Trivia / Challengers (2024)

• Actor-Shared Background: Tashi has both a White Mother and an African-American Father, just like Zendaya.
• Cast the Expert:
  • Outside the main trio, the tennis players are largely played by active college tennis players.
  • Brad Gilbert as Art's coach
  • Chris Fowler and Mary Joe Fernández as TV tennis commentators
• Dawson Casting: Zendaya, Mike Faist, and Josh O'Connor play the trio over the course of the thirteen years, including when they were in college.
• Dyeing for Your Art: All three leads spent three months training and exercising so they could convincingly play tennis players onscreen. In Mike Faist's case, he also had to eat nearly 10,000 calories a day because he had lost weight for West Side Story (2021) and needed to put on 30 pounds.
• Playing Against Type: Mike Faist is mostly known for playing troubled teenagers. Here he plays a well-adjusted, highly successful adult whose only baggage is tensions with his wife and former best friend.
• Produced by Cast Member: Zendaya has a producer credit for the film.
• Underage Casting: Tashi, Art, and Patrick are in their early thirties in the present day segments, and while Josh O'Connor and Mike Faist were thirty and thirty-two, respectively, Zendaya was only twenty-five years old during filming.

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