Love is a tennis match. A love triangle is a tournament, but only one player can win the grand prize. This is the story of Challengers, written by Justin Kuritzkes and directed by Luca Guadagnino (Suspiria, Bones And All). Coach Tashi (Zendaya) is married to Art Donaldson (Mike Faist) who is on a losing streak, and now playing his childhood bestie and Tashi’s former boyfriend Patrick Zweig (Josh O’Connor) who isn’t faring much better on and off the court. Who will win? Kuritzkes tells all.
“The first kernel of the idea for the movie came when I just happened to turn on the US Open in 2018 on TV. There was a match between Serena Williams and Naomi Osaka in the finals. There was this very controversial moment when the umpire claimed that Serena Williams had received coaching from the sidelines. She got very upset and insisted she would never do that,” recalls Kuritzkes.
Justin hadn’t heard of that rule before, which is unremarkable since he wasn’t a massive tennis fan at the time. But that moment stirred an intensely cinematic story inside him. A player is alone on the court, in a massive stadium full of tennis fans, but the one person who cares as much about the outcome as you do can’t communicate with you.
Kuritzkes started to think, “What if they really needed to have a conversation about something? What if it was about something beyond tennis?” The conversation needs to include a wider conversation about their lives and also include the opponent on the other side of the net.
The writer saw promise in this tangled character triad and the story pieces fell into place quickly. Justin also started watching a lot more tennis. He obsessed over the game and read everything he could about it, but not to distract him from his writing. “It was giving me so much pound for pound, more drama and more pleasure than anything I was watching at the movies.”
The writer used tennis as a metaphor for life in Challengers. He asked himself, “What would make tennis better if I knew every moment is at stake for the players? And not just in a surface level professional way, but what is at stake emotionally, what are they really playing for?” Therein lies the emotional heartbeat of the story.
Justin Kuritzkes. Photo by Stewart Cook/ Getty Images for Amazon MGM Studios
“An athletic career is really this mini life. It’s a little capsule of time and it’s really short,” he continues.
“That felt like a natural way to tell a story about three athletes, to meet them at this moment when they’re all just about to go pro, but they’re also just about to enter into adulthood, and then end it when they’re all towards the twilight of their careers.”
Meet Art, Patrick & Tashi
Two inseparable life-long buddies who’ve risen through the ranks of tennis tournaments are bound to have their disagreements, sometimes turning them into enemies. They’re deeply entwined in each other’s lives.
By the time Challengers starts, they are both best friends and worst enemies. Kuritzkes contends they are more like brothers.
“They’re each other’s best opponents and they bring out something in each other where they’re both capable of making the other guy play his best tennis, which then becomes a comment about what they both do for each other in their lives.”
Tashi is the character that anchors Art and Patrick. She could be described as a strategist, seductress, wife and coach. But Justin cautions against passing judgment against her.
“You try to make a character that’s as funny, kind, cruel, petty, controlling and understanding as the people you meet in real life.” She’s a mashup of many things. “They’re all balls of potential.”
Each character is big enough to carry their own movie. Each is having their own existential crisis.” It’s an exciting place to meet people dramatically. What you want from drama is the opposite of what you want from life, which is maximum discomfort.”
Non-Linear Timeline
A notable aspect of Challengers is that it jumps back and forth in time to illustrate the Art, Patrick and Tashi backstory to better explain their relationships.
“I wanted to drop the audience and myself right into the present in the opening scene, right into this match where these three people were looking at each other as if their relationship mattered more than a grand slam. And feeling the discomfort and the tension, but not yet knowing why it was working like that,” mentions Kritzkes.
“I also knew that the movie would function in a way where it filled in what we didn’t know so we can watch the match now that we’ve caught up.”
The writer positioned the flashbacks as their need arose. “I knew that whatever was happening in the past was going to inform the way that we were processing the drama of the match in the present.”
Art Donaldson (Mike Faist) & Patrick Zweig (Josh O’Connor)
Photo by Niko Tavernise/ Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures Inc.
There are two layers of flashbacks – one when they were doubles partners at the US Open and watching them play as kids and another of their more recent losses on the court.
Writing Challengers
Justin began his writing career as a playwright, most notably, The Sensuality Party, so he’s familiar with writing monologues.
“A lot of my plays start from monologues. I would find my way into those plays when a character would just start talking. And I would spend as much time with them as I could until another person interrupted them,” he explains.
It’s about encountering a character and getting to know them and the story would naturally come out of that. Screenwriting differs in that there is isn’t the real estate for extended monologues or prolonged exploration.
“I think so much of a screenplay is about predicting and counteracting readers’ patience. You can’t really approach it in the same way as playwriting, but you can approach it with the same spirit, which is unearthing a character gradually.” In the case of Challengers, it was a matter of gradually unearthing three characters and teasing out the shifting dynamic between them.
Justin Kuritzkes conceived Challengers over many years before he started writing it. He always had the image of the opening scene where Art and Patrick are playing tennis and Tashi observes from the stands. He started from there and moved on. “I’ll know where I’m dropping people in, and then sometimes it’ll take a while to figure out what happens next.” He had a few future key scenes in mind before writing the screenplay. “And then I moved my way forward through the dark, and found the story as I went.”
Justin wrote a solid draft in three months he could show colleagues. After Challengers was greenlit, revisions came, some of which were notes that the writer had previously made for himself, but not used.
He always envisioned Challengers as a sports movie and he hopes audiences experience it as such. “I’ve heard it described as an erotic tennis thriller, which I think is great.”
Understandably, the pacing of the film mimics a live tennis match. “There’s a lot of build up and a lot of anticipation. Sometimes, things happen really fast and the stakes change on a dime and sometimes, there’s this long creeping sense of dread. And then sometimes, a point goes in a totally different direction and takes you by surprise.”
“I hope that the experience of watching the movie is that the pacing is pretty full on. But there are sections that I feel allow you to hang out with the characters a little bit more, especially when they’re younger.”
“In terms of my writing overall, I’m drawn in if you can make a character feel like they exist in real life. I want to spend more time with that person who I’ve never met before, even if they’re composed of parts that might have something in common with other characters, so long as they have something completely unique and new.”
