Zendaya is opening up about the importance of the intimacy coordinator on her new film Challengers.
The 27-year-old Euphoria star spoke about crafting the sports romance’s intimate scenes with her costars Mike Faist and Josh O’Connor at the film’s premiere in Rome on Monday.
The sizzling feature from Suspiria and Call Me By Your Name director Luca Guadagnino stars Zendaya as Tashi Duncan, an aspiring tennis star who gives up her career after suffering a major injury.
Instead, she focuses on coaching her colleague Art (Faist), whom she falls in love with and marries, but she finds her feelings dangerously divided after Art is enrolled on the Challenger Tour, where he faces off against Tashi’s ex-boyfriend Patrick (O’Connor).
On the red carpet, Zendaya praised the intimacy coordinator for keeping a ‘safe’ environment on set, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Zendaya, 27, spoke about using an intimacy coordinator on her new film Challengers at its Rome premiere on Monday, according to The Hollywood Reporter; seen March 10 in LA
In Challengers, Zendaya plays a former tennis star who starts coaching after an injury ends her career. She coaches — and then marries — Art (Mike Faist, L), but their relationship is complicated when he has to compete against her ex-boyfriend Patrick (Josh O’Connor, R)
‘We had an intimacy coordinator which was fantastic and very helpful, because it was important that we felt safe,’ she said.
The film is suffused with ‘intense’ erotic scenes between Zendaya and her leading men, so the trio needed to find ways to decompress when they were on camera.
‘I spoke with my colleagues so that we could find a way to feel at ease. We played tennis together, we went out together, we rehearsed together,’ she shared. ‘We got to bond and feel good with each other.’
Faist agreed and added that that unstructured time was essential to creating a solid bond and portraying believable romance on screen.
‘We were able to spend time together during rehearsals and beyond, especially with Josh,’ he explained. ‘We were able to get to know each other as people before we could get into the film. We created a real friendship that created the basis of the film.’
O’Connor praised Guadagnino and his costars while explaining what drew him to the film.
‘It was an honor to be directed by Luca. The script was great, as was the cast and being able to work with Mike and Zendaya,’ he said.
‘To be honest, what attracted me to accepting the role of Patrick is that he is so different from me,’ he continued, though O’Connor struggled to nail down what was so different from himself.
‘I don’t really know, just different. That’s the beauty of being an actor,’ he said.
O’Connor and Guadagnino appear to have forged a strong working relationship, and the in-demand actor is set to appear in the Italian filmmaker’s next movie, Separate Rooms, based on the acclaimed novel by Pier Vittorio Tondelli, which portrayed a gay man’s struggles to adjust to single life after the death of his partner.
The actor ha also been enjoying collaboration with another Italian auteur, Alice Rohrwacher, after starring in her acclaimed new film La Chimera, which is currently out in limited release.
At the premiere, Challengers’ producer Rachel O’Connor delved in to the difficulties of making the film.
‘We had the script ready that Luca was in love with, but we really had a very short window to shoot with Zendaya, who is also a producer and brought her strong work ethic to the film, but who also had to work on Dune,’ she explained.
‘We had an intimacy coordinator which was fantastic and very helpful, because it was important that we felt safe,’ she said; seen with director Luca Guadagnino (R)
‘I spoke with my colleagues so that we could find a way to feel at ease. We played tennis together, we went out together, we rehearsed together,’ she shared. ‘We got to bond and feel good with each other’
Faist (L) said the trio of stars spent copious time together off camera and ‘created a real friendship that created the basis of the film’
In order to make her scenes as a tennis pro as believable as possible, Zendaya trained for months with the former tennis star and now-coach Brad Gilbert, according to Tennis.com
However, the ‘passion’ of the artists involved helped to keep things running smoothly.
‘Everyone was completely involved in the project and absolutely wanted it to become a reality,’ she added.
Even after the struggle to film the movie on a tight schedule, Challengers’ original release was postponed by the since-ended writers and actors strikes, as studios feared that otherwise-popular films could be hurt at the box office if their stars weren’t available to promote them.
In order to make her scenes as a tennis pro as believable as possible, Zendaya trained for months with the former tennis star and now-coach Brad Gilbert, according to Tennis.com.
