Zendaya breaks down her 'dream girl' dance scene in 'Challengers': 'It's hilarious'

Spoiler alert! We're discussing details about Zendaya's new tennis drama "Challengers" (in theaters now).

No one does a needle drop quite like Luca Guadagnino.

The "Call Me By Your Name" filmmaker is a maestro of wistful and witchy music cues, from Ralph Fiennes grooving to the Rolling Stones in “A Bigger Splash” to Timothée Chalamet rocking out with Kiss in “Bones and All.”

The latest is “Challengers,” which finds Zendaya cutting a rug to Nelly's 2002 chart-topper "Hot in Herre." The dance-floor scorcher is the soundtrack for a key early sequence, which is set in 2006 as young tennis prodigy Tashi Duncan (Zendaya) sways and twirls with abandon at an outdoor party. Her moves hypnotize Patrick (Josh O'Connor) and Art (Mike Faist), best pals who swiftly become athletic and romantic rivals under her spell.

Zendaya and Guadagnino break down how the characters' magic meeting came together:

'Challengers' director Luca Guadagnino wanted Tashi Duncan 'to look like a goddess'

For Guadagnino, that scene "is very layered,” he says. “Tashi just won the U.S. Junior Open; she has a deal with Adidas; she comes from a very simple background. These two boys are coming from high, high ground – they’re used to being champions. So we needed to show all of that: We needed to show that Tashi Duncan is a girl of huge potential and great determination, but she’s also green to this world of stardom.”

They began by talking about what Tashi would look like, and costume designer Jonathan Anderson landed on a simple strapless blue minidress for her to wear. Cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom also took an unfussy approach to shooting it: One camera zooms in on an infatuated Art and Patrick, while another pushes in on a euphoric Tashi.

"We wanted her to look like a goddess, not knowing she is a goddess,” Guadagnino says. “We wanted her to encompass an irresistible, ungraspable beauty and power."

Filming the scene, "he was like, ‘I’m pushing into you.’ It’s the dream girl push-in,” Zendaya recalls with a laugh. “He was like, ‘Just take your time and dance with yourself,' so that’s what I tried to do.”

Zendaya initially danced to a very different song than Nelly's 'Hot in Herre'

While Zendaya shot the sequence, David Bowie's thumping 1987 anthem "Time Will Crawl" was actually the song playing on the set.

"It's hilarious," Zendaya says, not knowing the song would be changed in post-production. "It would’ve been a different style of dance, let’s just say that.”

Guadagnino says he worked extensively with the movie's editor, Marco Costa, "on finding the right piece of music. It took us a while and we tried many things," including "Time Will Crawl," which now plays later in the sequence. "Eventually, it must’ve been my partner – who’s a bit younger than me – who said to use ‘Hot in Herre,’ because that’s what that generation clicked with.”

On the day of the shoot, "Zendaya was amazing: the way she was dancing and interacting with the people around her," the director adds. "It’s very grounded.”

Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross' score is sexy with 'many x's and many y's'

In addition to Nelly and Bowie, "Challengers" features memorable tunes by Bruce Springsteen and Blu Cantrell (not to mention Rihanna and Nelly Furtado, whose pulsing pop hits are heard in the film's trailers).

But the real star of the show is the exhilarating electronic score by Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, whose singular compositions for "The Social Network" and "Soul" have earned them Oscars.

“I told them, ‘This movie must play as a rave party and you have to compose a full-blown house music score,’ ” Guadagnino says. “And it has to be sexy, with many x’s and many y’s. Then we were finessing the nuances: More homoeroticism! More femininity! More drama! We had a lot of fun and they were just brilliant. Those two are just masters.”

Guadagnino also reached a personal milestone with closing track "Compress/Repress," performed by Reznor and his wife, vocalist Mariqueen Maandig: “We ended up putting a song at the end that (Reznor and Ross) wrote, for which I proposed lyrics,” he says. “So now I wrote my first song!”