In preparation for her role as a former tennis prodigy in the new film “Challengers,” Zendaya turned to a legend in the sport for help. The actress – alongside co-stars Mike Faist and Josh O’Connor – underwent rigorous training with Brad Gilbert, who currently coaches US Open champion Coco Gauff.
The movie centers around Zendaya’s Tashi Duncan, a tennis player turned coach who attempts to snap her husband’s (Faist) recent losing streak. Tensions reach a boiling point when he is matched up against his ex-best friend (O’Connor), who also had a past romantic relationship with Tashi.
Director Luca Guadagnino aimed to make the tennis scenes as realistic and competitive as possible by bringing Gilbert onto the set. In addition to Gauff, the No.3 singles player in WTA rankings, he’s also helped lead Andre Agassi and Andy Roddick to grand slam titles.
While making an appearance at the film’s premiere in Los Angeles, Gilbert revealed that there are more similarities than differences between tennis players and actors. “It was a great learning experience,” he said, according to Tennis365, reports the Express US.
“All three of them have good skills. Mike was the only one who had a little bit of a tennis background, he played in high school. Zendaya has a lot of athleticism in dancing. Josh, he had swam, he had played soccer, rugby. All of them had their own different characteristics of athleticism, but none of them were a prolific tennis player.”
“Actors have a lot of the same DNA as tennis players a lot of focus, a lot of determination, to really turn what they’re doing into something on screen,” Gilbert added. “They worked incredibly hard and it was a great pleasure to work with all three of them.”
Gilbert would train the actors early in the morning ahead of filming due to their busy schedules and limited free time on set in Boston. “The time I spent [in Boston] was short, with more time with Zendaya in LA before we started,” he said.
“Like with acting a lot of the time, you have a short period of time to become the character, we had a short period of time but they put in the hard yards to make themselves the best they could be for this film. We would train early in Boston. We would do a couple of hours every day and then a couple of hours in the gym. They had long days a lot of the time in Boston we were in the car by 6 am.”
After working behind the scenes on “Challengers,” Gilbert teamed up with Gauff last summer. Following her first match, the 20 year old tennis star revealed she had discussed the film with her coach and even actress Zendaya.
“[Gilbert] said that she picked it up well,” Gauff shared. “It’s hard to replicate tennis, but one thing he did say, she is a hard worker and she was trying as hard as she could to make it as perfect as she could and that she’s a super-sweet girl.”
“That’s how I actually got the flowers from her. He’s the one who gave her my address. I loved all the Challengers fashion looks. I thought that was really cool to see tennis in that way, because I felt for a tennis player for us, a lot of us wouldn’t want to do that, but she made it look like high fashion and chic.”
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