A sexy new tennis romance directed by Luca Guadagnino. challengersis a long-running love triangle that follows three millennial players through the ups and downs of their careers. At the center is Tashi (Zendaya), who is talented, driven, and amazing. She first dates Patrick (Josh O’Connor), who plays as well as she does, but doesn’t take his career or their relationship seriously enough for either of them to work out. do not have. When Tashi is forced off the circuit due to her knee injury, she meets Art (Mike Feist), a more serious person with a mediocre game of tennis, and as her coach, Tashi succeeds in turning him into a star.
Across different timelines, Tashi and Art are living on the streets in a five-star hotel (one of the filming locations for Challengers was Boston Newbury) and playing a game of Journeyman. For many years, she has had little contact with Patrick, who lives abroad. his car. When Art hit an unusual career low, Tashi was sent as a wildcard into a lower-level Local Challengers match, with the aim of giving him an easy, ego-boosting win before a more important match. Let him enter. But Patrick is also there (sleeping in his car in the club’s parking lot), desperate to get some of the purse money that comes with the match. When Tashi and Art arrive, he resets his goals higher.
In court, challengers Everything is done right, from the period-correct Adidas branding to the Kinesio tape running down the back of the art. Off the court, the film continues Guadagnino’s penchant for elegant, no-frills interiors, whether in the spacious dining halls of Stanford or the bars of upscale hotels that are beyond Patrick’s reach.For production designers melissa lombardo (thinking about ending things, Three billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri), it was important to provide an accurate and stylized view of the settings associated with competitive tennis. This meant building out almost the entire set of key challenger matches and redoing famous courts along the way.
We spoke to Lombardo about his involvement on the tennis circuit, exploring Guadagnino-esque interiors around Boston, and building visual backstories for the three main characters, even though none of them own a home. We talked about it.
Were you familiar with competitive tennis before taking part in the project?
No, not at all. In fact, when I received the script, I knew it was going to be a tough challenge, no joke, to start researching this movie and how to make it interesting and not just your average sports movie. That was very important to me, and I think it’s also important to Luca. We worked with Brad Gilbert and other consultants and experts to understand tennis, but from a design perspective, we looked at how tennis has been photographed and how it has been viewed historically. It was also important to see how many of them have been used and how we can incorporate many of them into our world.
The world oscillates between the realistic and the stylized. How did you decide on the direction for each setting?
In the original script, there were so many different matches. I started with, “What do these things look like in real life?” That’s the base, and from there you start playing with colors, lines, simple graphics, even clothing, and how it looks on a large colored wall. Everything was very intentional. We started from a point of reality and research, and from there we tried to find ways to add our own look to things and make them look really graphic and beautiful. I’m glad you noticed. Every time we watched a game, we tried to express the colors that way. Because when you’re watching a game, you’re really just seeing individual people in this big color field. That’s how I started watching this game. world.
How did the production design support the character’s growth and transformation process?
We took a close look at how real tennis players live. The hotel has so many great rooms, brands, and products, but we wanted to show it in action. A lot of my films and projects are environments with a lot of characters, but with these particular characters, you don’t know where they live. They exist as they are, so the question for me was how to represent these three different girlfriends. For example, when we painted the interior of Patrick’s car, we really thought about what was in there. And each has their own hotel room as they progress in their careers. They obviously start with dingy hotel rooms built on stage and progress to more glamorous and beautiful rooms filled with brands and products. All these are part of this lifestyle. I’m glad that people seem to be receptive to the fact that we were able to show progress and give the characters a visual backstory. I think the biggest improvement was the Billie Jean King post-game party. This was the first time we used Adidas posters, and this was our first entry into that world.
There are also interior elements reminiscent of the interiors of. i am love. Was Luca Guadagnino looking for such an aesthetic?
We never talked about it, but obviously he has a very particular style. I think we did a lot of hard scouting for different hotel lobbies and things like that to find places that would give us beautiful floors and beautiful details. We wanted everything to feel very clean.I tried to give him and sayonbu [Mukdeeprom, the cinematographer] It wasn’t just two walls because there was space to move around. The scouting process allowed us to find raw, beautiful locations and add our own personal touch to them, allowing the camera to shoot from different angles and move around the space. Luka clearly has his own style, especially when it comes to the intimacy of people.
Other than the initial dingy hotel room where the trio had their first intentional meeting, are there any other buildings that might surprise viewers?
We basically built the entire Challengers match site. It was very difficult to find it. We were scouting around Boston during the winter when there was 4 feet of snow. The script said “New Rochelle Tennis Club,” so I started researching from there. No matter where you go, these clubs have a different vibe. We worked really hard to find a site where we could build and lay out all the elements we needed for our script. To various places. I also needed a place where I could stay for a long time. We rented the property, rebuilt the courts, built locker rooms, put a pro shop in the barn, and built those big beautiful awnings over the tennis courts so spectators could see from both sides. I think the other thing that might surprise people is the Billie Jean King match. We shot on location, but we thoroughly researched all the graphics from the time, replaced everything with period-correct graphics, chose which coats worked best, and built that space.
The graphics are one of the most realistic elements of the movie, connecting players to the world of tennis.
I always, and Luca knows, like to use authentic brands. Branding in sports, especially in tennis, is such an important thing, so we fought hard to use those brands to make them feel that way and not just a made-up story. To make every match feel real, we researched what every court looked like and what was going on at the time.
Did the brand itself respond to that request?
It’s a big process. We have an entire department to help with that. Luckily everyone we contacted was pretty open to including them. Of course, it was a fictional story, but we were trying to stay true to the sport and make it look and feel authentic.
For more information on Challenger, check out the following stories:
‘Challengers’ screenwriter Justin Kritkes talks about Zendaya’s performance as Tennis Scorcher
Game On: Zendaya & Co. reveal why ‘Challenger’ is your new obsession
Featured image: Zendaya as Tashi in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures’ Challenger, directed by Luca Guadagnino. Credit: Niko Tavernise / Metro Goldwyn Mayer Pictures © 2023 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures Inc. All rights reserved.