CINEMA
How did they film Zendaya breaking her leg in ‘Challengers’?
The production team behind ‘Challengers’ invented a curious device to recreate the sports injury suffered by the main character played by Zendaya.
Hiring Zendaya is expensive business these days, and the task gets even more complicated if one of the scenes requires her character to break her leg in the middle of a tennis match. That was the challenge faced by the production team of Luca Guadagnino’s new psychological thriller Challengers (2024), who designed and built an ingenious device to simulate the injury in real life without the need for the actress or a body double.
Tashi’s knee injury
The photo below illustrates how it was done. The team made a fully-working, mechanical mannequin replica of Zendaya’s lower torso which could be programmed to perform the dangerous movement. It has not been revealed whether they used a mold of the actress (although it’s highly possible) or the made the mannequin after taking measurements of her legs and torso. The image on its own and without context appears a little scary - like a cyborg being attacked by tweezers...
‘Challengers’ convinces critics
The film premiered on 26 April to positive reception. At the box office it collected $15 million dollars from 3,477 locations in its first weekend, and currently stands at $19 million dollars but it still has a long way to go before it starts to make a profit. Its budget is estimated to be at least $55 million. On metrics sites such as Rotten Tomatoes, it has an 89% rating among professionals after raking in 269 reviews.
‘Challengers’ tells the story of a complex love triangle that pits two close friends against the love of their life over the years (played by Josh O’Connor and Mike Faist). Zendaya plays Tashi Duncan, a promising tennis player who, in the midst of her meteoric rise, suffers a career-ending injury that leads her to premature retirement. But her passion for the sport encourages her to become the coach of one of her friends, igniting the fuse of a rivalry that increasingly reaches new levels of tension.
The R-rated ‘Challengers’ also topped box office receipt figures in the United Kingdom and Ireland, bringing in £1.6 million ($2 million) in its first weekend, according to Comscore. The film has generated just under $30 million worldwide.