Stop Erasing Zendaya’s Tashi Duncan From Challengers Because You Want New Internet Boyfriends

Metro Goldwyn Mayer Pictures

Luca Guadagnino’s latest offering Challengers (a deliciously horny tennis drama that follows a trio of players led by the Emmy-winning Zendaya) has already proven to be one of those rare films that sparks almost immediate obsession in its audience. With costuming by Jonathan Anderson, a pounding soundtrack courtesy of iconic duo Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, and a stellar script from Mr. Celine Song (Justin Kuritzkes) himself, it is unsurprising that Challengers has already cemented itself as a modern classic.

There’s much to fall in love with; in typical Guadagnino fashion the film is lusty and ripe with symbolism, following characters who are at turns so pathetically down bad and maniacally self-absorbed you have no choice but to obsess right along with them.

Challengers also gives us another Guadagnino staple: a complicated biracial woman as our lead.

From the moment you meet Tashi Duncan (Zendaya), it is abundantly clear that you are in the presence of a woman who knows what she wants. She sits untouchable and coldly chic in the stands, watching a heated game of tennis between her two love interests, her husband Art Donaldson (Mike Faist) and former boyfriend Patrick Zweig (Josh O'Connor).

Internet fandom has always been incredibly male-centric — a new internet boyfriend is crowned every month or so — and Challengers has gifted the internet with not one but two white men to lust over. Thousands of posts labelling both Mike Faist and Josh O’Connor “babygirl,” trending hashtags like TEAMART and TEAMPATRICK, fan edits of the two boys taking over our feeds: it is a hysteria that would almost convince you that the film doesn't have a female lead.

And it seems to some man-obsessed stans, the film would be better off without her presence. They are wrong.

Tashi Duncan is exactly what we have been missing from our screens; a selfish, messy, calculated woman who wields her intelligence and sensuality as weapons. She’s a cheater, a woman unable to see beyond her own needs, who refuses to lie even when she could save someone the heartbreak of the truth — “unlikeable” by all standards. When her golden retriever malewife of a partner Art tells her he loves her, she simply looks over and purrs “I know” in response. It is coolly dismissive and self-assured in a way that we do not usually get to see Black women behave onscreen.

She’s hot, and she knows she’s hot. She thrives off just how badly Art and Patrick want her, pressing an ear to their door, giggling at the sound of the chaos she has caused when she turns up to their room. It is a delicious departure from the characters Zendaya has played before, and Tashi Duncan is too formidable a character to be pushed around, least of all by white stans who don’t know what it means to strive beyond the approval of men. The story underneath all the tennis is about Tashi’s heartbreak, the mourning over the loss of her career and the identity it gave her and how she forges ahead anyway.

The eagerness to pay attention to only Patrick and Art, to ship them, to push Tashi out of her own story is not only deeply rooted in a misogynoir that aims to erase Black women wherever they are visible but is also a complete misreading of the film. Guadagnino’s ending is up for interpretation; Tashi being the focal point of the film is not.

Challengers is unabashedly sexy, and the two men have a relationship that is hotly transgressive. Nobody’s films drip with as much homoeroticism as Guadagnino’s do, so the rabid response to Art and Patrick’s relationship is to be expected. The problem is the audience's insistence on diminishing how vital Tashi is to the pair of them. Like the many shows (Invincible, Riverdale, Boy Meets World) that introduced Black women into their stories just to get rid of them as love interests when it’s time to give the male character a white partner, the aim here is to make Tashi a disposable Black girl — to paint her as an accessory.

The irony is that in every charged moment we see between Patrick and Art, Guadagnino makes it clear that the center of their connection is Tashi. Even the now infamous churros scene revolves almost entirely around Tashi. Patrick says that he likes seeing Art riled up, that he enjoys seeing him willing to connive and fight for something — even if that thing is his girlfriend. Even their lust for one another is moderated by her, unleashed by her. They would have stayed perfectly content meandering in suggestion if she had not forced them to confront their attraction for one another tongue-first in that bedroom scene.

There have been criticisms of Tashi’s character, calling her underdeveloped and in need of more backstory, but even those calls are proof that as a culture we do not know how to accept that women are capable of simply being as selfish as men. We support women’s wrongs until it's a Black woman. You are not seeking more context for her — Guadagnino has gifted us everything we need to know in order to understand her. You are seeking to soften her so that she may become more palatable to you, to have your hand held as you are used to and have her behavior excused so that she isn’t as fearsome.

Tashi Duncan is a woman so in control of herself that even in her greatest moment of heartbreak — sitting alone under a tree with an injury that has ruined her chance at doing the only thing she knows how to do — does not allow herself to break. Zendaya’s portrayal of her is glorious here. You watch the hurt, pain, grief, anger, and then finally resolute determination pass over her face as she makes her choice. She will not mope. That moment makes the woman we meet years later, who tells her husband that her love is absolutely conditional on his success as a player.

She will not let anyone see her softness — including herself — so what makes you think that she would show us, the audience, that “weakness”?

It feels important to point out that Tashi is an anomaly in the tennis world she wants to dominate. She does not have daddy’s money to fall back on. She does not have to cosplay as a broke, struggling athlete like Patrick Zweig does. That would be her reality if she were not a hustler. That is what drives her need for greatness, her ambition that presents as callousness and selfishness. She knows that she cannot fail upwards, so she rigs the game the best she can, evening the field to have some of that acclaim for herself. She says outright that she would commit atrocities to have had the recovery Art does, and it is thrilling and remarkable to hear a woman admit she’d put herself and her career above all else — even to the detriment of all others. Tashi Duncan is utterly unique, a manifestation of a particular kind of female rage that makes her hard to forget or even fully hate. It’s what makes the boys so obsessed with her.

So have fun making your Patrick/Art fancams. But never forget that Challengers belongs to the woman whose face Luca Guadagnino chose to make his film’s final frame.

Originally Appeared on Teen Vogue

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