There's a moment in Challengers in the very final act when all the nasty little game playing chickens come home to roost. If you've seen the movie, and of course you have, you know the one: Patrick (a swaggering Josh O'Connor) holds a ball to his racquet, signalling something devastating to his one-time best friend Art (Mike Faist), who is now married to Patrick's ex, Tashi, played by the one and only Zendaya. When this scene rolled during the Australian premiere of Challengers in late March, the crowd was rocking. “Oh shit!” someone yelled, sotto-no-longer-voce in the febrile rapture of the State Theatre. Sydney was the first stop on the global tour for Challengers, which is the kind of movie that demands to be seen with an audience, the more rosé-sodden the better. It boasts outrageous needle drops, unhinged horniness and an almost pneumatic silliness that will have you grinning from ear to ear.
Maybe the theatre was so amped because Zendaya was there, in the flesh, walking the red carpet in a bedazzled lawn green Loewe gown. Her hair was newly blonde for the occasion, though Zendaya, ever the perfectionist – every article ever written about her will tell you one thing, and that is that Zendaya is a Virgo – was worried that nobody could tell. “I didn't like the lighting on the carpet. It was so dark,” she admits. “I dyed my hair blonde and it looks brown!” (She tips her immaculate pile of curls forward and yes, they are fresh as a wedge of lemon.) “This is blonde! in February, was something Zendaya first suggested to her stylist Law Roach when she was making the film two entire years ago. “I was going through references and coming up with ideas … ‘Do you think we could do this?’ And he was like, ‘Don't play with me!'”
