Zendaya’s film career ascends with this week’s sexually charged, adult tennis drama “Challengers.”

As Tashi Duncan, a tennis star whose career was clipped early by an injury, Zendaya, 27, embraced a role that goes from 18 to 30, a character for the first time close to her own age.

A teen model who morphed into a chart-topping singer and, thanks to “Euphoria,” an Emmy-winning superstar, Zendaya likes to upset expectations.

“Challengers” finds her Tashi torn between two lovers. Tennis pro Patrick Zweig (Josh O’Connor) is an old romance who surprises her at a tournament where she is coaching her current lover Art Donaldson (Michael Faist). Both men have a history as well in a convoluted saga constantly jumping between past and present.

What, Zendaya was asked at a virtual press conference, made “Challengers” so compelling?

“I was still shooting ‘Euphoria’ at the time and it’s one of those things where everybody knows, especially when I’m working, it’s difficult to get me to focus on anything else.

“So we had a mock table read of the script at my agent’s house. It was brilliant but made me nervous because of how complicated these characters are. I couldn’t define what this was. It was funny but not a comedy. It had drama but it’s not a sports movie.

“It was everything at once! Beautiful and exciting. And a character I had never read before and seen before. She scared the (expletive) out of me. So I needed to be part of it.”

Naturally in a movie about three tennis pros training was intense.

“Man! We were lucky enough to do what I call summer camp. We got almost six weeks before we started to just work on tennis.

“I knew,” she confessed, “nothing about tennis. All I knew was Venus and Serena. It was one of those things that’s terrifying if you’re supposed to be a great tennis player. We were all incredibly nervous that first day.

“During that training I was driving myself crazy trying to learn the fundamentals. Tennis is not a game you just pick up, unless you begin at four. I would feel something clicked, then would come in the next day — and you can’t recreate it.”

Once director Luca Guadagnino began to storyboard each shot, “I decided to approach the tennis like choreography. We had amazing tennis doubles and I wanted to understand her movements and make it as seamless as possible.

“That became my entryway into looking like a tennis player. I realized I wasn’t going to be one but I could fake it. And I knew everyone else was just as committed. We were struggling together.”

“Challengers” opens April 26