Drama<\/p>\nOriginal Language<\/strong> : English<\/p>\nRelease Date (Theaters)<\/strong> : Apr 26, 2024, Wide<\/p>\n<\/ins>\n![\"Challengers\"](\"https:\/\/cinemadailyus.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/Challengers-poster.png\")
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\u00a9Courtesy of MGM<\/p>\n
Press Conference with Actors Zendaya, Josh O’Connor, Mike Faist, Writer Justin Kuritzkes, Producer Amy Pascal, Director Luca Guadagnino<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
Q: So of course I want to start with Miss Amy Pascal.\u00a0 <\/span>I know that your producing partner isn’t here, but she found the script and brought it to you.\u00a0 <\/span>What was it about that script that just locked you in and said, “I have to do this?”<\/strong><\/p>\nAMY: Well, Rachel and I, Rachel runs my company, and we’ve been working together for the last 20 years.\u00a0 <\/span>And Justin’s agent, you know, Sue, sent it to Rachel, and she loved it.\u00a0 <\/span>And Rachel sent it to me, and I loved it. And then we begged Justin to be the producers of it. And we had quite a bit of competition.\u00a0 <\/span>But I think what really locked it, and I don’t think Z knows this, but I’ll say it now, is we promised we’d get her to do it.\u00a0 <\/span>I said, “You know, I know there’s a lot of other producers, but I know Z personally.\u00a0 <\/span>[laugh] And I will get her to do this movie.”\u00a0 <\/span>And that is why Justin chose us, I’m certain.<\/p>\nJUSTIN:\u00a0 <\/span>I can confirm that’s partly true.\u00a0 <\/span>When I heard that Amy was interested in the script, I was completely over the moon, because, you know, Amy is a legend.\u00a0 <\/span>And, you know, there’s a lot of phases of this process that have felt very surreal.\u00a0 <\/span>But if I’m being honest, that was the moment when the movie felt real to me. When I felt, like, oh, this might actually happen.<\/p>\nQ :\u00a0 <\/span>Ah, I love that. Well, walk me back to, you know, your process with writing it.\u00a0 <\/span>Because that story is incredible, and I don’t know if everyone here in the room and watching virtually is aware of where the idea was born.\u00a0 <\/span>So tell me where that was born and how you kinda worked to what we finally see on screen.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\nJUSTIN:\u00a0 <\/span>Yeah, of course.\u00a0 <\/span>You know, prior to writing the script, I hadn’t been that massive of a sports fan, or a tennis fan.\u00a0 <\/span>And then around 2018, I just happened to turn on the US Open.\u00a0 <\/span>And it was the final between Serena Williams and Naomi Osaka. And there was this very controversial call from the umpire where he accused Serena Williams of receiving coaching from the sidelines.\u00a0 <\/span>And I had never heard of this rule, but, you know, and Serena Williams was saying, “That didn’t happen,” “I would never do that.”<\/p>\nBut immediately this struck me as this intensely cinematic situation where you’re all alone on your side of the court, and there’s this one other person in this massive tennis stadium who cares as much about what happens to you as you do. But you can’t talk to them. And for whatever reason, it just clicked in my mind, well, what if you really needed to talk about something? And what if it was something beyond tennis? What if it was something that was going on with the two of you?<\/p>\n
And what if it involved the person on the other side of the net? How would you have that conversation?\u00a0 <\/span>And how could you communicate the tension of that situation using the tools that are specific to film? So yeah, that was really where it all started for me.<\/p>\nQ:\u00a0 <\/span>No, that’s beautiful. And of course, to bring your words to life, you needed the right cast in place to do that. And do that you guys did.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\nAMY:\u00a0 <\/span>Can I say one more thing about the screen play?\u00a0 <\/span>It is very, very difficult to tell a story that goes backwards and forwards, but only moves forwards as a storytelling device. And one of the things that I just want to say between Justin and Luca and my producing partner Rachel and Zendaya is that we were most impressed with, is that it’s very, very, very difficult to do a story that takes place in many different timelines, and yet you’re never confused.\u00a0 <\/span>And the story is constantly moving forward.<\/p>\nAnd one more thing I want to say, and then I’ll give it up, is that it is very rare that commercial movies are about adult relationships and about sex. And I was sick of it.\u00a0 <\/span>So, I thought it was high time that people kiss in movies and more.\u00a0 <\/span>And there was no better director to bring that to life than Luca.<\/p>\n<\/ins>\nQ :\u00a0 <\/span>I’m sure lots of people agree with that that have watched this film, right?\u00a0 <\/span>Zendaya, you know, where were you in your career when Amy brought this project to you, and what made you say, “I have to do this, and I also want to be a producer on it as well.”<\/strong><\/p>\nZENDAYA:\u00a0 <\/span>I believe I was still shooting Euphoria at the time. And it’s one of those things where everybody knows that, like, especially when I’m working, it’s really hard to, like, get me to do anything else [laugh] other than focus on what I’m going to do tomorrow on set.\u00a0 <\/span>And so we kind of had like a mock table read at my agent’s house.\u00a0 <\/span>And I just fell in love with the script.\u00a0 <\/span>I mean, it was brilliant.\u00a0 <\/span>And it also made me very nervous as something to tackle because of, I think, how complicated these characters are.<\/p>\nI think because of, also, you know, I couldn’t define what kind of movie it was.\u00a0 <\/span>Like, it was funny.\u00a0 <\/span>It was so funny, but I wouldn’t say it was a comedy.\u00a0 <\/span>But there was drama.\u00a0 <\/span>But I wouldn’t say it was just a drama.\u00a0 <\/span>You know?\u00a0 <\/span>And it had tennis, but it wasn’t like a sports movie.\u00a0 <\/span>So I think that feeling that it was kind of just like everything at once in this beautiful way was terrifying, but equally exhilarating and exciting.<\/p>\nAnd it was a character that I feel like I had never read before, and never seen before.\u00a0 <\/span>And she scared the shit out of me.\u00a0 <\/span>So I was like, “Maybe I need to do this.”\u00a0 <\/span>[laugh] You know?\u00a0 <\/span>And I think being able to be, you know, a part of it in a creative sense, and, you know, hopefully be in service to the characters and our, you know, incredible team here, and help in any way I can to help bring that to life, and then, you know, hearing that 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.<\/p>\nAnd we had met once at a Fenty dinner.\u00a0 <\/span>[laugh] And he was so kind and so sweet to me.\u00a0 <\/span>He helped me get vegetarian options ’cause I couldn’t speak Italian.\u00a0 <\/span>And, [laugh] I loved him then.\u00a0 <\/span>But I, you know, I had been hoping to work with him in some capacity.\u00a0 <\/span>So the idea that it would be this was, I mean, magical.\u00a0 <\/span>And we sat, and we talked over Zoom.\u00a0 <\/span>And I understood that he understood the kind of movie we wanted to create.<\/p>\nHe understood these characters in such a deep sense down to, like, you know, we were joking about what kind of lotion she would, you know, use before she goes bed at night.\u00a0 <\/span>You know what I mean? These are these little details that I’m like, “Oh my gosh, you know this woman.\u00a0 <\/span>You get her.\u00a0 <\/span>You see her.”\u00a0 <\/span>And he had that same instinct for a lot characters.\u00a0 <\/span>So it just felt like an obvious yes for me.<\/p>\nQ : Yeah, those little nuances are really great in the film. Luca, let’s bring you into the conversation.\u00a0 <\/span>What about you? What made you say, “I’ve got to direct this script?”<\/strong><\/p>\nLUCA:\u00a0 <\/span>Amy and I, we are courting each other since many years now.\u00a0 <\/span>And there is a sort of an unspoken love story between the two of us.\u00a0 <\/span>[laugh] But when Amy send me the script, I was working on something else.\u00a0 <\/span>And she calling me every half hour to ask me if I was reading it or not.\u00a0 <\/span>And eventually I had to read it while working.\u00a0 <\/span>The script was fantastic.\u00a0 <\/span>The characters were amazing.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nThe structure was so cinematic that I just immediately, instinctively felt that the company of Amy, the company of Zendaya, and the company of Justin, the artistic endeavor that we could all gather together in this would’ve been fantastic. And so I think I said I was in immediately, like — (Yes) And it was meetings. It was encounters. Encounters with Justin.\u00a0 <\/span>Encounters, remeeting with Zendaya.\u00a0 <\/span>And I would say what’s something that I don’t like, particularly, movie sets because I am a control freak, and the cows, I don’t like.\u00a0 <\/span>But I felt this was a very kind of, like, play. There was playfulness in making the movie that made me very happy about it.<\/p>\n![\"Challengers](\"https:\/\/cinemadailyus.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/Challengers4.png\")
<\/p>\n
Make Faist, Zendaya,\u00a0\u00a9Courtesy of MGM<\/p>\n
Q : Okay. I love that.\u00a0 <\/span>Thank you for that answer.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\nAMY:\u00a0 <\/span>Can I add also something else? That then when Mike and Josh joined this team, this movie came to life in a whole other way because —<\/p>\nLUCA:\u00a0 <\/span>Oh, absolutely.<\/p>\nAMY:\u00a0 <\/span>As complicated as the character is that Z plays, the characters that they play are really, really exquisitely difficult roles.\u00a0 <\/span>Because they do unspeakably terrible things to each other.\u00a0 <\/span>And you love them.\u00a0 <\/span>And you understand them.\u00a0 <\/span>And you’re like, “Oh, yeah, I did that.” Right?\u00a0 <\/span>And they make you understand them on such a human level.\u00a0 <\/span>It was such a beautiful experience for all of us working together.\u00a0 <\/span>It was quite something.<\/p>\nQ :\u00a0 <\/span>Thank you for adding that.\u00a0 <\/span>Mike, how did this project come to you, and why was it, I’m assuming, a quick yes for you [laugh] to do this?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\nMIKE:\u00a0 <\/span>I was home in Ohio, and I think like Z, it’s really hard for me, for my team, to get me to read anything. And my agent actually called me.\u00a0 <\/span>Sam.\u00a0 <\/span>She gave me a call and she said, “Mike, you have to read this script.”\u00a0 <\/span>And I was like, “All right, well, that sounds serious.”\u00a0 <\/span>So I read it.\u00a0 <\/span>And you know in those moments when you’re like, “Fuck, I hate when other people are right.”\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n[laugh] And so then, from there, I met with Luca.\u00a0 <\/span>Luca and I, you were in Italy.\u00a0 <\/span>I was in Ohio.\u00a0 <\/span>We Zoomed.\u00a0 <\/span>We met each other.\u00a0 <\/span>We chatted.\u00a0 <\/span>And then they flew me to London to meet with Z. And we did a screen test there.\u00a0 <\/span>And I remember I left the screen test, and I was walking around London, and I actually felt like it went atrociously wrong.<\/p>\nAnd I thought, “Okay, well, I did not book that at all.”\u00a0 <\/span>And then Luca gave me a call, and he said, “Mike, where are you?\u00a0 <\/span>Come back, have lunch with me.”\u00a0 <\/span>I guess we sat down and had lunch.\u00a0 <\/span>And he just was, you know, we just chatted some more and got to know each other. But the thing that stuck out with me personally that was the draw to want to do this, besides the script and the team, ’cause it was always gonna be art, is what they were asking me to kinda look at.<\/p>\nAnd the thing that really stuck out with me about the character was this idea of a person, this craftsman who’s fallen out of love with his craft.\u00a0 <\/span>And he’s so desperately trying to kinda get back to that place of purity.\u00a0 <\/span>That place of, Josh uses the word “flow” where you’re just, it’s like a form of transcendence.\u00a0 <\/span>When you’re just in your work and just in your craft, and you actually love the process of doing it.<\/p>\nAnd I think for all of us at times, we kind of ebb and flow throughout our artistic endeavors to always strive to try to find those projects that pull something out of us that makes us feel compelled to really conjure the things for ourselves, to pursue it to the fullest extent that we can.\u00a0 <\/span>And that just leapt off the page with me, genuinely, with this character.\u00a0 <\/span>And I thought, I understand this very deeply.\u00a0 <\/span>And I would be very, very lucky to be a part of it.<\/p>\nQ : Kind of what Zendaya was saying about being scared.\u00a0<\/span>You know, like a character scaring you and you’re like, “I got to do it.” You got to conquer that.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\nMIKE:\u00a0 <\/span>But you know, and that’s the thing, right? It’s like when that feeling of fear pops up within you, that’s a really good indicator of you probably should do it.<\/p>\n<\/ins>\nQ : Yeah. Thank you for that.\u00a0 <\/span>Josh, you know, what about yourself?\u00a0 <\/span>Where did you even start with building this character? What made you say yes, and then where did you start?\u00a0 <\/span>Did you model him after anyone in particular, or?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\nJOSH: Well, what made me say yes was Luca and Zendaya. And Mike wasn’t on board at that point.\u00a0 <\/span>But if Mike had been on board, that would’ve also contributed.\u00a0 <\/span>I think also, I knew Luca before. We’d met a few years before.\u00a0 <\/span>And we talked about making some work together for a while. What I liked about Patrick initially, I mean, I love both the characters, and I actually read the script like a year or two before.\u00a0 <\/span>‘Cause I met Justin in New York.\u00a0 <\/span>Because my American agent, I just moved to New York, and I was on the phone to my agent one day and I said, “I have got no friends.” And so he set me up on a friend date.<\/p>\nJUSTIN:\u00a0 <\/span>We had a little date.<\/p>\nJOSH:\u00a0 <\/span>And I guess to kind of, like, guise under the idea of, like, this is also work, Josh.\u00a0 <\/span>He gave me a script to read.\u00a0 <\/span>But really, it was just, “Josh, here’s a friend to make.”\u00a0 <\/span>So we met on Ninth Street —<\/p>\nJUSTIN:\u00a0 <\/span>I’ll just embarrass you.\u00a0 <\/span>Josh had also just won an Emmy at that point. And we were at this coffee shop, and people kept coming up to congratulate.\u00a0 <\/span>[laugh]<\/p>\nJOSH:\u00a0 <\/span>They’re not real friends, Justin.\u00a0 <\/span>Anyway, so I’d read the script before.\u00a0 <\/span>But then when Luca asked me about doing it, initially Patrick was kind of, I thought this would be kind of beyond my reach. And I felt like this was a character that was so confident, so front-footed, so comfortable in himself, even though he has, as we all do, fears and insecurities.\u00a0 <\/span>But really is, you know, he’s completely, you know, lives life to the full.<\/p>\nAnd is very accepting of his flaws.\u00a0 <\/span>And all those things seemed like a reach.\u00a0 <\/span>And Luca very brilliantly kind of accepted that and made me feel comfortable around that.\u00a0 <\/span>And there was a process, you know, once we started preparing where, you know, we had to kind of pull those things out. It didn’t fit comfortably for me to not hide.\u00a0 <\/span>You know, he doesn’t hide at all.\u00a0 <\/span>So all those things contributed.\u00a0 <\/span>But there was no doubt, really.\u00a0 <\/span>You know, it’s such an honor and a privilege to get to work with people like this.\u00a0 <\/span>And so, yeah, that was an immediate yes.<\/p>\nQ : Yeah. Well, now of course I’m gonna kick to the audience questions.\u00a0 <\/span>Apologies in advance if I mispronounce anyone’s name. Again. Sorry, Justin.\u00a0 <\/span>Barbaros Tappin [phonetic] from Hurriyet Newspaper asks Zendaya, Josh, and Mike, “Can you talk about your tennis training process for the role?”\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\nZENDAYA:\u00a0 <\/span>Tennis training. Yeah.\u00a0 <\/span>The gym work, as Josh puts it.\u00a0 <\/span>Man, I mean, we were lucky enough to kind of, I don’t know, I call it, like, I call it summer camp.\u00a0 <\/span>It was great.\u00a0 <\/span>Because essentially, we got about almost six weeks before we actually started production to just work on tennis.\u00a0 <\/span>And we were under the support and guidance of Brad, who is incredible and an iconic person in his own right.<\/p>\nAnd truthfully, I had no idea about tennis.\u00a0 <\/span>I knew nothing.\u00a0 <\/span>All I really knew of tennis was Venus and Serena.\u00a0 <\/span>[laugh] And so, again, it was one of those things that it was terrifying as a challenge to, like, take on.\u00a0 <\/span>Because you know you’re supposed to be a great tennis player.\u00a0 <\/span>And I’ve never been a great tennis player.\u00a0 <\/span>And I think I was incredibly nervous showing up.\u00a0 <\/span>And I think we were all incredibly nervous showing up on that first day. And so we did tennis training beside each other.\u00a0 <\/span>We worked out beside each other.<\/p>\nAnd 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.\u00a0 <\/span>But during that tennis training time, I think I was, you know, driving myself crazy trying to, I mean, become a tennis player, right?\u00a0 <\/span>Like, I was trying to learn the fundamentals and make sure.\u00a0 <\/span>I remember when I first started hitting the ball, it just would go off into trees.\u00a0 <\/span>Like, it was just never even close to the court.\u00a0 <\/span>And I was like, “Damn, I got a long way to go.”<\/p>\nAnd eventually, you know, with tennis, if you’re picking it up, it’s not a game you could just pick up, right?\u00a0 <\/span>Unless you’ve been playing since four, it’s not happening for you.\u00a0 <\/span>You know what I mean?\u00a0 <\/span>[laugh] So, you know, I would come in, and I feel like I would get it.\u00a0 <\/span>I’m like, “Yeah, I got this.”\u00a0 <\/span>Okay, like something clicked.\u00a0 <\/span>And then you come in the next day and you can’t do it.\u00a0 <\/span>And you can’t recreate it.\u00a0 <\/span>[laugh] You’re like, “Damn.”\u00a0 <\/span>You know, back to square one.\u00a0 <\/span>And I think there’s one thing too, is like they’re feeding me balls, right?\u00a0 <\/span>I once asked, I said, “I want to try to see what it feels like to return a serve.”\u00a0 <\/span>Someone like, you know.\u00a0 <\/span>Hit me a real one. The way that thing flew by me so fast —<\/p>\nAnd at the time, I still had glasses.\u00a0 <\/span>I’ve since had LASIK, so I couldn’t even see the dang thing.\u00a0 <\/span>So, at some point, I realized, okay, my approach has to be different.\u00a0 <\/span>Because whatever this is isn’t working.\u00a0 <\/span>And as soon as the ball’s flying at me, all of a sudden my fundamentals and the form, everything is gone.