Tessa Thompson And Nia DaCosta Talk Female Rage And The Joy Of Chaos In “Hedda”

Nia, you’ve mentioned before that you wrote the script a few years back, but sat on it for a while; why did you feel now was the right time? 

Nia DaCosta: It was just a natural progression. I wrote the script, and then I ended up doing a couple of episodes of Top Boy. Then, while Top Boy was happening, I got Candyman. While Candyman was happening, I got the Marvel film. And then while I was doing the Marvel film, this kept coming to the fore, and I wasn’t really thinking about what was next, but eventually it became really clear that this was it, so it was just the right timing.

Iben’s Hedda Gabler has so many different iterations, but your adaptation approaches the story from a new lens. Did you always have it in mind for Hedda to be played by a woman of colour, and when did Tessa come into the project?

Nia: Before I wrote it, I told her, I was like, “Hey, I think I’m going to write an adaptation of Hedda.” When I came to write it, I was like,” I’m probably going to ask Tessa to do it,” so I’ll write that into the script. Because also, as a director of colour and someone who writes in hopes to have diverse casts, you have to write the race into the script, because if you don’t, they will just assume and default to white. Unless you work with (casting director) Des Hamilton. Which is what I love about him. So, yeah, it was very clear from the start that Tessa would be the one.

And Tessa, Hedda Gabler has been described as a holy grail role by so many actors. Did you have a connection with the character before reading Nia’s script?

Tessa Thompson: Yeah, yeah, she definitely is. She was not the first Lady of Ibsen that I read or fell in love with, though. So, that was Nora in A Doll’s House, and I kind of always wanted to play Nora. I don’t know, something about Nora I really understood, even when I read it at a very young age, like 15 or 16. And then later, I read Hedda Gabler and continued to be mystified and mesmerised by her.

But really, what drew me to it more than anything is the chance to work with Nia and what she did with the adaptation. When she first told me, and she didn’t tell me any of the ways that she was thinking about changing the original piece, she just told me she wanted to do an adaptation of Hedda Gabler. And only because it’s her, I thought, like, “Okay, cool.”

But I didn’t understand why, to be honest. Like, what was the opportunity or what was the call? And then as soon as I read her script, I really understood how urgent it was and how much of herself and herself wrestling with some of the big questions of the piece she embedded into the material. And that made it really exciting.