Interview: With the Tennis Romance ‘Challengers,’ Writer Justin Kuritzkes Serves Up the Hottest Film of the Year

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Justin Kuritzkes is a bit a renaissance man. He’s a songwriter, a novelist, a playwright and now, a screenwriter of the year’s hottest and horniest film in the Luca Guadagnino-directed Challengers, which details three people in the high stakes of tennis and even higher stakes of a triangle of love and stars Zendaya, Mike Faist and Josh O’Connor.

Growing up a theater kid, performance and creation were in his framework going into college where plays became the thing and he studied under Gregory Moss and Lisa D’Amour while idolizing Albee, Brecht and Beckett. While writing a play for his senior thesis, he started tinkering around with apps on his computer that contorted his face and energized some of the more theatrical performance part of his creativity and in the early 2010s became a bit of a YouTube sensation with his ‘Potion Seller‘ video and characters, about a knight and a man who sells potions.

But it was the inspiration for and creation of Challengers, which he wrote on spec and ended up on the BlackList, that has catapulted him into major player status. With the SAG-AFTRA strike delaying the film from a Venice bow and theatrical release last September, Kuritzkes will not have one but two films out this year, both with Guadagnino; the adaptation of the seminal William S. Burrough’s novel Queer, starring Daniel Craig and Drew Starkey, will hit theaters later this year.

I spoke with the LA-born, NY-based Kuritzkes about the ins and outs of Challengers, working with Guadagnino, the lack of cruel intentions in his characters and yes, potions.

Erik Anderson: The reviews of the film are pretty spectacular. Congratulations on that.

Justin Kuritzkes: Thank you so much. Thank you.

EA: I’m a massive fan myself. What’s been your reaction to seeing the final film?

JK: It’s been amazing to watch it with an audience. I had seen the final film a couple times over the past however many months, but the first time I got to see it with a real audience was in London and then again in LA, and that’s a totally different experience, because all of a sudden it’s alive.

EA: It’s fascinating, because even in a press screening, a lot of times there isn’t a lot of reaction the way that there is with a general audience, but this definitely had a lot of enthusiastic reaction, which is always great to see.

JK: Oh, good. I’m so happy that it went like that.

EA: I interviewed your incredible wife, Celine, last year, and talked with her several times during the season and I asked her a version of this question, which I thought would work really well for you as well. As a writer in other mediums before your first produced screenplay, in what ways did that experience help or even hinder this process?

JK: I think it mostly helped. Who you are as a storyteller and your voice doesn’t really change across mediums, the kind of characters you’re interested in or the kind of situations you find dramatic and worth putting in front of people stay pretty consistent across mediums. I think what’s good about having a background in theater or in novels, in my case, when it comes to writing screenplays, is that a screenplay is such a unforgiving, formalized way of writing, and it’s almost like writing architectural plans at the same time as you’re trying to write something that’s dynamic and exciting on the page. So it really helps to have a pretty firm sense of yourself as a writer and have a pretty firm sense of what you’re drawn to so that you can submit it to that kind of a rigid, unforgiving process where you have no real estate.

A novel can kind of find its way into a story, and you can kind of go on a journey with it and feel out a character for a while. My novel that was published a couple of years ago, I just started writing what I thought was a monologue for theater, and it went on for 60 pages, and I realized that nothing had happened yet, but I really liked the guy, I liked the character. And so I kept going and went, “Okay, this will be a novel.”

You can’t really do that in a screenplay, because you just don’t have the room. I think that’s part of what’s really challenging about a screenplay, but it’s also what’s exciting about a screenplay, because it forces you to write in a different way and that limitations make for exciting opportunities.

EA: I think I read a 2021 version of the screenplay, and it has that exact energy of the film, the non-linear nature, and the tennis ball volleying back and forth, which is often a very different animal than a play or a novel, so it’s fascinating.

JK: Totally.

EA: You said that the U.S. Open match between Serena Williams and Naomi Osaka was the inspiration for Challengers. Was the love triangle idea in place and needed a backdrop, or was it vice versa?

JK: No, it didn’t all come as a love triangle right away. I just was drawn to this situation that was going on in that match, of needing to communicate something and not being able to, and using film and using action and not language to have a conversation. That felt really cinematic to me. I think it started to become clear that it was a love triangle when I was thinking about what would make the stakes of a match feel the most potent, and what would make the stakes for the person watching really potent?

And so that sort of naturally started to form as I was thinking about this idea on a tennis court. I sort of saw the movie as this geometry between three characters, and the process of writing it really became about figuring out what the story was. Why does this all seem so important to them? Where is all this tension coming from? Because I could feel it in whatever image I had, but how can I fill in the rest of this image?

EA: As an extremely gay person…

JK: (laughs)

EA: (laughs)…I selfishly could probably spend the entire time talking with you about the queerness of this story and how very much it is Art and Patrick having nonstop sex through tennis. Can you talk a little bit about forming that triangle with those three and how collaborating with Luca really made this happen?

JK: Well, Luca brought a lot to that. It was always in the script that there was erotic energy coursing between all of them. Because I think the truth about a love triangle is that there’s always desire flowing in all directions in a love triangle. You’re intimately involved with two other people, whether you want to be or not. Whether you’re entering into that intentionally or not, when you find yourself in a love triangle, that’s what’s happening. There’s two other people who are deeply in your erotic life.

And so that energy between Art and Patrick also just comes out of the relationship that they have in the movie. They are two guys who grew up with each other, who have spent their whole lives together, basically, and who were kind of orphans together. They got shunted off to this tennis boarding school by their wealthy parents to go be raised on a tennis court. They lived their whole childhood in dorm rooms and locker rooms and on the courts together, and there’s a lot of erotic energy that happens there. Whether those guys are queer or not, it almost doesn’t matter, because that’s present in every intimate friendship. Right?

EA: Mm-hmm.

JK: I think what was really important to Luca, and something we talked about in our early conversations about the movie, was that he used this phrase, “In a love triangle, all the corners should touch.” On one level, I felt like that was already happening. These people’s lives are already so deeply entwined with each other. They’re touching. They’re deep in each other’s stuff. But I quickly realized that he meant literally. There should be a time when it happens literally.

The question for me as the writer became, how can I make that happen organically, make it feel like it’s earned, and make it feel like it belongs in the story and it always belonged there? It enriches everything that happens after it, but it doesn’t completely alter the course of the movie or the structure of the movie, because we all felt good about that. You know?

EA: Absolutely.

JK: So that was a real challenge, and it was something that I couldn’t have done without having a lot of conversations with Luca about it. Ultimately, when I finally went and wrote the scene that ended up in the movie, it became one of my favorite scenes. Now, when I watch the movie, that’s the one I’m most excited for is watching that scene, which is almost entirely because of the insane work that Luca is doing in that scene and the insane work that those actors are doing in that scene. It’s a real showcase for what makes all of them so rightfully praised. So that’s kind of a journey of that. Honestly, I’m very grateful to Luca for pushing me to write that, because it allowed me to sort of find a pocket in the movie that wasn’t there, but now feels like it always was.

EA: I think that’s exactly what happens, because it’s filtered throughout the story, and again, the non-linear nature of it really just kind of keeps adding to that. You’re right, the trio of Zendaya, Mike [Faist] and Josh [O’Connor] that you have here are as perfect as possible for these roles.

JK: Yeah, they’re incredible.

EA: They’re amazing. I go back to a few bits of dialogue like Tashi saying, “I’m not a homewrecker,” talking to those two. Is there sort of a Machiavellian nature with her where she’s very intentionally pitting them against each other? Was that sort of an origin?

JK: I mean, it’s interesting. I think one of the things that surprised me about the movie as I was writing it was that a lot of the time you think about these characters as being sort of cruel or manipulative towards each other. But when you actually look at their motivations, it’s often the case that they’re trying to be kind to each other. They’re doing something that seems vicious because they know it’s what’s best for the other person. The other person might not be ready to hear that, but they know it’s what’s best. Maybe they’re wrong, but that’s where they’re coming from.

I think it’s never quite that simple. I don’t think anybody is a evil or manipulative person in the movie. I think they’re all as petty and cruel and kind and caring and generous and selfish as the people you meet in real life, and that’s what you’re trying to do when you’re writing people. That’s what I hope comes across.

EA: What are some of the best and worst tennis puns that you’ve seen so far about the film?

JK: I try not to read that much about the film. I’m sure there’s lots of stuff with “love” in it. Anytime someone uses a tennis pun to say the movie’s good, I’m happy about it. I’m thrilled. Bring it on.

EA: I think my favorite thing I’ve seen so far was at the London premiere, and someone asked Josh O’Connor for a serve, so he did a tennis racket serve from the movie, and then Zendaya was asked, and she posed and served a look, and that was perfect.

JK: (laughs) Well, everything you need to know about the two of them is right there. Yeah.

EA: Exactly right. The relationship with you and Luca obviously is a great one, because you now have Queer [based on the novel by William S. Burroughs] coming up later this year with him. I’m thrilled to see that and to see this relationship continue.

JK: Yeah, no, I was so honored and touched that he would trust me with that book. It’s a movie he’s been wanting to make for a long time. It was a no-brainer for me. When somebody like Luca asks you to adapt this legendary book by a legendary author, you do it. I can’t say much other than Daniel Craig and Drew Starkey are absolutely fantastic in it. I can’t wait for us to share it with the world.

EA: You mentioned your own novel earlier, Famous People. Do you think there is any future for that as a film?

JK: I don’t know. Yeah, I don’t know.

EA: I hope so.

JK: That’s nice of you to say. Thank you.

EA: I was fan casting and thinking about it earlier…

JK: Oh, man. Cool. Thank you so much. That’s so sweet.

EA: I’m going to close with asking, between Tashi, Art and Patrick, who could handle your strongest potions?

JK: (laughs) Oh my God. Tashi. Tashi.

EA: I think that is correct. Congrats again on the film.

JK: I think that’s the only answer. Thanks so much. It means a lot. Peace.

Amazon MGM will release Challengers only in theaters on April 26.