SPOILER ALERT: This article contains details about Challengers.
Luca Guadagnino‘s Challengers opened at the top of the U.S. box office, and one scene from the movie went viral on social media.
The particular scene involves Josh O’Connor’s Patrick and Mike Faist‘s Art eating churros. At this moment in the film, Patrick visits his girlfriend Tashi (Zendaya) at Stanford but first catches up with his best friend Art in a cafeteria, where they bond over the doughy pastry.
“What I will say is…that was my first churro and I hadn’t eaten anything that day,” O’Connor said in an interview with Capital FM. “So I was starving and tasted my first churro – and churros are extraordinary. So I ate my one and then I ate his [pointing to Faist].”
Zendaya then said, “The churro wasn’t scripted, was it? The churro was something that you guys found right, with Luca?”
Faist and O’Connor said the scene “was definitely a Luca thing,” referring to the director.
In a separate interview with USA Today, Faist said the scene was “about the interplay between them,” and there was definitely some improvisation between them.
“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,” Faist said laughing. “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.”
In a deep dive into the scene, Guadagnino told the New York Times that the scene “depicts a moment and evolution in [the duo] friendship that has been diverted because of a third person.”
“What we see is basically, a sort of like, a game of revelry, a sparkling between these two young boys, over Tashi, but at the same time, a jealousy that ignites the relationship. Also, because probably, these two guys are also jealous of one another, not only of Tashi,” the Challengers director said.
Guadagnino notes that throughout the scene, Patrick and Art are in a “constant battle,” and “they are fighting but taking care of one another” at the same time.
“When the sugar goes on the cheek of Patrick, Art takes it off with his hand in a very nice gesture of kindness and very intimate I would say,” Guadagnino added. “But at the same time, they are really like tense. And I think it’s about being jealous of one another but at the same time, wanting one another that we’re trying to play out and that Josh and Mike do in a beautiful way in the sequence.”