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April is to TV as November is to movies, with the Emmy eligibility deadline a month away and—hey, wait a second. Didn’t we just do the Emmys? Well, yes, the most recent Emmy Awards ceremony happened in January, but only because the actors’ and writers’ strikes delayed an event that was originally slated to happen in September 2023. Now we’re looking ahead to this September, when a second 2024 ceremony will honor series released between last June and this May. The upshot is that prestige television season is once again upon us.

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The best shows that debuted in April reflect that glut, featuring A-listers like Robert Downey Jr. in Park Chan-wook’s The Sympathizer, Julianne Moore and Nicholas Galitzine in Mary & George, and Lily Gladstone and Riley Keough in Under the Bridge. But it isn’t just the big names that deserve attention. This month’s highlights also include a surprisingly insightful surprise Netflix hit and an intimate dramedy to watch for free on Tubi, both imported from the UK.  

Baby Reindeer (Netflix)

A woman walks into a London bar, crying softly, her eyes on the floor. She claims to be a powerful lawyer, but she also says she can’t afford a cup of tea. So the bartender, intrigued by this suddenly chatty enigma, gives her one on the house. This isn’t the setup for a joke, though the bartender happens to moonlight as a comedian. It’s an encounter that will soon escalate into the woman, Martha (Jessica Gunning), stalking the bartender, Donny (Richard Gadd). Their relationship forms the foundation of Netflix’s Baby Reindeer, a darkly comedic psychological thriller based on Gadd’s real-life ordeal and adapted from his award-winning one-man show.

At first, it seems as though we’re in for a type of TV series that has become far too popular in the streaming era: a true-crime drama, and more specifically one about a regular person who has their life ruined by some kind of monster with a human face. (See also: The Thing About Pam, Dirty John, A Friend of the Family.) In the premiere, Martha is made to look as dumpy and pathetic—and then as unhinged—as possible. I started to despair at the thought of yet another hit show that mined mental illness for cheap horror-comedy thrills. But Baby Reindeer turns out to be a murkier, more insightful, and sadder show than early scenes let on. It’s a Trojan Horse of sorts, drawing in viewers with the promise of schlock, then starting serious conversations, instead, about sexuality, abuse, shame, and how unprocessed trauma can poison even healthy relationships. [Read the full review.]

Big Mood (Tubi)

Tubi isn’t exactly known for high-quality original programming, but its recent foray into licensing British TV is beginning to change that. In March, the FAST platform brought us Boarders, a wonderful teen drama that follows a cohort of Black scholarship students brought in to diversify a posh boarding school. This month it’s joined by Big Mood, a Channel 4 dramedy that casts two great young actresses—Bridgerton and Derry Girls star Nicola Coughlan and It’s a Sin breakout Lydia West—as codependent best friends fumbling their way through their early 30s.

Coughlan’s Maggie is the big personality, a playwright with bipolar disorder who’s prone to go off her medication because she’s convinced it kills her creativity. That makes Eddie (West) the patient, if increasingly frustrated, caretaker, doing her best to support Maggie while struggling to keep the bar her late father left to her open. Big Mood touches on plenty of themes that have been well represented on TV in the past several years, from mental illness to female friendship. But it’s inventive enough to feel fresh, with many laugh-out-loud funny scenes; a standout episode takes Maggie and Eddie to a pagan gathering in the woods. Best of all is the chemistry between Coughlan and West, as two very different women whose bond makes perfect sense.

Mary & George (Starz)

Lest you worry that TV’s streaming-era surplus of original scripted programming is no more, know that April delivered two all-star period dramas about clever, ambitious queer men who scheme their way up the socioeconomic ladder. Netflix’s Patricia Highsmith adaptation Ripley might’ve been the higher-profile of the pair, squandering Andrew Scott’s nuanced lead performance as lethal con man Tom Ripley and gorgeous black-and-white cinematography from Robert Elswit on a series so languid as to be fully enervating. Mary & George, from horny historical fiction hub Starz, makes no pretense of being high art—which makes it a hell of a lot more fun.

The setting is 17th century England, and the eponymous characters, drawn from real life, are a minor aristocrat named Mary Villiers (the great Julianne Moore) and her unfeasibly handsome son George (Red, White & Royal Blue heartthrob Nicholas Galitzine). A cutthroat survivor, Mary has connived her way to a comfortable life and is counting on her precious boy to elevate the family to the highest echelons of power. That means seducing King James I, who brazenly indulges his same-sex desires with a coterie of fiercely competitive young noblemen. George is extremely down for this dangerous game, and his adventures—with Mary exerting pressure and bedding madams in the background—yield seven episodes of delightfully pulpy entertainment.  

See where Mary & George lands in TIME’s list of TV dramas about British royals, ranked by salaciousness.

The Sympathizer (HBO)

When you hear that Hollywood is adapting a book like Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Sympathizer, you worry. Published to raves in 2015, the searing debut novel set in the immediate aftermath of what Americans call the Vietnam War—but that, as Nguyen and the new HBO series both remind us, Vietnamese know as the American War—won a Pulitzer for what the committee described as “a layered immigrant tale told in the wry, confessional voice of a ‘man of two minds’—and two countries.” It’s a psychological thriller, a war story, a political satire, a cri de coeur, and an investigation of identity, sifted through a mesh of framing devices and unfolding largely within the fractured interiority of a man who has yet to discover who he is or what he believes.

How lucky we are, then, that the adaptation was entrusted to Park Chan-wook. The South Korean filmmaker behind international hits including Oldboy, The Handmaiden, and Decision to Leave has spent decades making movies that commingle beauty and ugliness, genre tropes and literary layers, grindhouse depravity and arthouse imagination to profound effect. He also, in 2018, directed a slow-burning BBC-AMC adaptation of the John le Carré spy thriller The Little Drummer Girl. Working alongside co-showrunner Don McKellar (of the underrated Canadian series Sensitive Skin), Park has crafted a vibrant, faithful yet often audacious Sympathizer that matches executive producer Nguyen’s brilliant novel in both ambition and execution. [Read the full review.]

Under the Bridge (Hulu)

There are so many cop shows. So many murder shows. So many shows about innocent dead girls who turn out to be less innocent than they looked. Most are pointless wallows in the suffering of others, real or fictional. A precious few—Twin Peaks, Sharp Objects—transcend the clichés of an overplayed genre through artful storytelling and thematic depth. Hulu’s Under the Bridge doesn’t reach the latter series’ heights. But thoughtful, empathetic writing and excellent performances make it more than just another dead-girl show. [Read the full review.]

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In honor of Zendaya’s new film Challengers, which focuses on the intersecting love lives of three tennis players, we are taking a look at the best love triangles in movie history. The 31 films included on this list span decades, genres, and romantic machinations that may end up convincing you that, when it comes to love, three is a crowd. (There’s even one four-way love square, which is the most tragic romance on this list by far.)

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The greatest love triangles include a martial arts epic in which two men become rivals for a woman’s heart and a Nicholas Sparks-inspired melodrama. John Hughes created an unrequited love triumvirate for the teen set, while basketball becomes the third wheel in Gina Prince-Bythewood’s full length directorial debut. 

From a romantic comedy that casts Julia Roberts as the villain to a pair of Mike Nichols’ films with troubled romances and a notable soundtrack, below are the best love triangles that Hollywood has to offer.

The Notebook (2004)

In the 1940s-set The Notebook, Allie (Rachel McAdams) must choose between her fiancé Lon (James Marsden), a caring and gentle World War II veteran who she helped nurse back to health, or her first love Noah (Ryan Gosling), a hotheaded carpenter who drives her nuts, but forces her outside her comfort zone. What makes the romance, based on the Nicholas Sparks novel of the same name, so compelling is that even those who are happy to see her end up with Noah can’t help but hope that Lon finds his own happily ever after.

Broadcast News (1987)

The blonde-haired blue-eyed Tom (William Hurt) is a born on-air personality, while Aaron (Albert Brooks) is not quite safe (and far too sweaty) for TV. Despite their professional differences, both men are competing for the affections of the same woman: a skilled but sometimes severe news producer, Jane (Holly Hunter). The ending of Broadcast News, which feels rather ahead of its time, shows that there are far more than two choices when it comes to both the news business and matters of the heart.

The Graduate (1967)

The Graduate begins with the seduction of recent college grad Benjamin (Dustin Hoffman) by Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft), the wife of his father’s law partner who is at least 20 years his senior. (In real life, the 35-year-old Bancroft was only six years older than her co-star.) The Mike Nichols comedy is all fun and late night liaisons, until Benjamin finds himself falling for her more age appropriate daughter, Elaine (Katharine Ross), much to Mrs. Robinson’s chagrin. The film’s memorable final shot will leave you wondering whether Benjamin’s wedding interruption was about love or revenge. 

Bridget Jones’s Diary (2001)

In the Pride and Prejudice-inspired Bridget Jones’s Diary, perpetual singleton Bridget Jones (Renée Zellweger) finds herself caught between her womanizing boss, the Mr. Wickham-esque Daniel (Hugh Grant at his absolute smarmiest) and the reindeer jumper-wearing barrister Mark Darcy (Colin Firth), who, as his name suggests, is as hard to read as Jane Austen’s romantic hero (whom the actor once played to much acclaim). It’s only after getting to know each of them better (and trudging through the snow in her tiny knickers) that Bridget realizes, just like Elizabeth Bennet, she is meant to be with Mr. Darcy.

Casablanca (1942)

Casablanca might have the most iconic love triangle in cinematic history. Amid World War II, exiled former American freedom fighter Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart) has built a life for himself in the titular Moroccan city, far away from Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman), the woman who abandoned him years earlier. But when she unwittingly walks into his gin joint with her husband, Czech resistance leader Victor Lazlo (Paul Henreid), looking for a way to escape the Nazis, it’s clear things aren’t quite over between them. Yet Rick knows that the only way to save her is to let her go. They may not have a future together, but they’ll always have Paris—and for him, that has to be enough. 

The Age of Innocence (1993)

Grab all of the tissues, you’re going to need them for the Martin Scorsese-directed Gilded Age weepie based on Edith Wharton’s 1920 novel of the same name. In 1870s New York, Daniel Day Lewis’ chivalrous lawyer Newland Archer is set to marry a respectable woman, the sweet and virtuous May Weiland (Winona Ryder). But he soon finds himself falling in love with May’s cousin, Countess Ellen Olenska (Michelle Pfeiffer), who has been ostracized by the city’s elite following her separation from her husband. Age of Innocence is a beautiful tragedy of manners that questions whether it is better to follow one’s own heart or the rules set by polite society.

The Philadelphia Story (1940)

If you were Katharine Hepburn, who would you rather marry: Cary Grant or Jimmy Stewart? It’s the question at the heart of the classic romantic comedy The Philadelphia Story. Wealthy socialite Tracy Lord (Hepburn) is on the brink of walking down the aisle with fellow aristocrat George Kittredge (John Howard). Their wedding is the talk of the town, which is how her ex-husband, yacht designer-turned-journalist C.K. Dexter Haven (Grant), and his photographer Mike Connor (Stewart), end up at her home to cover the star-studded affair. It’s in the days before saying “I do” that Tracy begins to rethink the choices she’s made to please her family. In the end, Tracy leaves George at the altar for another guy who she believes will give her the life she’s always wanted.

House of Flying Daggers (2004)

House of Flying Daggers is an exhilarating martial arts film about love and betrayal. Set in 859 AD during the dying days of China’s Tang Dynasty, undercover cop Jin (Takeshi Kaneshiro) arrests Mei (Ziya Zhang), a blind dancer whom he suspects of being the daughter of the leader of the underground rebel group that shares the film’s name. With the help of fellow cop Leo (Andy Lau), Jin works to land a confession from Mei, but amid the investigation, both men find themselves falling for her. The Zhang Yimou film ends with the three battling it out to the death in an action sequence for the ages; a poetic end to a love story destined to end tragically. 

Jules and Jim (1962)

The complex love triangle at the center of François Truffaut’s landmark French New Wave film is between two best friends, Jules (Oskar Werner) and Jim (Henri Serre), and the young woman, Catherine (Jeanne Moreau), they both love. Jules and Jim is often credited with creating the manic-pixie-dream-girl trope before we had a term for it. But many, including movie critic Roger Ebert, argue that the film isn’t about Jules and Jim’s quest to win the freewheeling Catherine’s heart. It’s about her long, hard journey into adulthood; a reading that makes the ending of this trilateral romance all the more bittersweet.

The Half of It (2020)

In Netflix’s The Half of It, high school football star Paul Munsky (Daniel Diemer) is crushing on popular girl Aster Flores (Alexxis Lemireso) so he enlists the shy, but shrewd Ellie Chu (Leah Lewis) to write her a love letter for him. The only problem is: Ellie has a thing for Aster, too, in this Cyrano de Bergerac-inspired teen rom-com with a queer twist that’s a welcome addition to the love triangle canon.

Sabrina (1954)

Two wealthy brothers, played by Humphrey Bogart and William Holden, find themselves competing for the same girl: the titular character played by Audrey Hepburn. The two men, who couldn’t be more different, have known Sabrina all their lives; she’s the daughter of their chauffeur. But it isn’t until after she returns from Paris—looking more sophisticated than ever—that they give her a second glance. Now, she must figure out if either one of these guys really loves her for who she is or if she’s just a trophy to be won. 

The Hunger Games (2012)

No offense to the Twihards, but Twilight‘s Bella, Edward, and Jacob have nothing on Katniss and her guys, Peeta and Gale. Throughout The Hunger Games series, Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence) finds herself drawn to fellow tribute Peeta (Josh Hutcherson), who poses as her fake boyfriend in hopes that it will help them survive the death tournament. But their fake romance doesn’t sit well with Katniss’ District 12 bestie Gale (Liam Hemsworth), who secretly harbors feelings for her. No matter what team you’re on, The Hunger Games offers a compelling battle for Katniss’ heart and soul.

The Apartment (1960)

A pencil pusher at an insurance agency (Jack Lemmon) finds himself falling for his office’s sweet elevator operator (Shirley MacLaine). Unfortunately, she’s also the mistress of his two-timing boss (Fred MacMurray) in Billy Wilder’s heartfelt comedy about the struggle to find the kind of love one deserves. 

While You Were Sleeping (1995)

The love triangle in While You Were Sleeping is between a man, a woman, and a man in a coma who doesn’t actually know he’s part of this romantic triumvirate. After lonely Chicago transit token collector Lucy (Sandra Bullock) saves her longtime secret crush Peter (Peter Gallagher) from being hit by a train, she is falsely identified as his fiancée. Peter’s estranged family quickly adopts her and she can’t help but fall in love with them. Specifically, Peter’s brother Jack (Bill Pullman), who is at first suspicious of Lucy, but soon finds himself captivated by his brother’s soon-to-be fake wife. Hilarity definitely ensues in this zany rom-com.

Y Tu Mamá También (2001)

Alfonso Cuarón’s Y Tu Mamá También is a sexy hormone-fueled road trip movie set in the Oscar-winning director’s home country of Mexico in which two teenage friends, played by Gael García Bernal and Diego Luna, find themselves falling for their travel companion, a married woman in her late 20s (Maribel Verdú). Possibly at the expense of their lifelong friendship. 

Brooklyn (2015)

Eilis (Saoirse Ronan) is torn throughout Brooklyn. Not just between two countries—her motherland of Ireland, or her newly adopted home of New York City—but between the two men who exemplify the best of both those worlds. Soon after moving to Brooklyn, she meets Tony (Emory Cohen), a nice Italian plumber who wants to build a life with her, but when a tragedy forces her to go back home, she finds herself getting close to Jim (Domhnall Gleeson), a fellow Irishman who hopes he can give her a reason to stay. The charming romantic drama based on Irish author Colm Toibin’s 2009 novel of the same name offers a thoughtful look at what it really means to put down roots with someone. 

The Piano (1993)

In Jane Campion’s feminist classic The Piano, talented pianist and mute Ada (Holly Hunter) finds herself at the center of an odd love triangle. Set in the mid-1800s, Scotswoman Ada has been sold into a marriage with Alisdair Stewart (Sam Neill), a New Zealand frontiersman who is aloof to her needs and wants. But when Alisdair’s right-hand man George (Harvey Keitel) enlists Ada to teach him to play piano she is finally able to find pleasure outside of her music. But it may be at her own peril.  

The Dark Knight (2008)

Most superhero movies are action-packed, but light on romance. Not The Dark Knight, which uses its love triangle of Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale), his childhood sweetheart, assistant District Attorney Rachel (Maggie Gyllenhaal), and her new romantic partner, Gotham’s new D.A. Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart) as the Christopher Nolan film’s major turning point. Losing Rachel at the hands of the Joker (Heath Ledger), sends each of these heroic men on diverging paths looking for vengeance. Neither finds salvation, only more destruction. 

The Favourite (2018)

At first glance, the love triangle in Yorgos Lanthimos’ 18th century dark comedy The Favourite appears to be one of pure convenience. Both Lady Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough (Rachel Weisz) and her cousin, Abigail (Emma Stone) are battling for the affections of England’s Queen Anne (Olivia Colman) in hopes of earning power over her court. But as the film goes on, it’s clear that not everyone is faking their lustful feelings for the depressed ruler, which makes the final shot of The Favourite feel even bleaker.

Reality Bites (1994)

Budding filmmaker Lelaina Pierce (Winona Ryder) has a thing for her friend, former convenience store clerk and scruffy grammar savant Troy Dyer (Ethan Hawke). But it isn’t until she takes up with Michael, an executive at an MTV-like network played by the film’s director Ben Stiller, that Troy makes his feelings for her known in the worst way possible. Reality Bites perfectly encapsulates the angst of falling in love with someone you shouldn’t be falling in love with. But to be fair, who would really turn down a chance to get with Ethan Hawke in the ‘90s?

Something’s Gotta Give (2003)

Would you break up with a handsome, attentive younger doctor (played by Keanu Reeves) to be with a charming sexagenarian socialite who previously dated your daughter (Jack Nicholson)? That’s the predicament Diane Keaton’s character, playwright Erica Barry, finds herself in with Nancy Meyers’ mature rom-com that shows you’re never too old to find love.

Your Sister’s Sister (2011)

After the death of his brother, Jack (Mark Duplass) needs a break, so his best friend Iris (Emily Blunt) sends him to her father’s cabin in the woods. It’s there he meets her sister Hannah (Rosemarie DeWitt), who has set up camp there after a breakup. The two make for easy drinking buddies and bedmates. But when Iris arrives with plans to tell Jack that she’s in love with him is when things get really complicated in Lynn Shelton’s tender drama. Like, possibly stealing someone’s sperm kind of complicated. 

Bound (1996)

Three years before they created The Matrix, the Wachowskis made Bound, a lesbian heist movie in which the deadly eternal triangle at the center of it—a violent gangster (Joe Pantoliano), his conniving girlfriend (Jennifer Tilly), and an ex-con (Gina Gershon)—must work together to steal from the mafia. But can these three really be trusted? In this modern edge-of-your-seat noir, all’s fair in love and gang war.

Love & Basketball (2000)

The hoopers at the center of Love & Basketball, Quincy (Omar Epps) and Monica (Sanaa Lathan), fall in and out of love throughout their lives. And while the climax of the sports drama has Monica balling to keep Quincy from marrying another woman, the real love triangle at the center of the movie is between those two and basketball, the shared passion that risks tearing them apart.

Pretty In Pink (1986)

In the John Hughes classic Pretty in Pink, Molly Ringwald plays Andie, a stylish teen from the wrong side of the tracks who falls for classmate Blaine (Andrew McCarthy), a (mostly) goodhearted yuppie who finds himself enamored with her despite the objections of his caddish best friend (James Spader, giving a masterful performance). But Blaine’s not the only guy in love with Andie; her sweet, but awkward bestie Duckie (Jon Cryer) is too shy to tell her how he really feels. (Though lip synching for his life to Otis Redding’s “Try a Little Tenderness” should have been a clear giveaway.) But there’s an awkward truth about this teen love triangle: Andie doesn’t seem as torn between the two as so many in the audience are. #JusticeForDuckie.

Past Lives (2023)

Celine Song’s poignant romance Past Lives spans 24 years, two continents, and two great loves. As a tween growing up in South Korea, Nora (Greta Lee) dreamed of marrying her best friend Hae Sung (Teo Yoo). In reality, she ends up with Arthur (John Magaro), a budding author she meets at a writing retreat in Montauk. Seven years into her marriage, Hae Sung comes to visit her in New York and she finds herself wondering what could have been.

Blood Simple (1984)

The Coen Brothers debut feature is a nasty thriller in which a husband (played by Dan Hedaya) sets out to kill his wife (Frances McDormand in her movie debut) for taking up with another man, who also happens to be his employee (John Getz). Blood Simple is a twisty noir that will keep you guessing on where each of the members of this devilish triangle’s allegiances lie until the very bloody end. 

My Best Friend’s Wedding (1997)

When Jules (Julia Roberts) finds out her best friend Michael (Dermot Mulroney)—with whom she had a longstanding pact that they would get married if they were both single at 28—is engaged to a younger woman (Cameron Diaz), she sets out to win him back by any means necessary. By the end of My Best Friend’s Wedding, you may find yourself asking: is Jules part of a love triangle or just delusional? Casting Roberts as the possible villain makes this one of the genre’s best. 

The Worst Person in the World (2021)

Despite what the Norwegian film’s title might imply, protagonist Julie (Renate Reinsve) is not the worst person in the world. Heck, she’s not even the worst person in this movie. Instead, she is a lost twenty something woman trying to figure out whether she wants to be with a curmudgeonly cartoonist 15 years her senior (Anders Danielsen Lie) or a laidback barista (Herbert Nordrum). Or, maybe, perhaps find a third option that will make her even happier. 

Closer (2004)

It can be hard to look away from the car crash that is Closer’s ever changing love square: Dan (Jude Law) loves Alice (Natalie Portman), but cheats on her with Anna (Julia Roberts), who is married to Larry (Clive Owen), who plans to seduce Alice out of revenge. So why then would you do it? Because there’s something heartbreakingly therapeutic about watching this foursome try to come to terms with their own infidelities in director Mike Nichols’ penultimate film.

Gone With the Wind (1939)

Frankly, you might not give a damn about Gone With the Wind, but the controversial Hollywood classic has one of the most compelling love triangles ever put to screen. Set during the American Civil War, Southern belle Scarlett O’Hara (Vivien Leigh) spends a decade obsessing over Ashley Wilkes (Leslie Howard), the film’s most tragic character, while spurning the advances of Rhett Butler (Clark Gable), a strikingly handsome soldier who is both her knight in shining armor and her greatest antagonist. All of this makes for a tormented love story with an ending that is still as explosive as it was 90 years ago.

Knocking on the front door, it’s already clear that this is one of those dreamy California artist houses, its rich green paint and big windows lighting up a quiet street. Inside there are flowers on the bathroom shelf, music lilting in the background. And the kitchen! A jar of fresh cilantro sprigs on the table. The sea green backsplash, warm wooden cabinets, and the dangling strands of a pothos over the sink. It’s an unfriendly, blustery early-spring day out there in Los Angeles, but everything in here is inviting, most of all its inhabitants: the author and food journalist Rachel Khong and a sweet brown cat she and her husband call Bunny.

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I was warned about this. A mutual friend told me about Khong’s cozy office, stacked high with books; about the persimmon tree outside; about, most of all, what happens in this kitchen: “She’ll woo you with her delicious things.” Tonight, I’m here to talk to Khong about her second novel, Real Americans, while making a dinner she planned for us—mapo tofu with pork and mushrooms, smashed-cucumber salad, and rice.

This marriage of food and fiction is only fitting for a writer whose career has been defined by both. Khong, 38, started in food service then came up in food media, an early staffer at Lucky Peach magazine under celebrity chef David Chang and his partner Chris Ying. After the magazine shuttered in 2017, she founded the Ruby, a co-working space for women and nonbinary creatives in San Francisco, making food and beverage programming a crucial element.

For all these reasons, people who know Khong’s work tend to arrive at her fiction with certain expectations. To some, her 2017 debut novel Goodbye, Vitamin, about a young woman caring for her father after an Alzheimer’s diagnosis, was brimming with food. To others, there wasn’t enough. Real Americans will inspire the same response.

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On its surface—and at its heart—the book has nothing to do with cooking or dining; it’s a multigenerational family saga tracing the lives of a mother, a son, and a grandmother through a history that begins in China during the Cultural Revolution and reaches into the future, though not in that order. Khong layers the lives of her characters to challenge how well we can really know one another. The book asks who gets to be American and calls for deeper compassion. It also, in my experience, could make a reader very hungry.

“There’s not that much food in it, right? I think we can agree on that,” Khong says when I broach the subject. My mind immediately fills with images she conjured on the page: a teenager staring warily into the shell of his first oyster, a man chewing dry chicken. A scene at the fanciest restaurant a 20-something has ever visited, her date sliding the rest of his buttery venison across the table to her. 

We look at each other and laugh. “Oh,” Khong says. “Do you think there’s a lot?”

---

Khong, who was born to ethnically Chinese parents in Malaysia and moved to the U.S. when she was 2, grew up with an “uncomplicated” love of food. Her family ate dinner together every night, usually home-cooked Chinese or Malaysian dishes her mother made. It wasn’t only the food that set an example for Khong: “She’s a joyful cook too—it wasn’t drudgery for her,” she says.

Now, for Khong herself, making dinner at the end of the day is an important ritual. After moving from San Francisco to Los Angeles less than a year ago, for the first time she’s working as a full-time writer without the structure of her previous workplaces. “There’s something uncomfortable about writing something that’s just your own and nobody is expecting it,” she says. “You’re kind of looking around like, Who gave you permission?” To cope with her amorphous new schedule, she started to build up routines to create a sense of accomplishment at the end of the day. Usually, she takes a walk in the morning—the only safe time to avoid baking in the Southern California sun—then writes for two to four hours. The rest of the afternoon seems to disappear, so come dinnertime, there’s comfort in doing something so concrete. “Cooking is always satisfying—there’s nothing like writing 1,000 words and feeling like I need to delete them all,” she says. “You can’t f-ck things up so bad that it’s not edible.” (Well, maybe she can’t.)

Tonight, she puts me to work first peeling ginger, handing over a thin-sided spoon she picked up in Thailand, her favorite tool for the job. She sets a radish-shaped timer, a souvenir from Japan, next to the stove for the rice. Soon, to smash cucumbers, she’ll give me the biggest pestle I’ve ever held—the kind used to make curry paste in Southeast Asia. And later, I’ll watch her as she stands over the pan of sizzling mushrooms and meat with a hand on her hip, stirring in a mix of Chinese and Japanese pastes and seasonings without measuring (Sichuan peppercorns and chili-bean sauce, miso and vinegar, soy sauce). There’s a sense of blending cultures here that feels particular, a porous line between identities that shows up in Real Americans.

There is no shortage of great immigration stories. Khong’s feels real because it comes from a place of authenticity. This is not her family’s story, but the way the characters are searching for belonging, or have found ways to be multiple things at once, rings true—she captures the feeling of floating in the in-between, not firmly tethered to one pole of identity or another but instead looking for a way to feel secure in your own space.

And that title—Real Americans—evokes more questions than any single book could answer. What is American, and what is real? In Khong’s novel, it’s someone far away, someone who has never identified as American, who uses the phrase to describe one of the three main characters. And that character probably would not say it about herself. This is how Khong’s novel pokes holes in the assumptions we make about each other. As soon as you start to understand one of the three protagonists, she moves on to the next, tracing the influence of history, trauma, biology, and life experience on how the characters are understood, or misunderstood, by one another.

Khong describes the space she’s trying to fill—or rather, the space she finds herself in without trying. Her favorite writers are Deborah Levy, Ruth Ozeki, Kazuo Ishiguro—writers who do their own thing, conventions be damned, and this book offers a twist in genre of its own, a turn into the realm of speculative fiction. On a more personal level, Khong felt like there was no one with her point of view writing fiction she could fully relate to when she was growing up. Amy Tan’s work was “unabashedly Chinese” in a way Khong was not. “I felt like I wasn’t anything enough—I wasn’t Chinese enough. I wasn’t Malaysian enough. I definitely wasn’t American enough, even though I felt more American than anything else,” she says. It’s akin to how Lily—the mother in Real Americans, sandwiched between the other two characters—might describe herself.

Khong shied away from writing about Asian American identity in Goodbye, Vitamin—she didn’t feel skilled enough to tackle it in the way she would’ve wanted to. Since then, she has written multiple short stories with Asian characters, finding her way through. “Usually it’s not that the whole story is about Asian American identity. It’s more like this Asian American female character is just going about her day and then is reminded she’s Asian by other people, which is reflective of my own experience,” she says. Lily is a representation of this woman in the Y2K era. Someday, Khong posits, Lily’s story may feel obvious. “As I was writing, I was thinking: How much of this is too basic?” she says. She gives an example, tying her thoughts back, as ever, to food. She references “the smelly-lunch story” and how certain experiences become tropes. “People know that immigrant kids once felt embarrassed by their lunches, and now it’s a cliché. If in 10 years it seems like Lily’s story is dated because nobody could possibly be insecure about these things anymore, that’s fine,” Khong says—then clarifies, “That would be really great.”

---

We’re both hungry by the time dinner is ready. I’m giddy as I help set the table, laying down yellow cloth napkins and heavy ceramic plates. Khong has this device she uses in her writing—food in her world is like the weather, an omen. That dry chicken I remembered before? It was a breakup scene, a mistake in the kitchen portending certain doom. “The food is bad when people aren’t having a good time or something is wrong,” she says.

We’re silent for a moment, chewing. The tofu is soft and savory, Khong’s improvised blend of spicy, salty, and tangy flavors hitting every note. The cucumbers are crisp and garlicky, cooling in contrast. The rice is fluffy and tender, balancing it all out. This food is, in a word, delicious.

PARIS — French media are reporting that police have summoned actor Gérard Depardieu for questioning about allegations made by two women that he sexually assaulted them on movie sets.

Broadcaster BFMTV and the daily Le Parisien both reported that the 75-year-old actor was called in for police questioning in Paris on Monday.

The Paris police, the Paris prosecutor’s office, Depardieu’s lawyers and a lawyer for one of the alleged victims did not immediately respond to Associated Press emails seeking comment.

BFMTV and Le Parisien reported that the police summons relates to accusations of sexual assault filed by two women who accuse him of groping during filming — one in 2014, the other in 2021.

Depardieu has also been accused by more than a dozen other women of harassing, groping or sexually assaulting them. He was handed preliminary rape and sexual assault charges in 2020 following allegations from actor Charlotte Arnould.

Depardieu denies wrongdoing. In an open letter last October, he said: “I have never, ever abused a woman.”

Depardieu was long seen as a national icon in France. He has been a global ambassador for French film and enjoyed international fame with several roles in Hollywood.

Rags-to-riches tales, revenge plots, and plenty of twists—Chinese viewers are loving what they can find in internet “micro-dramas,” the latest big thing in Chinese entertainment of vertically-shot shows posted on social media with episodes that have runtimes of just a few minutes or less.

But Chinese authorities, wary of losing control over messaging, aren’t loving the new medium so much—and are cracking down on the booming micro-drama industry.

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Unlike legacy television productions with longer production schedules and larger budgets—and strict government oversight—the micro-drama industry has risen through the proliferation of low-budget, quickly made mini-shows that often cost only a fraction of the time and money to put in front of viewers, and until recently, were largely unregulated.

Not known for award- or acclaim-worthy scripts or acting but rather for their pure bingeworthiness, micro-dramas tend to lean into familiar tried-and-tested themes, like love affairs, family disputes, and tensions between the rich and poor.

Read More: China’s Solution to Inequality? Cracking Down on Displays of Wealth and Poverty

“They’re not looking for the quality of their drama,” Oscar Zhou, a lecturer at the University of Kent who is researching the topic, tells TIME of micro-drama makers. “It’s a very profit-oriented production model.”

Yet, despite the low production value, the audiences these micro-dramas receive are massive and the financial returns practically immediate. Put out on platforms like Douyin, Bilibili, Kuaishou, and QQ, many micro-dramas require small-dollar subscriptions to follow, and viewers have proven willing to shell out for them. Last year, Kuaishou had around 270 million daily active users watching micro-dramas—over 94 million of them paid users. And a 2023 show launched on WeChat earned some 100 million yuan (around $19 million) in revenue in just eight days.

In just five years, the domestic market size of the micro-drama industry has reached 70% of the scale of China’s century-old film industry, at around 38 billion yuan (around $5 billion) in 2023, according to Chinese financial newspaper Securities Times, and projected to grow to $14 billion by 2027.

These micro-dramas are reaching American viewers, too. ReelShort, a Chinese app that streams them and that was launched in the U.S. in 2022, was at one point in 2023 the top app downloaded on the Apple App Store, surpassing TikTok. On Google’s app store, it has more than 10 million downloads.

But the very intriguing tropes that keep viewers glued to their screens, especially content that highlights negative aspects of family life, are also what keep censors up at night.

Over the course of just over a year, the industry has transformed from one of the most free forms of expression in China to one of the most heavily regulated.

Between the end of 2022 and February 2023, China’s Radio and Television Administration took down some 25,300 shows for their alleged “pornographic” and “vulgar” content, state-run CCTV News reported. And in December 2023, the Communist Party’s Cyberspace Affairs Office issued guidelines on short-video content, barring display of pornographic or violent behavior, incitement of ethnic and regional discrimination, and spread of “wrong views on marriage and love.” Starting June 1, the government will require all micro-dramas to have a license before they can be distributed online.

Many of the platforms also began self-policing to ensure continuity in operations. In recent months, Douyin and Kuaishou have taken down several micro-drama titles for “bad values” and other illegal content. Earlier this month, Douyin announced that it took down six micro-dramas because they “deliberately amplified and exaggerated content such as conflicts between husband and wife, mother-in-law and daughter-in-law.” On the same day, Kuaishou took down four titles and more than 700 related content, echoing some of the reasons from Douyin, adding that the titles were found to be “deviating from the mainstream value orientation of society.”

The Xi Jinping administration has repeatedly promoted the preservation of family values as a way to boost languishing birth rates. Young citizens have cited a multitude of factors as to why they don’t want to marry or have kids, including predominantly economic concerns, but in an October 2023 speech before the All-China Women’s Federation, Xi said: “It is necessary to tell good family tradition stories, guide women to play their unique role in carrying forward the traditional virtues of the Chinese nation, establish good family traditions, and create a new trend of family civilization.”

Read More: China Is Desperate to Boost Its Low Birth Rates. It May Have to Accept the New Normal

To that end, the government seems to recognize the appeal of micro-dramas as a potential tool to harness, not just a problem to constrict. In January, state regulators launched a plan to integrate cultural and tourism promotions into as many as 100 micro-dramas this year, as towns that have been featured in micro-dramas have seen boosts in visitors. “The government won’t just shut down the whole genre, because it could be an opportunity for them to do something more creative,” says Zhou. “Ideological work,” he calls it.

Zhou doesn’t believe the new restrictions will turn off producers of micro-dramas, who are clearly more interested in profit than principle, he says. “This is always a negotiable space,” he says of the Chinese entertainment industry. “If they want to censor the ‘non-conventional family values’ drama, then the production company can find the next corner.”

But viewers are already expressing displeasure over the latest overt example of the CCP’s efforts to transform culture into control.

In response to the April takedown of several titles, one Weibo user commented: “Film and television dramas are part of culture. If you compare culture to a tree and impose too many restrictions on it, it will only grow into a tree with a crooked neck, let alone ‘cultural confidence.’” (Cultural confidence is a CCP slogan that calls on Chinese people to be proud of their culture.)

“The country wants to control your thoughts,” another user commented, while another asked: “Are you afraid that it will affect the marriage rate because it is too realistic?”

“Like consumers everywhere, most mainstream audiences and consumers of media are going to prefer the lowest common denominator, that is, content produced in their native language, reflecting the country and reality in which they live, and readily accessible on their favorite app or streaming platform,” Michael Berry, director of the UCLA Center for Chinese Studies, tells TIME.

But, he adds, complaints about censorship in China aren’t typically allowed either. And, he believes—cynically, he admits—that over time, Chinese audiences will simply “readjust their expectations per what is permissible.”

—Koh Ewe contributed reporting.

Drake almost found himself in legal trouble after he released a Kendrick Lamar diss track titled “Taylor Made Freestyle” with an AI-generated version of Tupac Shakur’s voice earlier this month.

On Thursday, the song, which was originally released on April 19, was scrubbed from Drake’s Instagram page and from his X account. An attorney with Tupac’s estate, Howard King, sent a cease-and-desist letter on Wednesday threatening legal action if the rapper, whose real name is Aubrey Drake Graham, did not take down the track from all public platforms, King said in a statement to Billboard.

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“The Estate is deeply dismayed and disappointed by your unauthorized use of Tupac’s voice and personality,” King’s statement said, in part. 

King called the use of Tupac’s AI-vocals a “flagrant violation of Tupac’s publicity and the estate’s legal rights,” as well as “a blatant abuse of the legacy of one of the greatest hip-hop artists of all time.” He added that it’s not something the estate would have ever given approval for. 

On the song, the AI-Tupac vocals rap: “Kendrick, we need ya, the West Coast savior / Engraving your name in some hip-hop history / If you deal with this viciously / You seem a little nervous about all the publicity.”

The song, which also features AI-generated vocals from Snoop Dogg, had reportedly been streamed more than a million times on different platforms. Snoop seemed to joke about his AI-feature in a video posted to Instagram. “They did what? When? How? Are you sure?” 

“Taylor Made Freestyle” was a second diss track aimed at Kendrick after he seemingly dissed Drake and J.Cole on the song “Like That” with Future, which hit number one on the Billboard Hot 100 Chart late last month. Before that Drake had released “Push Ups” also dissing Kendrick, and last Friday, Drake posted “Taylor Made Freestyle” on Instagram with the caption: “While we wait on you I guess.” The post has since been deleted.

Drake, 37, hasn’t released a statement about the song’s removal.

On Wednesday, President Joe Biden signed a bill that would force TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, to sell the app to a buyer in the United States within nine months or face a nationwide ban. The ban, passed by the House of Representatives on March 13 and the Senate on Wednesday, was folded into a bill that would provide billions of dollars in aid to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan. 

“The path to my desk was a difficult path. It should have been easier, and it should’ve gotten there sooner,” Biden said after signing the bill. “But in the end, we did what America always does; we rose to the moment.”

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In response, ByteDance uploaded a message to Toutiao, a Chinese social media platform, saying the company “has no plans to sell,” and TikTok released a statement on X. “This unconstitutional law is a TikTok ban, and we will challenge it in court,” the statement reads. “We believe the facts and the law are clearly on our side, and we will ultimately prevail.” The statement noted that the ban would “devastate seven million businesses and silence 170 million Americans.”

Our Statement on Enactment of the TikTok Ban:

This unconstitutional law is a TikTok ban, and we will challenge it in court. We believe the facts and the law are clearly on our side, and we will ultimately prevail. The fact is, we have invested billions of dollars to keep U.S.…

— TikTok Policy (@TikTokPolicy) April 24, 2024

Since TikTok became popular in the US in 2020, it’s become a platform where all kinds of creators can quickly build a following and sustain businesses through the app’s revenue-sharing programs, by earning money on live streams, and by taking on brand deals, paid partnerships, and promotions. Outside of creating a space for a nontraditional career path—according to a 2023 Morning Consult report, 57% of Gen Z would be content creators if given the opportunity—TikTok is and always will be a place where people can build a community. If the app is banned in the U.S., TikTok creators say they are worried about losing more than an income stream. The app has been a crucial resource for people to convene to share information, educate others on a wide array of topics, develop their business and brand identity, and fundraise and organize like-minded individuals around different humanitarian issues.

@brennalip

What’s actually going on at Columbia University? An investigative snapshot of the Gaza Solidarity Encampment at Columbia University. #foryou #columbiauniversity #gazasolidarity

♬ original sound – Brenna Lip

While TikTok’s path remains unclear, creators on the app are either laughing their way through a potential ban or trying not to get too anxious about something out of their control. TIME spoke with a few TikTokers, who have used their platforms in a range of ways, to discuss what they are worried about losing and how they plan to move forward.

@pisoiscoy

My message to the Precedent. My message to the people.

♬ original sound – coy piso

Small businesses will feel the effects of a TikTok ban

TikTok has been integral to the reach of many small businesses in the U.S. According to a March 2024 Oxford Economics report, which surveyed 1,050 small business owners and 7,500 TikTok users to learn how they “interact with the app and leverage the economic and social opportunities it provides,” over seven million businesses use TikTok to promote their products. More than half the respondents to the study said TikTok has helped them reach a new audience that they wouldn’t have otherwise been able to tap into, while 45% of those surveyed said a “meaningful portion of their business’ success and/or growth is directly attributable to their TikTok marketing efforts.”

Nadya Okamoto, a TikTok creator with over four million followers and the co-founder of the lifestyle period care brand August, says that TikTok was able to help her business “unlock so much growth.” This is because ads on platforms like Instagram and Facebook are oversaturated and expensive to place, whereas TikTok allowed her company to promote its products organically. “Platforms like TikTok that are very focused on organic brand awareness allow overnight virality and kind of give anybody a chance to build a following to help small businesses,” she says. “TikTok has been especially important when it comes to community building. I’ve found so much community with like other Asian creators, other queer creators, other female founders, and I think it’s because people can do a bit more about storytelling through short video.”

@nadyaokamoto

Reply to @had701 omg @itsaugustco #backstory 🥺 #onmyperiod #periodhealth #periodtips #summerstories #collegelife

♬ come into my arms – november ultra

TikTok is an integral space for marginalized communities to organize

TikTok has over 170 million users in the U.S., and the platform allows for the quick formation of community. “With TikTok, you can start something almost immediately and have support. I think that frightens a lot of our political class because we’re using it to advocate for ourselves against them,” says Imani Barbarin, a disability rights activist with over 696,000 followers on TikTok. “Without TikTok, that community building, that advocacy work would be lost.”

Because of TikTok’s ability to make even the most innocuous videos go viral, the app has become a place where different perspectives and lives can be shared, allowing users to interact with people they might not otherwise encounter. For Barbarin and her community of young activists, TikTok provides an online space in a physical world where it feels like “everybody’s forgotten about us.” Younger disability advocates on the platform are growing up and sharing their experiences in real-time.

“We’re learning more about one another and how to navigate systems that are built without us in mind or, at the very least, to isolate us from society,” Barbarin says. “The reality is that the more we see each other, the more we connect with one another, the more we start to work together to create a future that we all can live in sustainably. That frightens a lot of people in power because they make money off of our desperation and disconnectivity with one another.”

TikTok also provides several avenues for raising and earning money. In November 2023, 28-year-old AR creator Jourdan Johnson raised $14,000 in 10 days with her viral “Filter For Good,” an effect that had creators trace a watermelon across a squiggly line, collecting seeds.

The filter generated money through qualified views via TikTok’s Effect Creator Rewards program. It could only be used once a day, and it started generating money after it had been used over 200,000 times. The effect gained almost instant popularity, and Johnson quickly reached the maximum amount of money the filter could generate through the program in less than two weeks. Johnson, who donated to Doctors Without Borders and bought eSIMs to aid the people of Gaza, says it was a small way she could use her skills to offer help. “We’ve seen how people can organize for different causes and issues that they’re passionate about and believe in,” she says. “It just so happens that the issue now is about the actual platform we’re on.”

@xojourdanlouise

How using this filter can help the people of Gaza 🍉 — @Jourdan 🖤 As an AR creator, I am part of the Effect Creator Rewards program – basically like the creativity fund but for effect creators. This allows me to earn money for each unique video published using my effects*. I have created this FILTER FOR GOOD effect and will be donating the rewards earned to charities providing aid in Gaza. I know many of us don’t know how to help, but it can be as simple as posting a video with this filter! *Effects only can start earning rewards once 200,000 people have posted a video using it, which seems like a lot but it can easily be achieved! Please comments, save, and share to boost and encourage everyone to use this filter 🍉 #newfilter #effecthouse #watermelon #free #blackgirlsintech #augmentedreality #socialchange #filterforgood

♬ Redbone (feat. The Notorious B.I.G. & 2Pac) – $TURCK

Grassroots organizers have found success on TikTok, too, forming a new generation of activists. Gen Z for Change, which has been on the app since Oct. 2020, organizes young voters and focuses on issues ranging from climate justice, gun safety, worker and economic rights, and rights for marginalized communities. The group’s TikTok following has grown to over 1.8 million since launching in 2020, as they continue to educate followers on political issues concerning Gen Z.

“The Gen Z for Change audience has evolved with the page itself,” says Anthony Guevara, who is the head of engagement and Gen-Z Por El Cambio Coordinator. The latter is an initiative aimed at Latino Gen Z and provides resources like combatting misinformation and educating young Latinos on things like early voting and higher education. “People who have been following the page since 2020 have seen the progress the page has made and still has to do.”

@genzxelcambio

Welcome to Gen-Z por El Cambio, your new hub for Latine/Hispanic content by Gen-Z creators! Tag your friends and let us know any creators who you’d like to see on the channel🇭🇳🇸🇻🇲🇽🇳🇮🇧🇿🇬🇹🇨🇷🇵🇦🇨🇺🇭🇹🇵🇷🇩🇴🇪🇨🇨🇴🇻🇪🇧🇷🇺🇾🇦🇷🇵🇾🇨🇱🇧🇴🇵🇪🇬🇶 #latino #hispanic #latina #genzforchange

♬ Shakira: Bzrp Music Sessions, Vol. 53 – Bizarrap & Shakira

He says this sort of growth would not really happen on a platform like X or Instagram because multiple polls have shown that Gen Z uses TikTok as their main source for news.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Gen-Z for Change (@genzforchange)

However, the Gen Z for Change team still relies on other social platforms like Instagram to get the word out about different initiatives. The coalition recently launched a tool that sends daily emails to representatives using Apple Shortcuts, calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. After downloading the tool on Shortcuts, users are prompted to enter their congressional district, and it automatically sends daily emails to representatives who have not signed the ceasefire resolution in the House of Representatives. The tool has been used about 10 million times—meaning between 25 and 30 million emails have been sent to representatives, according to Sofia Ongele, the director of strategy at Gen Z for Change.

@sewpheeyuh

maybe its actually them who think we just fell out of a coconut tree #🍉🍉🍉

♬ original sound – sofia!! 🍉

But without TikTok, they stand to lose a digital space for community and connecting with like-minded individuals across the globe. The United States is giving ByteDance at least nine months to sell to a buyer stateside, if not then the app will be banned. It’s unclear exactly how that will happen, but a total ban on TikTok is proving difficult, with the U.S. government facing many challenges to enforce it. There will be legal battles, issues with antitrust enforcers, and public dissension. If the ban does happen, the app won’t disappear from people’s phones—but it will disappear from the app store. This means the platform would not be able to update the app, nor would they be able to keep it up to date, and it would slowly become unusable. Lawmakers on both sides have cited national security concerns as the biggest reason for supporting the ban.

@sewpheeyuh

all im gonna say on this i think the mccarthyism is going incredibly crazy rn and we should know exactly why! hint: 🍉 #keeptiktok

♬ original sound – sofia!! 🍉

But, Ongele says that this ban feels like “a performative bandage on a larger issue, which is the lack of regulation on social media.” She continues, “I don’t think that banning an app that many people have used to raise funds for each other, bring awareness to different issues, and hold people accountable after instances of police brutality can even be argued as remotely an action that is being taken to care for the greater needs of the people.”

There’s no denying that 2024 has already been booked and busy for Zendaya. Since the year started, the Euphoria star has dominated the box office with her blockbuster sequel Dune: Part Two, nabbed not one, but two Vogue covers (the American and British editions), and been tapped to co-chair the annual (and very exclusive) Met Gala. This week, her latest and much anticipated film, Challengers, releases in theaters, putting Zendaya squarely in the spotlight as Tashi Duncan, a powerful tennis competitor at the center of a steamy love triangle.

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Zendaya’s many projects have translated into a plethora of red-carpet appearances and press calls, which, in turn, have resulted in a wealth of high-fashion serves from the actor and her longtime collaborator and “image architect,” Law Roach. While Zendaya, a veritable style superstar, could always be counted on for a bold, experimental, and show-stopping sartorial moment, her current looks have elevated to an art the practice of dressing up for the press tour .

In Zendaya and Roach’s capable hands, the themes of her movies cleverly translate into clothing, whether that’s a futuristic silver glambot suit sourced from the Mugler archives for the London premiere of Dune: Part Two or a subversively preppy Thom Browne gown that riffs on tennis whites for the London premiere of Challengers. Her fashion choices feel less like promotion than they do an extension of her work as an artist, with clothes as her medium, which might explain why this year, watching her press tour has been almost as much fun as heading to theaters to watch her movies.

With that in mind, we’ve rounded up all of Zendaya’s best looks from the red carpet so far in 2024.

For the Mexico City premiere of Dune: Part Two, Zendaya wore a dramatic Torishéju gown.

Zendaya went for gold in a custom two-piece set from Louis Vuitton for the Paris premiere of Dune: Part Two.

Zendaya stunned at the London premiere of Dune: Part Two when she showed up in a vintage Mugler ensemble fit for a glambot.

For the Seoul premiere of Dune: Part Two, Zendaya wore a vintage Givenchy suit designed by Alexander McQueen during his time as their creative director. The gray ensemble had glow-in-the dark embellishments.

Zendaya wore a futuristic white Stéphane Rolland gown with dramatic cutouts and gold embellishment on the hem to the New York City premiere of Dune: Part Two.

For the 2024 ESSENCE Black Women in Hollwood Awards, Zendaya wore an embroidered corset top, jeans, and a stacked choker necklace, all from Jean Paul Gaultier.

For the 2024 Oscars, Zendaya wore a pink and gunmetal embellished Armani Privé gown.

Zendaya sparkled in a custom Loewe gown that paid homage to Challengers; Loewe’s creative director, Jonathan Anderson, was the costume designer on the film.

For a press call in Paris, Zendaya took a mod approach, selecting a vintage checkered Marc Jacobs coat dress and accessorizing with white pumps and a headband.

For the Paris Challengers premiere, Zendaya donned a diaphanous custom white Louis Vuitton gown with a matching belt.

Zendaya made a cheeky showing at a London press call when she arrived in an archival Vivienne Westwood striped vest and matching mini skirt with a feather bustle.

For a press call in Rome, Zendaya wore a sparkling tennis-inspired mini dress and a pair of tennis ball-embellished pumps, both of which were custom Loewe.

Zendaya made the case for quiet luxury with her elegant Brunello Cucinelli sweater and matching maxi skirt a press call in Monte Carlo.

For an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live! in Los Angeles, Zendaya styled a vintage gray Ralph Lauren double breasted blazer as a mini dress and completed the look with a pair of white pumps.

Zendaya put a subversive twist on the concept of tennis whites with a custom Thom Browne gown with mesh inserts and tennis racquet embroidery. She accessorized the look with a pair of white pumps and an oversized hairbow.

For a press call in Milan, Zendaya wore a minimalist vintage Ralph Lauren white mini dress that was previously modeled by Cindy Crawford in 1992.

Zendaya departed from her tennis-inspired looks on the Challengers press tour for the Los Angeles premiere, where she wore a romantic lace-embellished black and pink Vera Wang gown.

She quickly switched gears again to serve a truly tennis-inspired look for Challengers‘ Los Angeles premiere after-party in a dramatic lime green Celia Kritharioti halter dress with a plunging neckline and tennis ball embellishment.

For a press call in Los Angeles, Zendaya wore a ladylike yet daring (and midriff-baring) baby pink dress from Jacquemus, accessorizing it with a pair of matching sling back pumps and a pink bow headband.

Zendaya continued her streak of tennis-ball green outfits with a vintage Mugler skirt suit and matching pumps for a visit to Good Morning America.

For her actual appearance on Good Morning America, Zendaya channeled Old Hollywood with a bespoke floral gown with a full tulle skirt by Erdem, pairing it with a pair of white pumps.

The strapping grandeur of Myron’s Discobolus notwithstanding, it’s weirdly taboo to acknowledge the sensual appeal of athletes. Somehow we’re not supposed to notice the sassy-tight buns of football players in their tiny stretch pants, or the easy bedroom drawl of a basketball player’s limbs. The message seems to be, Sports are serious business! Leave the ogling out of it.

But Luca Guadagnino is here with a benediction in the form of Challengers, a movie that urges us to ogle and sigh and laugh to our heart’s content. There are three major players in this love-triangle fantasia that’s partly about tennis but even more about love and obsession, with dashes of Les Liaisons Dangereuses tossed in. First there’s Mike Faist’s tennis pro and almost-champ Art Donaldson, a guy on a losing streak, his confidence leaking away by the minute. Then there’s Art’s wife, Zendaya’s Tashi Donaldson, a driven young woman who’d been headed for pro glory before a serious injury sidelined her for good; now she lives vicariously as Art’s coach. And last but hardly least is Josh O’Connor’s Patrick Zweig, a onetime tennis hopeful who’s gone to seed. He also happens to be Art’s former best friend, and Tashi’s ex-boyfriend, and there’s some part of his brain that can’t let either of them go.

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How does Guadagnino map the relationship between these three, and how does he bring their story to a satisfying, leap-of-joy close? His mode of storytelling doesn’t resemble anything you’d call a straight line; even calling it nonlinear fails to capture its kangaroo energy. It’s better described as a series of springy volleys backward and forward through time—the movie ping-pongs between 2019 and 2006, with stops in between—that leave you feeling a little dizzy, even a bit punch-drunk.

Read more: The 100 Best Movies of the Past 10 Decades

Working from a script by Justin Kuritzkes, Guadagnino takes pleasure in teasing us, toying with us, getting us all turned around. This is his most buoyant movie. Guadagningo can be a wonderful director: His 2009 I Am Love, starring Tilda Swinton as an Italian aristocrat’s wife who yields to forbidden desire, is a blissful swoon of a movie. He’s also guilty of taking himself too seriously: His 2018 Suspiria remake is muddied by art-house ponderousness. But Challengers is just fun. Even its synth-sexy, Giorgio Moroder-style score, by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, has a cool, serpentine vibe. There are times you want to fight Challengers—to take its sliced-and-diced timeline and put everything in its proper order—but resistance is futile. Guadagnino has essentially invited you out for a drink and maybe a little flirtation. Why not have a sip or two?

The movie opens in 2019, in the midst of Art’s slump. To boost her husband’s confidence, Tashi has booked him into a “Challenger” event in glamorous New Rochelle, not knowing that Art’s opponent will be his nemesis, Patrick. For years, since they’d met at tennis camp at age 12, the two had been thick as thieves. But at some point along the movie’s wiggy timeline, we see their bitter fallout. And while Art’s career, with Tashi’s ruthless guidance, has skyrocketed, Patrick’s has pooped out. He arrives in New Rochelle with a tapped-out credit card and nowhere to sleep. The night before his match, he folds himself into the backseat of his car to get some shut-eye.

It’s not giving too much away to say that Tashi is both the wedge that’s driven these two men apart and the magnetic force that unites them spiritually—maybe even physically. It’s a bummer, then, that—save one magnificent scene—Zendaya’s performance is the weakest in the movie. As the adult Tashi, a fierce competitor who takes her husband’s wins and losses so personally they may as well be her own, she strides through the movie like a powerhouse in her angular tailored shirtdresses and Chanel espadrilles. But Zendaya, gorgeous as she is, can’t spin beauty into charisma. Glowering appears to be her single dramatic tool. Zendaya is an appealing performer, but she doesn’t have enough ballast to play a woman who’s supposed to be the single obsession of two men. The idea, maybe, is that they’re so competitively fixated on each other that they can’t really see her. But for the most part, the movie isn’t very sexy when she’s around. She’s really just a reflective surface for these two guys, a mirror in which they can admire their own flexing muscles.

As well as, of course, each other’s. In the scenes where the two face off on the court as youngsters, there’s a feral joy to their competitiveness—they’re high on their mutual regard, surfing the waves of their testosterone. Later, as adults who have come to blows over a woman, they’re more aggressively macho as they smash the ball back and forth, kings of the jungle competing for the lioness prize, or at least for what they think is the prize. In the movie’s greatest scene, the teenage Tashi, a rising tennis star who dazzles everyone who sees her on the court, seduces the lads Art and Patrick with tempting kisses, as if intending to lure them both to bed. Then she withdraws, and they’re left to confront—or not—their real feelings for each other. It’s a gorgeous sequence, sexy, funny, and sly, and intentionally or otherwise, it points to the truth: this is really Faist and O’Connor’s movie.

Each has a different, and distinctive, way of seducing us. Faist, with his noble nose and wily smile, is like a cross between a pale Roman god and the Artful Dodger. His skin is so fair that we can see every scab and scar, every point where Art’s tennis shoes have abraded his feet—his body is a map of what an athlete must endure. He’s both conniving and needy; one minute you want to slap him, the next you want to mother him. O’Connor’s Patrick has an entirely different, but no less enticing, energy. He’s a bedhead Casanova, a little messy but never distracted from his goals. He’s a scamp and a scoundrel, the devil on wiry limbs. What would it be like to run your hand up his calf? Guadagnino and his frequent cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom, don’t punish you for thoughts like that; it’s what they’re angling for. Challengers goes by in a flash. Its ending is an erotic thunderclap. By the time it’s over, you don’t know what smacked you, but it felt like love.

Warning: This post contains spoilers for Challengers.

What is it about tennis that reminds directors of sex? Is it the fact that, unlike swimming or golf, the player must look across the net directly at their opponent? Is it the sheer athleticism on display? Is it the obvious love pun in the scoring? Whatever the reason, movies like Wimbledon, Match Point, A Room With a View, and even The Royal Tenenbaums set stories of lust on the tennis court. Usually a major moment in a game serves as metaphor: A ball that hits the net teaches a lesson about luck; an unlikely defeat represents a rocky moment in a relationship; a furtive glance during a match hints at buried feelings.

[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

The new Zendaya movie Challengers is perhaps the horniest film in the genre to date. Players Art (Mike Faist) and Patrick (Josh O’Connor) spend the better part of two nearly decades vying for the affections of one-time tennis phenom Tashi (Zendaya). Their romantic rivalry culminates in a single match laden with erotic subtext, the outcome of which will determine the characters’ romantic futures. Director Luca Guadagnino volleys between the action of the match and flashbacks to the characters’ teenage years. The jumps back and forth in time become ever more erratic as the tension in the match builds. Tashi practically vibrates with each thwack of the ball. Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’s synth soundtrack crescendos as the boys stretch their long limbs across the court to catch each other’s drop shots.

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And yet we never learn who actually wins the face-off, let alone Tashi’s heart. Instead, Guadagnino makes a curious decision: He ends the movie not with match point but with an accidental-but-maybe-on-purpose mid-air hug at the net. A hug that thrusts the men together after a long match of lustful looks but no physical contact. A hug that’s more orgasmic than any sex we see in the movie. A hug that defies physics and (probably) the rules of tennis. It’s horny and ludicrous.

But it’s impossible to end a film of this nature any other way. Either man defeating the other would have been anticlimactic because Tashi is not actually the trophy they claim they’re pursuing. The hug makes it clear that two of the three characters are in love—and it’s not the pairing you might expect. And that’s the essence of Challengers: The story of a woman turned on by orchestrating erotic encounters between the men that love her.

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The first flashback is key to understanding the drama at the center of this love triangle. We watch as young Art and Patrick—curiously close roommates who geekily call themselves “Fire and Ice”—win the doubles title at the U.S. Open Junior Championships in 2006. Patrick, arguably the better player but less diligent worker, agrees to let Art win their face-off in the singles tournament the next day.

But then the two boys watch the spellbinding Tashi grunt her way to her own juniors title. After flirting with Tashi at a party in her honor, they invite her back to their hotel room. Over a shared beer, Patrick admits that he taught Art how to masturbate. When they’re all sitting on the bed together, she leans back and coaxes—really, coaches—them to reach across her and kiss one another. She smirks.

The boys’ bond begins to fissure when the ultra-competitive Tashi interrupts the make out session to make an indecent proposal: She’ll give her phone number to whomever wins the next day’s match. She then exits the room, insisting she doesn’t want to be a “homewrecker.”

Art and Patrick will spend the rest of their professional tennis careers competing for Tashi’s attention. So much for the bro code. Patrick breaks his promise to Art and wins the U.S. Open match. Later, when Art asks Patrick whether he slept with Tashi, Patrick demurs. He does, however, point out that Art has a habit of placing the ball in the throat of the racquet before he serves. Patrick mimics Art’s move, both mocking Art and signaling to him that he did in fact have sex with Tashi.

A collegiate relationship between Tashi and Patrick fizzles, and she soon faces a career-ending injury. In Patrick’s absence, Art swoops in. Eventually Tashi and Art marry, and she becomes his coach.

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Flash forward to a giant billboard featuring Tashi and Art modeling luxury goods as tennis’ golden couple. Despite his success—or because of it—Art has lost his verve and keeps losing matches. When he mulls retirement, Tashi enters him into a challengers tournament in New Rochelle, N.Y., in hopes that he’ll snag an easy win and a confidence boost. That’s when Patrick stumbles back onto the scene. Living out of his car and finding shelter night-to-night by bedding women he meets on dating apps, Patrick has grown into a scruffy cad. For Tashi, he proves an irresistible counterbalance to good-natured golden boy Art. When all three characters realize the men will face off at the challengers tournament, Tashi makes threats and promises to each of her “two little white boys,” as she calls them during a pivotal scene.

Tashi tells Art she will divorce him if he loses, and promises to coach Patrick if he throws the match. Are these promises genuine? Does she want either of them? Both? All we know is Tashi wants to see a good tennis match. At the beginning of the movie she declares that playing a worthy opponent is similar to entering a relationship: “It’s like we were in love.” She’s turned on by the heat of competition and living vicariously through her husband and his former lover.

The film’s screenwriter Justin Kuritzkes describes tennis as a sport of near-misses: A player tries to get a ball just past another. “There’s a deep intimacy in that, and a lot of repression,” he told Variety. “It’s very sexy. And you usually play tennis against somebody of the same gender, so tennis, by its nature, then becomes almost homoerotic.”

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In theory, this is Zendaya’s film. After all, she is the movie star—fresh off the box office success of Dune: Part Two, Zendaya is one of the biggest celebrities in the world, known as much for her acting as her red-carpet fashion. Faist and O’Connor, who broke out in West Side Story and The Crown, respectively, are stupendous in the film. But Zendaya is the center of gravity, and the marketing team knows it. For an original drama with no ties to I.P. and a mid-sized budget, Challengers is everywhere—thanks to her. You’ve probably spotted Zendaya serving dozens of preppy looks on the press tour while her co-stars smile shyly in the background.

Guadagnino, known for the sensual gay love story Call Me By Your Name and the tense, erotic thriller Suspiria, plays with audience expectations. No stranger to fostering movie stars—by casting both Timothée Chalamet and Dakota Johnson in key roles early in their careers, he helped launch them into the Hollywood stratosphere—Guadagnino capitalizes on Zendaya’s offscreen star power: The movie begins and ends on her face.

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And throughout the film, Guadagnino positions Zendaya in the center of several shots, with the two boys flanking her. When the three first meet in 2006, Tashi invites Art and Patrick to her hotel room. She beckons them both onto her bed, and they scramble to each side of her like eager puppies. Later, during the movie’s climactic tennis match, she sits exactly in the center of the stands, swiveling her head back and forth to look at each man on either side of the court. Though impassive, she’s in the middle of the action. She adopts an iciness reminiscent of Katherine Hepburn as suitors flitted around her in The Philadelphia Story. Zendaya is the unattainable object of desire. It’s how a director frames a movie star.

But it’s a feint. Tashi is nothing but bait. Just as Tashi orchestrated that kiss between the boys in their youth, she lures the men into their final embrace in the film, sitting between them in the stands—the supposed prize—when actually what the boys wanted was one another all along.

Art and Patrick’s suppressed attraction to one another isn’t exactly subtle. Perhaps in a nod to the infamous Call Me By Your Name peach scene, Art and Patrick are constantly munching on phallic foods in Challengers: bananas, hot dogs, even a churro. Before their epic match, Patrick taunts Art with the possibility that he’s having an affair with Tashi, but does so while the two men sit in the sauna, clad in only strategically placed towels.

It’s not the only scene that takes in their physical forms: The camera pays tribute to the men’s taut bodies with their polos stretching across bulging pectorals. Guadagnino even shoots the men from below the court, sweat dripping from their faces onto the camera. Despite being billed as a sexy romance, the movie’s steamiest scenes are reserved for the court. Each break point its own small climax. As we flash back and forth to the New Rochelle match, Guadagnino experiments with ways to build the tempo: The camera takes on the perspective of the balls and even the racquets as we watch the men make a number of increasingly desperate shots.

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At a pivotal moment in the match, Patrick places the ball in the throat of the racquet before a serve, a callback to Art’s signature move that Patrick used to signal he slept with Tashi earlier in the film. Paired with a smug grin, the gesture signals to Art that Patrick slept with his wife (again). And then the near-comatose Art comes alive. Does he pick up on Patrick’s clues about the affair? Does he somehow know that Tashi has asked Patrick to throw the game? Does he simply hope to impress his wife and prove once and for all he’s the better player? 

One thing is for sure: he feels an electricity from his old partner on the other side of the court. Patrick, for his part, never smiles wider than when he’s provoking his former friend. In this dysfunctional polycule, an affair with Tashi is a means to reawaken the fire in his true object of desire, Art.

The men make eyes at each other, and the pace picks up. The tennis becomes more athletic, the shots more dramatic, sweat all but flooding the court. It’s Fire and Ice, back together again after all these years. Tashi’s head continues to swivel, and she doesn’t know how to react. The boys don’t seem to notice—they’re having fun.

The tennis match becomes foreplay, and a reminder of what they used to be. In the end, the boys embrace. The final shot lands on Tashi’s face, usually impassive but now elated. The puppet master has engineered a reunion of these two men and prodded their competitive spirits once again. The game is so on.

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