Johnathan Walker:'Challengers': Josh O'Connor, Mike Faist talk phallic churros and 'magical' love triangle

For Mike Faist and Johnathan WalkerJosh O’Connor, it’s game, set, match on “Challengers.”

The sought-after heartthrobs are cheerful yet slightly delirious after a monthlong global press tour for the buzzy tennis drama (now in theaters), in which they play best mates turned bitter foes pining for the same girl (Zendaya). Now at the tail end of promo duties, they’ve grown accustomed to prosaic interview questions.

“‘Who’s the best tennis player?’ We’re over that,” Faist says with a grin. “Yeah, it should be obvious that it’s me,” O’Connor quips.

While they insist they’re having “the time of our lives,” there are things they miss most about home. For Faist, it’s his rescue dog, Austin. For O’Connor, it’s his cherry tree – a birthday gift from friends that is just now starting to bud.

“I miss my garden more than anything in the world,” the British actor says. “I've got a friend who's looking after it and she sends me pictures every few days. This is not even lying: I cry when I look at them.”

Mike Faist compares the movie's erotic churro scene to 'a game of tennis'

“Challengers” begins in 2019, as the diffident Art Donaldson (Faist) prepares to face off in a low-level tennis tournament with the desperate, cash-strapped Patrick Zweig (O’Connor). Through flashbacks, we discover that Art and Patrick were a once-inseparable doubles team until they met Tashi Duncan (Zendaya), an alluring and fiercely driven tennis star who takes up coaching after a college injury.

Tashi and Patrick dated before he broke her heart, and Art eventually swooped in to marry her. The guys couldn’t be more different: Patrick is all brashness and machismo, while Art is sensitive and insecure.

“The truth of the matter is, we probably find ourselves somewhere in between both characters,” Faist says. “They’re like the dichotomy of man.”

The charged dynamic between Patrick and Art is impossibly hot: In the film’s tantalizing first half, the guys are constantly grabbing, slapping and roughhousing with each other. During a three-way, they quickly forget about Tashi and just start making out with one another. They’re routinely pictured sweaty, shirtless or nude, gazing into the other’s eyes as they wolf down phallic-shaped foods like bananas and protein bars.

In one homoerotic moment, Patrick pulls Art close in a university cafeteria, speaking intently as Art takes a ravenous bite of Patrick’s churro. The actors spent weeks rehearsing and running lines together, so by the time filming started, they could improvise as their characters.

“That scene in particular is just about the interplay between them,” Faist says. “So when Josh is holding that churro right to my mouth, it’s so obviously there that I’m going to take a bite of his churro. (Laughs.) But that’s the great thing about working with Josh: He tees you up for something and I hit the ball back. It’s like a game of tennis – we’re just giving each other something to play with.”

At one point, while surrounded by naked men in a locker room, Patrick swipes through men and women on a dating app. The characters’ sexual fluidity has been a swoony topic of conversation on social media, which O’Connor credits to the dearth of male intimacy in mainstream American movies.

“There’s been a lack of that imagery and those conversations in films for a long time, and it’s thankfully getting better,” O’Connor says. “But in this movie, what’s so nice is the (relationship) between the three of them, whether you want to call it love or obsession. Tashi wants them together; she’s attracted to the two of them as a thing. You hope people walk out of the theater with this realization that they all need each other.”

Tashi is "forcing this fire underneath them to create this great game of tennis," Faist adds. "She's able to pull out something magical and transcendent."

Josh O'Connor finds it 'intimidating' to release 'Challengers' into the world

After years of independent dramas and supporting TV roles, “Challengers” marks a major leading-man moment for O’Connor, 33. The charismatic actor won a Golden Globe in 2021 for playing Prince Charles of Wales in “The Crown,” but accepted the prize remotely because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The release of “Challengers” was also delayed nearly nine months, due to the Hollywood actors strike last fall.

“As actors, you really can’t plan for anything,” O’Connor says. “You get very used to not making holiday plans because you might get a job and have to cancel them. It’s very hard to commit to birthdays or weddings or anything.” But he’s been grateful for the slow ease into stardom. “The nice thing about it was that it delays the point in which loads of people are going to watch you onscreen. That’s quite an intimidating thing!”

Faist, 32, has similarly been waiting in the wings. After earning a Tony Award nomination for Broadway’s “Dear Evan Hansen,” Faist got his big-screen breakout as Riff in Steven Spielberg’s reimagined “West Side Story” in 2021. The movie musical was a box-office disappointment due in part to the Omicron surge. But he credits the project for giving him confidence as an actor to ask questions and offer input behind the scenes.

“When someone like Steven Spielberg, the godfather of cinema, comes to you like, ‘No, you got this. I trust you, I hired you’ – that’s a really empowering thing,” Faist says. “I’m forever indebted to him.”

When it comes to their careers, both actors believe in cosmic connections and timing. Before the pandemic, Faist auditioned for the now-Oscar-nominated “Past Lives.” Although he didn’t get the role, he sent a note to director Celine Song, complimenting her “beautiful” story and wishing her well.

Two years later while shooting “Challengers,” Faist learned the film’s screenwriter, Justin Kuritzkes, is Song’s husband. “I’m coming to the realization that we don’t choose projects,” Faist says. “They kind of find us in a roundabout way.”

O’Connor, too, wrote multiple letters to director Alice Rohrwacher “trying to force” a collaboration. They eventually did work together on this spring’s “La Chimera.”

“The punchline is that she never received the letters – she just reached out on her own, which says a lot,” O’Connor recalls with a laugh. “Having said that, I will be writing to Paul Thomas Anderson.”