Zendaya, Josh O’Connor and Mike Faist star in the tennis dramedy ‘Challengers,’ in theaters April 26
Zendaya and her Challengers costars are leaning in to the films’ lusty aesthetic.
Zendaya, 27, shared a number of behind-the-scenes photos and videos from the new tennis drama to Instagram on April 23. At the end of the nine clips she shared, the actress featured a quick video of her costars Josh O’Connor and Mike Faist jokingly kissing a tennis racquet wearing Zendaya’s wig from the movie — a tongue-in-cheek reference to a highlighted scene in the movie’s trailer in which both men begin kissing Zendaya’s character Tashi.
“This is the makeout scene,” Faist, 32, says in the video, before he and O’Connor, 33, lean in to kiss the racquet. All three actors can be heard laughing, before O’Connor appears to say, “Not again!”
“A little bts dump in honor of @challengersmovie coming out in a couple days. This is my first time leading a film in this way so ya girls been nervous but everyones excitement and encouragement has meant the world to me,” Zendaya wrote in a caption to her post.
Her carousel also included a video of O’Connor flipping a plastic water bottle to land perfectly upright, a video of herself practicing her tennis game and images of her costars sitting with the film’s director Luca Guadagnino.
“I’m so honored that I get to do this beside these incredibly talented, brilliant (and hilarious) people and on behalf of all of us, we hope you enjoy the film and again… try not to judge the characters too much lol,” she finished the caption, adding: “but also #teamtashi.”
Challengers follows Zendaya’s character Tashi Duncan as a promising young tennis prospect whom fellow athletes Patrick (O’Connor) and Art (Faist) both take an interest in. The movie entangles the three characters romantically, and then picks up years later, after an injury has ended Tashi’s tennis career and she works as a coach for Art, now her husband.
“Married to a champion on a losing streak, Tashi’s strategy for her husband’s redemption takes a surprising turn when he must face off against the washed-up Patrick — his former best friend and Tashi’s former boyfriend,” an official synopsis for the movie reads. “As their pasts and presents collide, and tensions run high, Tashi must ask herself: What will it cost to win?”
Guadagnino, 52, has said in the past that Zendaya contributed much of her own tennis playing to the movie’s match sequences. Zendaya herself recently shared with Entertainment Tonight that tennis legend Serena Williams enjoyed her performance in the movie, saying, “She did say that it was great considering that I had never, never touched a tennis ball before.”
Challengers is in theaters April 26.