Justin Kuritzkes Serves an Ace

With his first movie script for the erotic tennis drama Challengers, he has gone from struggling playwright to in-demand screenwriter.

- Madeline Leung Coleman

THE WRITER JUSTIN KURITZKES became obsessed with pro tennis after watching Naomi Osaka beat Serena Williams at the 2018 U.S. Open in an infamous match fraught with argument. As Williams pleaded her case to the umpire, Kuritzkes realized how cinematic the situation could be: how alone each player was, yet how linked to each other. He started watching tennis all the time, and when he ran out of big matches, he found smaller ones like the Challenger tournaments-low-budget events that could help someone qualify for the highest level of competition. Some of the players there may be among the top 300 in the world, but they're fighting for prize money that won't even cover their expenses. Kuritzkes knew the feeling. At the time, he was a well-regarded playwright who struggled to get anything produced. "Although the stands at a Challenger are mostly empty, the players' emotions are just as if they were at the U.S. Open because they're fighting for their lives. It's the humiliation of being a gladiator and nobody's even there to watch you die," he says. "I connected with that deeply as a theater person. If you asked me if I know the 271st most successful theater actor in America, I probably do. And I guarantee you they're broke."