Move over Dune 2, because Zendaya has brought the spice to Sydney to promote her searingly sexy tennis film Challengers.
The latest movie from visionary filmmaker Luca Guadagnino (Call Me by Your Name) broke the internet last year with its trailer drop, which featured Zendaya and castmates Josh O’Connor (The Crown) and Mike Faist (West Side Story) as young tennis prodigies in bed, seemingly about to engage in a menage a trois.
For fans of Zendaya and Guadagnino – the director who made cannibalism sexy with Bones and All – it was game, set and match.
The Dune star wowed hundreds of onlookers at the film’s Australian premiere on Tuesday at Sydney’s State Theatre, wearing a glittering green gown with a plunging neckline, and sporting Bulgari accessories.
The gown was custom Loewe by Jonathan Anderson, and offered a playful nod to the film by featuring a shadowy silhouette of a tennis player.
Speaking at a press conference on Wednesday, Zendaya said playing characters such as Tashi in Challengers, a former tennis champ whose career was cut short by injury, helped overcome her real-life shyness.
“If anybody has the cure, let me know,” the 27-year-old actor laughed.
“But I do think that acting, or this job, per se, has helped me in many ways, and I think the reason why I like it is it allows me to be these other people, allows me to do things that I otherwise would be terrified and nervous about … and I’ve come out of my shell because of my work.”
Struggling to deal with the premature end of her own promising career, Tashi channels that frustration into the career of her husband, Art (Faist), who himself is at the tail-end of a successful run as a pro.
Believing Art has won more big tournament left in him, Tashi seeks to light a fire under her world-weary hubby by entering him in a lowly challenger tournament, where he’ll inevitably face Patrick (O’Connor), his former best friend and Tashi’s ex-lover.
“She’s unlikable,” Zendaya said of Tashi. “Like, you judge her immediately be like, ‘She’s too too much’ … so I think my job was trying to find her gooey centre, her empathy and why she makes the decisions, and where the pain is coming from.”
The film’s tennis scenes are incredible, and played for maximum homoerotic effect by Guadagnino, but there’s no question which of the three leads was the best player in real life.
“(Mike) is an amazing tennis player,” O’Connor admitted at the press conference. “He’s actually good at everything.”
Challengers is in cinemas on April 24.
