It’s a deceptively warm April day in New York, and O’Connor, looking more radiant than anyone who’d woken up before dawn would, is hunched over his phone to share with us the music he’s listening to these days . This is where he came up with the idea of “fucking off“, the central text of Fuck Off World by Irish blues singer Mick Flannery: “Fuck off world / Fuck off politics / I’m going in the woods with a stick / I’m going by the stream just to sit“. Other pieces O’Connor has lined up for the day include South African cellist Abel Selaocoe and the Taiwanese eight-part harmonies of David Darling & The Wulu Bunun. “This stuff is crazy,” O’Connor says as he scrolls through his favorites in a long playlist. But it is Flannery’s Walden-like lament of a world in which capitalism and social media are silenced by the serenity of nature that enchants and entertains him, especially because it represents the exact opposite of his current life. «I was listening to it when I was in Sydney for the press tour and I thought: “Wahhh!”, he jokes, with fake sobs that shake his shoulders up and down. “‘I just want to go into the woods with a stick!'”
While the impulse is understandable, it is entirely antithetical to the promotion of a great film featuring three talents of the latest generation, a critically acclaimed director and a ménage à trois erotic with a tennis background. O’Connor stars, along with Mike Faist and Zendaya, in Challengers, directed by Luca Guadagnino, a breakneck drama about three professional tennis players involved in a love triangle that spans years and careers. Former tennis star Tashi Duncan (Zendaya) is coaching her husband Art Donaldson (Faist) in her dream career, which she ended due to an untimely injury. But when former friend and campmate Patrick Zweig (O’Connor) gets in their way, a power struggle erupts that threatens to throw their entire lives into turmoil. Justin Kuritzkes’ screenplay fluctuates across time and point of view, turning every personal interaction into a gripping tennis match with the help of a pulsating, bass-heavy score by Atticus Ross and Trent Reznor. It’s a real joy for viewers, and a project that has led to O’Connor having to embark, by contract, on a massive promotional tour that has visited a dozen metropolises around the world. O’Connor knows that part of acting is promoting your work. He just doesn’t think he’s very good at it.
Mike Faist, Zendaya and Josh O’Connor in Luca Guadagnino’s ‘Challengers’. Photo: Warner Bros.
«’Monotonous’ seems rude, but there is something monotonous, especially in press conferences. In the era of “content”, everyone needs answers to questions like: “Who is the best at tennis?”, “Who is this character inspired by?”», he says, quickly snapping his fingers (just one of the gestures that become a constant in our conversation: a hand reaching to the back of his head as he mulls over a question; an anxious tap in the ear when he fears being rude; a shrug when excitement lights up his eyes). “So it gets a little tiring, although I understand why it works the way it does. I don’t know if I’m able to express in a concise way, with a caption or a quick image, what journalists want.”
As O’Connor struggles to summarize his work and career in a nutshell, we step in to help. The son of a midwife and an English teacher, he grew up in the bucolic county of Gloucestershire, two hours west of London, and was a regular theatergoer, obsessed in particular with Shakespeare. During his time at St Edward’s School (another notable former pupil is FKA twigs), he took part in numerous school productions. Another period of training at the Bristol Old Vic Theater School instead led him to auditions which earned him several television jobs, and which meant that O’Connor became what he himself defines as a “bad actor”.
It was his role in the critically acclaimed queer romance God’s Own Country (2017) introduced O’Connor to audiences and film producers, who were suddenly clamoring to see more of him. When O’Connor joined the cast of period drama of Netflix The Crown, where he played a young and insecure Prince Charles, cemented his image as an actor skilled at tenderly portraying both adolescent idealism and a kind of inner rage, coming to occupy a unique place among other leading actors of his generation. Where Austin Butler brings the intensity of the Method and Barry Keoghan the nastiness, O’Connor imbues all of his characters with an irrepressible boyishness, even when they are grown men. Unconventionally handsome, with blue eyes and protruding ears, he is capable of being vulnerable and prickly at the same time, a contrast that fits perfectly with a sad antihero like Carlo. In Challengershowever, throws that modesty out the window.
“Patrick may be in some ways the most difficult challenge I’ve faced,” O’Connor observes, “because his qualities are characteristics that I don’t necessarily recognize in myself: his nature is bombastic and direct. Seen from the outside, he is so sure of himself and so comfortable with himself that at first I almost couldn’t understand it.” O’Connor credited Guadagnino with bringing him out of his shell, as did the costume designer of Challengers Jonathan Anderson (who is also the creative director of the Loewe fashion house). «[Jonathan] he made me wear really short shorts,” he says, “and you can’t wear really short shorts and be a little shy. You have to be credible.”
In Challengers, O’Connor’s character is presented as a wild counterpoint to the rigidity of Tashi and Art in their hyper-structured marital ménage. Where Art retreats, Patrick pushes. When Tashi spews insults aimed at hurting him, Patrick smiles and asks for more. When Art gives him a low blow, Patrick congratulates him for being a snake with pride in his eyes. Patrick is both a rival and a teammate.
O’Connor said one of the things that attracted him to the role was the way Art and Patrick’s relationship swings from childish competition to almost sensual, throbbing intimacy. Although viewers tend to leave the film desperately searching for a villain (and O’Connor’s Patrick is an easy target), he prefers them to focus on what is his desire: that all three characters find a way to be together after the credits.
“I don’t know what it would be like,” he comments. «I don’t think they know how to predict what their future will be like. That’s what they’re trying to figure out. There’s something going on between Art and Patrick. Not only are they attracted to each other, but Tashi is attracted to the idea of the two of them together. I also think that, as far as tennis goes, she knows that the best version of Art and Patrick is when they face each other.”
O’Connor’s greatest success in Challengers it lies in the way this kind British boy manages to blend perfectly with the character of an asshole and presumptuous American. For the record, no one in this film holds a position of moral superiority. But while Tashi and Art’s fights seem to revolve around duty versus desire, Patrick inserts himself firmly into the tension, reveling in situations that show him as the bad guy. For O’Connor, that meant a crash course in movement, tennis lessons and how to be a badass, all things he admits he’s not particularly good at. And this is where Guadagnino comes in.
Before the film began shooting in Boston, O’Connor explains, the cast and crew spent a few days together “just training and rehearsing.” O’Connor, new to tennis, was struggling. «One day Luca came to one of our training sessions and saw the way I was playing», he says. «I wasn’t in character, because I was just learning to play, but at the same time I was wrong to “hold on” too much when I didn’t get a point: I was too embarrassed, and only because I didn’t feel good enough. He pulled me aside and said, “Stop it. [Patrick] he never gets embarrassed.” She took me back in every moment of insecurity, doubt, anxiety or fear. She would come to me and put her hand on my back, pull my shoulders down and stick my chest out, abuse me. But it was really helpful.”
Although O’Connor knew that Challengers it would have been a new and not easy experience, the fact that he was shooting it right in the middle of filming another film – the solar The chimera by Alice Rohrwacher – didn’t make things any easier. The chimera follows the lost grave robber Arthur as he searches the Italian hills for both hidden treasures and his missing beloved. The role was written for an older man, but O’Connor, a huge fan of Alice Rohrwacher’s work (there’s an unreceived letter somewhere in their story) convinced the director by auditioning her. O’Connor says it “felt like an act of fate.” And he continues: «I know it sounds ridiculous, but I felt like that role was written for me. He was someone who didn’t know where or how to exist. He was torn between this life and the people he left behind, he was dealing with spirituality and home, friendship and love, and all these unresolved questions. Arthur felt like everything I wanted to explore in myself.”
Josh O’Connor in ‘The Chimera’ by Alice Rohrwacher. Photo: Simona Pampallona
And immediately after transforming into Arthur in the Italian countryside, he had to leave. “I was living in my camper and washing myself in a lake in Italy, and then, a week later, I was in this beautiful apartment above the Four Seasons in Boston playing tennis,” O’Connor says, laughing. «I liked the duality of this situation. But it put me to the test.”
The possibility that Challengers could catapult him into even higher stratospheres of stardom has O’Connor now a little worried about the impact this will have on his life. When I ask him how he feels about going on a press tour that will likely end with more people knowing his name than he does, O’Connor sinks completely into his seat.
“It’s a terrible thought,” he observes with an ironic smile. «It’s not a popular thing to say, but as you may have understood, all this doesn’t fill me with enthusiasm. I understand that for an actor, the more well-known you are, the more likely you are to be seen by director X or director Y. If we look at acting as a business, that’s a good thing. But I don’t see acting as a business. So this new space I’m in makes me feel very vulnerable.”
O’Connor will live in that space for the foreseeable future. But after the promotional tour of Challengers, he will have a short break and the chance to stay a while, at his home. Last year he bought a house and moved to the countryside, near where he grew up. He has a garden. He wants a dog. He already has in mind to build a pond together with his brother and fill it with fish and especially frogs. After our chat, he will also have a short break during this day, which he will use to go to the Adidas store to buy sneakers and swimsuits. And then, of course, more interviews. The forest and the stick must wait. At least for now.
From Rolling Stone US
