Three’s Com­pa­ny: Zen­daya, Josh O’Connor and Mike Faist on Challengers

We hooked up with the hottest cast of the year to get their Z: It’s the obvi­ous answer but, Call Me by Your Name, which I post-match analy­sis and insight on Luca Guadagnino’s Chal­lengers. In the film, Josh O’Connor and Mike Faist play ten­nis bud­dies-turned-arch rivals, Patrick and Art, while Zen­daya, who also pro­duced the film, plays Tashi, the would-be cham­pi­on whose life and career takes an unex­pect­ed turn.

LWLies: Can you tell us about your first meet­ing with Luca in person?

Zen­daya: My first encounter with Luca was at a Fen­di fash­ion show in Rome. We sat next to each oth­er at din­ner. I could not speak a word of Ital­ian and was hav­ing dif­fi­cul­ty explain­ing that I need­ed the veg­e­tar­i­an option. He helped me.

Josh O’Connor: My first encounter with Luca? I went for lunch with him and my friend Jonathan Ander­son. We just chat­ted about film and every­thing else and we got on bril­liant­ly. I remem­ber wear­ing a stripy jumper that didn’t fit me, and I came with a bicy­cle hel­met because I’d cycled from North London.

Mike Faist: Luca and I first met over Zoom. He was a fan of West Side Sto­ry. We talked about Justin’s script, the role of Art, some of our favourite actors and films.

Zen­daya, how did you come on board as a producer?

Z: I’d been a pro­duc­er on Eupho­ria, and I made a film with John David [Wash­ing­ton], a two-han­der, back in Covid days, called Mal­colm and Marie. So pro­duc­ing is not entire­ly new for me. But every time you do it, you do it to a new lev­el. Or you try to do more and learn from pre­vi­ous expe­ri­ences. It just kind of came about real­ly because Amy [Pas­cal], who cast me in Spi­der-Man, acquired the rights to the script and brought me in. And I just imme­di­ate­ly want­ed to talk to Justin to under­stand what his vision was and why he wrote this thing. We real­ly con­nect­ed pret­ty quick­ly over the phone. And I was like, ​‘Oh, he’s cool.’

For the direc­tor, we thought it had to be like the right per­son and who’d make sure that it feels ele­vat­ed and thought­ful, but also still fun and sexy and com­mer­cial to a degree. And when we heard that Luca was actu­al­ly inter­est­ed and had read it and want­ed to speak about it, I was def­i­nite­ly excit­ed. Him being on the phone and just com­plete­ly under­stand­ing it made me think he was clear­ly the one to take it on. With pro­duc­ing, I enjoy the pro­duc­e­r­i­al aspect. It allows me to be cre­ative and solve problems.

What was your first encounter with Luca’s films?

MF: I wasn’t famil­iar with Luca’s work, but his first film I watched was A Big­ger Splash. I love that cast and I real­ly enjoyed the film.

Z: It’s the obvi­ous answer but, Call Me by Your Name, which I thought was absolute­ly won­der­ful. For our script, Chal­lengers, it hon­est­ly felt like, from know­ing that film, this was some­thing I didn’t expect Luca to be inter­est­ed in. In tone and style it seemed so dif­fer­ent to the things he had made before. Yet I remem­ber our first meet­ing and he just had this deep under­stand­ing of the char­ac­ters in this beau­ti­ful, nuanced way that he brings out in all of his work. He has this under­stand­ing of their inner sto­ry. I feel like for most peo­ple there’s the ques­tion of, ​‘What’s on the page?’ but with Luca it’s, ​‘What isn’t on the page?’.

JO’C: I was a big fan of his work. I have this very strong mem­o­ry of when we pre­miered God’s Own Coun­try at Sun­dance and, the night before, we all went to see Call Me by Your Name, and it got a stand­ing ova­tion. We were all singing Luca’s praise.

How did you devel­op your char­ac­ter with Luca?

Z. We just kind of knew this woman. Who­ev­er Tashi was, wher­ev­er she was going, our instincts real­ly aligned in how we want­ed to bring her to life. And it was down to fig­ur­ing out the details, from her hair­cut to the mois­turis­er she uses and all these lit­tle things that rep­re­sent the essence of this woman. And I must say, this was one of the few times I’ve worked with some­one who’s so quick. He’s like five steps ahead of every­one else. There’d be times where he’d fin­ish shoot­ing some­thing with­out doing the sort of cov­er­age that I’m used to, and he’s like, ​‘All right. We’re done,’ and I’m like, ​‘Wait, we’re done like already?!’. And he’s like, ​‘I love it, I know what I’m cut­ting to, I don’t need anymore.’

JO’C: Luca was very par­tic­u­lar about images. He and Jonathan [Ander­son, artis­tic direc­tor of LOEWE] were very clear about all of that. And when it came to the char­ac­ter of Patrick, it was just about his con­fi­dence and his brava­do and where that came from – that was real­ly clear. He had a real­ly strong feel­ing that he should be very cock­sure and very cer­tain of him­self and over­ly- con­fi­dent, and he want­ed me to lead with that.

MF: I spent 12 weeks train­ing. Six in Ohio with my friend Julie, who is a per­son­al train­er and six in Boston with Brad Gilbert. For those twelve weeks I focused on becom­ing effi­cient in ten­nis and build­ing up my body. In 12 weeks I put on just under 15 pounds and was able to serve and hit with a one hand­ed backhand.

When did you all meet togeth­er for the first time, and how did you dis­cuss the things you had ahead of you?

Z: As pro­duc­er, I feel like I met the boys before I met them. When I first read the script, my mind imme­di­ate­ly went to Josh. I was think­ing, ​‘You know the guy from The Crown!’ And I was like, ​’He would be great for Patrick.’ When I sat down and final­ly had a moment to chat to Luca, he said, com­plete­ly inde­pen­dent­ly, ​‘You know, I was think­ing of some­one like Josh O’Connor.’ I was like, ​‘That’s so fun­ny you’d say that because that’s lit­er­al­ly the first name that I thought of.’ And I think in his heart of hearts, Luca always knew Mike would play Art.

MF: I met Z and Josh when we began our train­ing in Boston. We would hit for about two hours every day and then work­out for anoth­er two hours. After that we had rehearsal with Luca and Justin where we all went over the scenes.

JO’C: It was great. We had a read-through. We were all just so excit­ed. The script was so great. We all just kin­da felt that we need­ed to get out of the way of the sto­ry and let it tell itself and focus on the char­ac­ters. When you’ve got some­one like Luca at the help, you know that it’s going to be strong.

Z: I called it our ​‘Sum­mer Camp’. We’d get up, have break­fast, then go to ten­nis prac­tice. We had ten­nis prac­tice on these three in indoor courts that were side by side, so me and the boys each work­ing on our own, but right there next to each oth­er. And then we all head­ed to the gym and worked out togeth­er. And then every­body would kind of go off and have lunch and get them­selves togeth­er, and then we’d have rehearsal. And for me that is like a per­fect day: it forces me to be active and be out of the house and work­ing and being cre­ative all at the same time. And it was just real­ly nice to be in this place and to do it with the boys. They’re just real­ly love­ly peo­ple, love­ly to be around.

There’s an incred­i­ble scene in a hotel room where the char­ac­ters open up – emo­tion­al­ly, phys­i­cal­ly – for the first time. What prepa­ra­tions do you make – for your­self, and with the oth­er actors – for such a tac­tile scene?

MF: Josh, Z and myself spent six weeks get­ting to know each oth­er and becom­ing friends. We laughed a lot, espe­cial­ly while shoot­ing that scene.

JO’C: It’s fun­ny. Par­tic­u­lar­ly when there’s three of us, I think it’s eas­i­er. We were excit­ed about telling of the youth­ful nature of that sto­ry and the com­pet­i­tive­ness, and also their obses­sion with one anoth­er. And Luca real­ly encour­aged a play­ful­ness in that scene so it was real­ly fun to play, and very funny.

Z: We just rehearsed every­thing except for ​‘that’ part of it. We rehearsed the dia­logue to try and get a good sense of the tim­ing. There is a comedic essence to the film, even though I don’t think it’s strict­ly a com­e­dy. I don’t think it’s a dram­e­dy either. I don’t know what it is. But that sequence def­i­nite­ly relied on tim­ing and real­ly being absolute­ly in sync with one another

When it came to rehearsals, what kind of things did Luca have you doing?

JO’C: We spent weeks doing ten­nis train­ing. So it was a cou­ple of hours on the court and then a cou­ple in the gym every day. In the after­noon, we’d just rehearse scenes and just get them up on their feet, fig­ure them out, talk about them. We were always all in the room for that, which was great – it was like doing a play, with every­one con­tribut­ing and every­one say­ing what they were see­ing and reacting.

Z: It was just so nice to have that time where me and the boys and every­body else could be in a space togeth­er and just talk through the work. Pick apart the mate­r­i­al, find the char­ac­ters togeth­er.
I think Luca’s great at find­ing things with you – he loves being col­lab­o­ra­tive, but also allows you to find things yourself.

Did you immerse your­self in the world of ten­nis of the shoot? Were there any spe­cif­ic play­ers who inspired you?

JO’C: I’ll watch Wim­ble­don every year, and that always gets me excit­ed to go out and play. Maybe I’ll play one game. But I’m not very good. Obvi­ous­ly, in prep for this I got a bit obsessed. I was real­ly inter­est­ed in Nick Kyr­gios and some of his antics at the base­line. So some of the pol­i­tics of it and the dynam­ics between every­one. They’re so com­pet­i­tive, but there’s a classi­ness to it.

MF: While I was in Ohio I trained in the same camp with JJ Wolf who is a pro­fes­sion­al ten­nis play­er. It was chal­leng­ing and reward­ing work.

Z: I don’t think I nec­es­sar­i­ly grew up a ten­nis fan, but I have since become one. While I could appre­ci­ate it, I don’t think I real­ly had a great under­stand­ing of it. The first thing I did was just watch a shit ton of ten­nis. YouTub­ing con­stant­ly, dif­fer­ent ten­nis match­es involv­ing every great play­er you could imag­ine – just to throw myself into that world. I want­ed to under­stand as much as pos­si­ble. And dur­ing that process, I became a fan. With ten­nis, I just find that you can’t look away – it’s just so intense. There are so many lit­tle things that you notice when you watch a lot of ten­nis: the way that they walk out onto the ten­nis court; how they open their bag; what they pull out; the snacks that they eat when they’re on their breaks; the way they put their tow­el over their knees; all the rit­u­als. But also, you know, the ways in which they get frus­trat­ed and how that shows on their face.

Josh, how did you go about devel­op­ing Patrick’s unique serv­ing technique?

JO’C: We tried a few things. We had Brad Gilbert as our coach and we tried look­ing back at some stranger tech­niques for serv­ing. The real­i­ty is, any­one who knows ten­nis will see ten­nis very dif­fer­ent­ly, so Brad would be say­ing, ​‘Look at this serve, it’s total­ly strange!’, and I’d look at it and think it would appear com­plete­ly nor­mal. We had to invent a lit­tle bit to make it feel out of the ordi­nary and not too perfunctory.

The film takes place over mul­ti­ple time­frames, offer­ing a stark coun­ter­point between the young and old char­ac­ters. How did you approach that contrast?

MF: The way that Justin struc­tured the scenes took care of the major­i­ty of my work. Justin is a fab­u­lous writer, he’s thought­ful and smart. It’s a joy as an actor when the writ­ing is this good.

JO’C: Often the way with films, you have to keep a clear mind about the time tran­si­tions. Par­tic­u­lar­ly as most of the time we were shoot­ing out of sequence. I’ll always have a fair­ly organ­ised load of Post-it notes stuck on the wall of when we’re shoot­ing what scene, then the order of the scenes chrono­log­i­cal­ly and then the actu­al order of the scenes. That allows me to map out where I am, emo­tion­al­ly speaking.

Z: What’s inter­est­ing to me is I actu­al­ly think Tashi’s the same. And that’s what I appre­ci­at­ed about her: her injury didn’t drain her ener­gy, it just momen­tar­i­ly dis­placed it. She becomes this extreme­ly dri­ven woman, some­times over­com­pen­sat­ing for cer­tain things, to the point of being very unapolo­getic about what it is she wants in life and what she’s will­ing to do to get it. And you know what? I appre­ci­at­ed that. I also think it’s inter­est­ing to watch her unrav­el a lit­tle bit, espe­cial­ly as some­one who is always in con­trol. She even­tu­al­ly has to deal with the idea that she is griev­ing a career and a life that she didn’t have. But Tashi is a char­ac­ter I’d nev­er played before. Or real­ly seen, for that mat­ter. I think she’s just so… straight up. I’m sure peo­ple will have a lot of dif­fer­ent opin­ions about her. But I think the more you watch the film, the more com­pli­cat­ed the feel­ings you’ll have for her.

And final­ly, what was your favourite cos­tume and why?

Z: I’ve got to say, I real­ly love all my cos­tumes. I think the blue dress she wears is fun, and I real­ly love her ten­nis whites and see­ing her in her ele­ment. But she’s got some great looks when she’s old­er. I like the ele­gant night slip with her husband’s white t‑shirt over it, and the cash­mere cardi­gan… It’s just she’s this woman and there’s a sto­ry to all these dif­fer­ent pieces.

JO’C: I love, love the short shorts. Which, I’ll admit, I wasn’t mad about at first, but I think they’re actu­al­ly inspired. It’s when Patrick goes to the hotel and flirts with the hotel man­ag­er to try and get a room. I real­ly like those shorts – they’re real­ly out­ra­geous, which is what Patrick is too.