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Having played Thor's pal Valkyrie in four Marvel movies, musician Bianca Taylor across Ryan Coogler's Creed trilogy, and devious Delos director Charlotte Hale in (almost) every season of sci-fi series Westworld, Tessa Thompson is well-versed in revisiting characters. Whenever she signs up to play a new one, though, she's hellbent on doing something completely different to what she's done before.
That's a trickier task, still, when you're playing someone who's been interpreted by many others before you – on both stage and screen. In her latest collaboration with writer-director Nia DaCosta, who she previously worked with on low-budget crime drama Little Woods and blockbuster sequel The Marvels, Thompson is the most recent actor to tackle Henrik Ibsen's Hedda Gabler.
"I hope not. I really try not to do that in general. I'm always trying to, like, break new ground and figure out new pathways into things," Thompson tells GamesRadar+, when we ask whether she transferred anything she's learnt playing darker characters into the role. "I think that so many of the things that you see in any character exist in all of us, it's a matter of circumstance. I believe that so many of the places that we see Hedda go exist in all of us."
While still fraught with tension (and Machiavellian scheming from its eponymous master meddler), DaCosta's take swaps 1890s Norway for 1950s England – and Hedda's male ex-lover Eilert for Nina Hoss's formidable Eileen. The result? A wilder, sexier, queerer tale that shifts focus away from Hedda's new husband George's insecurities and onto its central trio of women, in its exploration of race, societal status, and the female ego.
"I wasn't actually interested in an icy version of Hedda, I feel like I've seen a lot of them. In fact, some of my favorite Heddas, like Fiona Shaw's, are incredibly warm. If you talk to her, she thinks Hedda is, you know, not the worst person in the world," Thompson laughs. "So I don't know, I wasn't really interested in that. I was interested in a person that is capable of monstrous things – and seeing what those monstrous things cost them."
DaCosta, similarly, didn't want to make Hedda a dour drama. Yes, Hedda might encourage recovering alcoholic Eileen to have a drink or smooch another man in the shadowy corners of her and George's new manor, but there's a mischievous, lost child-like quality to her that the filmmaker felt was crucial to bring to the fore.
"I found the play quite funny. One of her first lines is her making fun of Aunt Julie's purse, or no broken umbrella… or no, her hat. Her hat. She's like, 'There's a bunch of ugly hats over there. Why do the maids keep moving things around?' And Julie's like, 'Oh, that's mine,'" she chuckles. "It's just really funny. She makes fun of George to his face in the play, and he's just like, 'What's going on?' I just loved how fun she is and I think that's part of what makes her so vital as well, is that you actually love watching her. You love spending time with her, even when you're, like, covering your eyes. And because it's a party, you just ratchet some of that up."
Hedda releases in select US cinemas on October 22, before landing in UK theaters on October 24. It will be streaming on Prime Video from October 29. For more, check out our picks of the most exciting upcoming movies heading our way.
