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Zendaya is serving up a sexy love match in her new tennis movie "Challengers" with Josh O’Connor and Mike Faist.
“Extra’s” Terri Seymour sat down with the trio to talk about their steamy drama.
The film centers on Zendaya as a tennis prodigy in a love triangle between her tennis-player husband (Faist) and his best friend (O’Connor), who happens to be her former lover.
There was an intimacy coordinator and a full crew on set, so filming those racy scenes wasn't so intimate.
Zendaya commented, “People see our side, but they don't realize the other side is like a crew of people. We're not alone in the room. There's a camera like coming in.”
Mike added, “We had a month and some change to actually get to know each other as co-workers, which developed a kind of rapport and familiarity that made us all comfortable with each other.”
“It's like the most embarrassing thing that you could possibly do,” Mike admitted of doing sex scenes.
He explained about acting, "Your job is to fully believe that what you're doing is real... You are in a ridiculous situation in reality, and you have to, like, trick yourself mentally and have this kind of mental fortitude to be so committed and dedicated to what you're doing that you actually want to try to believe it. That's the goal."
He continued, "In order to put yourself in such a vulnerable position, you have to feel comfortable and save enough to allow yourself to be ridiculous. Acting is a foolish profession. If you are good at this, you will be a fool, and you want to put yourself into being a fool. But in order to do that, you have to feel comfortable enough to allow yourself to be in that ridiculous position."
Zendaya agreed and said what helps is, "The people I'm next to being good people and feeling safe with them as human beings, as fellow actors, that have my back in these scenes and outside."
She added, "When you have that, again, like he's saying, 'Okay, we both look foolish or we both feel foolish. Alright, let's do it then.' You know, who cares? And that safety is really, really important."
Zendaya, a fashionista at heart, has been killing it on a global media blitz for the movie, from Rome to Milan to London to Los Angeles.
While she’s seen mostly glammed up these days, Zendaya still makes time to be in her pajamas. She explained, “I do do that in between all of this. I think is like partially another character that I get to present and play with and hide behind often. They've been on set with me, they've seen the other side. It's not all the time."
She continued, "I think that's the good part is the duality, it's being able to go home and chill and, you know, I've got my slippers on. It's not all the character all the time, but fashion does help, I think, you know, with confidence. I don't know, feeling the foolish thing, it helps like, buy into the fantasy a little bit."
And all their tennis training helped their confidence on the court!
When asked how they prepped for the roles as tennis players, Josh commented, “Was it an hour and a half tennis, hour and a half working out, gym work? We did that for six weeks, every day. So even if you're like me and avoiding exercise, it was inevitable that I would look reasonably good."
He reflected, "We had to train quite hard, but it was worth it. And it was really important for us three to spend some time together, and we were all in it together."
Zendaya’s character is competitive, but is she that way off-screen?
"I'm a beast!" she joked, adding, "Sometimes. Maybe. I don't know. I don't know if that's the word I would think of when I think of myself.”
She elaborated, “But I do think my character, for sure, I think she has a level of brutality almost to her and an intensity and this fiery passion almost for tennis that is scary at times... My character is, she's different from me in many ways, and I think that was the fun of choosing a character like this. Because of her forwardness and her almost cruelty, how do I make sure that she's still human? How do I make sure that she's still tender and soft and we see all the parts of her that aren't just cold?"
Zendaya also spoke about feeling some nervousness and "imposter syndrome" when it came to getting into the tennis training.
“I know, for me, when we were learning tennis that first day and like being on court side by side and I was like, I don't know. I don't know how good they are,” Zendaya went on. “I don't know what the vibes are. I don't know if they're going to be like competitive. I don't know if they're gonna look at me like, ‘Oh, my God, she sucks.’ So, I was really trying to fake it till I make it. And then, once we all got comfortable and we all realized we were all terrified and we all didn't know what we were doing, then I was like, I could let it go a little bit.”
"Challengers" hits theaters April 26, but Z's fans are also eagerly awaiting any news about Season 3 of "Euphoria," which has been put on hold.
She told Terri, "I don't have an answer. I wish I had more information, I don't."
