Hollywood star Zendaya is in the UK currently, promoting her recent film Challengers. Owing to the tennis theme of the film, the Dune and Spiderman actress is also interviewing with a lot of tennis media channels like the Tennis Channel and Eurosport. Speaking to Laura Robson from Eurosport, Zendaya talked about her wonderful interaction with World No.1 player Iga Swiatek almost a month ago at the Indian Wells Open 2024 tournament, which the Polish player won.
Laura Robson, a former tennis player from the UK, was eager to bring up Zendaya’s interaction with Swiatek. She even played an audio recording from Swiatek herself, where the 4-time Grand Slam winner asked a pretty “deep” question.
“I know you met her a couple of weeks ago, Iga Swiatek, the world no. 1. So, she had quite a deep one I think,” said Robson to Zendaya.
Robson then goes on to play the audio from Swiatek.
Swiatek asks, “Hi! It’s Iga here. So as you were preparing for the Chalengers movie, what would you say are the similarities between a life of a professional athlete and an actress?”
Zendaya appreciates the question, and then proceeds to answer it.
“That’s a beautiful question. This is so cool. Yeah, I was really lucky to meet her at Indian Wells and she was so, so nice. I’m sure she would probably say the same about the weird work that I do, but, but, when I watch her, I can’t imagine what it must be like to be out on that court and have all these people watching and having to perform at such a high level and keep your composure and stay so focused and of course, we are similar. I think it’s just different, different worlds. But I have a lot of respect for what it takes to do your work in front of the world. I definitely understand.”
This interview has gone viral and Zendaya’s as well as tennis fans alike expressed their delight at seeing it.
Zendaya put herself through a lot of rigorous training to get inside the mind and body of a tennis player for her movie. Although Zendaya played a reel-life tennis player, she has immense appreciation and respect for real-life players. This feeling of hers only increased monumentally after she learnt about the lives of tennis players.
She also acknowledged that acting is far simpler than that, since it doesn’t happen live and in front of many thousands of people watching and judging every move of the professional. Plus there are retakes in acting, which isn’t possible in tennis or any other sport.
Zendaya Opens Up About Serena Williams & Preparing for ‘Challengers’ Role
Zendaya plays Tashi Duncan, a tennis player-turned-coach, who is involved with Art Donaldon (Mike Faist) and Patrick Zweig (Josh O’Connor) in Challengers. She spent hours training as a tennis player, and that too with Faist and O’Connor together. This helped them build the bond and chemistry required for the movie.
The legendary coach of Coco Gauff and Andre Agassi, Brad Gilbert acted as an advisor for the film. He trained Zendaya, Faist, and O’Connor very hard to get into the skin of a real-life tennis player.
Zendaya also mentioned in a recent interview about how surreal and inspirational it was for her to meet Serena Williams. Although she did not reveal much since it was a private conversation, Zendaya admitted that Williams meant the world to her when she was growing up. She was also a major inspiration for the young actress to prepare for this film.
