Naomi Osaka Channels Zendaya in Challengers

Naomi Osaka is executing her best Zendaya impact.

In a online video posted to TikTok on Thursday, Could 2,  the 4-time Grand Slam winner, 26, paid playful homage to Challengers, the strike passionate drama starring Zendaya as a tennis phenom caught in a steamy really like triangle.

“No a single: Me after looking at Challengers,” Osaka captioned her submit, in which she slid on her sunglasses, spun her racket and showed off her provide. For the track record tunes, she selected the tremendous-intensive synth score from the film. 

Just lately, the movie’s screenwriter, Justin Kuritzkes, mentioned that he was encouraged to compose the script immediately after seeing Osaka conquer her idol, Serena Williams, in an upset victory at the 2018 U.S. Open. Osaka was then 20 a long time old — a prodigy just like Zendaya’s character, Tashi Duncan, while Kuritzkes did not foundation Tashi upon Osaka. Her famously riveting match with Williams, nevertheless, was another tale.

“Immediately, this struck me as this intensely cinematic predicament wherever you’re all on your own on your aspect of the court docket and there is this just one other man or woman in this substantial tennis stadium who cares as a great deal about what happens to you as you do, but you just can’t converse to them,” Kuritzkes claimed in a push convention last month, per Company Insider. 

@naomiosaka

😁😂 #challengers #tennistiktok #funnymoments

♬ Challengers [MIXED] (Challengers Soundtrack) – Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross & Boys Noize

The match was an infamously tense a person, with Williams, the fan favorite, arguing with chair umpire Carlos Ramos for offering her 3 code violations. “[Y]ou stole a point from me, you’re a thief, too,” she explained to Ramos. 

Immediately after the game, which Osaka won 6-2, 6-4, the rivals stood next to a single a further though observers in the stands booed the result. Osaka covered her encounter with her visor and cried. Williams hugged Osaka, who explained to the group, “I know that anyone was cheering for [Williams]. I’m sorry it experienced to finish like this. I just want to say thank you for looking at the match.”

It was at that moment, Kuritzkes stated, the tale for Challengers clicked in his intellect. “Well, what if you genuinely needed to chat about a little something? And what if it was anything further than tennis?” he described. “What if it was something that was heading on with the two of you? And what if it associated the individual on the other side of the net? How would you have that dialogue and how could you connect the tension of that circumstance utilizing the instruments that are precise to film?”

The drama in Challengers revolves all-around a pivotal game between former finest friends Patrick Zweig (Josh O’Connor) and Artwork Donaldson (Mike Faist), who’s married to Tashi, his mentor. Adding to the tension, Patrick is the former lover she just can not give up. The movie, directed by Luca Guadagnino, opened No. 1. in theaters last weekend. 

(If Osaka needs to make a different social-media tribute, she could take into consideration wearing the “I Told YA” T-shirt that Zendaya manufactured viral.)