Tessa Thompson has one of those faces that mesmerizes, captivates, and communicates even the most imperceptible emotions with razor-sharp subtlety. In Hedda, the forthcoming film adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s classic stage play, Hedda Gabler, her co-stars (or rather, the characters they play) fumble around her deftly hidden malice. For audiences, though, watching the simmering rage bubble beneath those magnificently expressive features is part of the fun. The faintest raising of a sharp brow, a slight parting of full lips—the moments that reveal all are communicated only to us.
The film, by visionary director Nia DaCosta, revisits the 1891 tale of a wilful, complicated woman trapped by society, its expectations, and her own changeable emotions. In this version, the chaos ensues over the course of a single glamorous party inside Gabler’s opulent home circa the 1950s—a grand Victorian mansion her unsuspecting husband has just purchased to please her. Over those hours, she oscillates from scorned lover to the one who scorns when her former flame arrives with a new partner, both of whom she proceeds to psychologically terrorize, along with a slew of others who are drawn toward her like moths to a flame. She does bad things—but is she bad? That’s the question audiences have deliberated for more than a century, with legends like Ingrid Bergman, Maggie Smith, Cate Blanchett, and Isabelle Huppert taking turns bringing her to life in various productions. Thompson’s version leaves us no closer to finding an answer, which for her, is the point. “Morality is not a lens through which it’s useful, at least for me, to see [her],” she tells me over video chat.
When I reach the 41-year-old actor, she’s in a space that could easily double as a stand-in for the film’s lavish setting: a seductively lit London hotel she moves through with the same catlike ease as her character (though for an inherently 2025 reason: the phone she’s using to chat with me is about to die and she needs to plug in). She’s bundled up for an unseasonably cold July day—boxy blazer layered overtop a vintage grey sweater, with a rogue retractable pencil haphazardly thrust into her ponytail. (“I found it, and I love it so much that I’m so afraid of losing it,” she says. “It’s been a day-and-a-half love affair with this thing.”)
Fresh off a vacation in Greece, she’s in full Hedda mode, eager to discuss the making of the film, which she also serves as a producer on through her production company, Viva Maude, and the many ways it subverts our expectations of women. “One of the reasons [Hedda Gabler] was revolutionary in its time—and continues to be—is because so often, when women do challenging things in stories, audiences want to justify, excuse, or to understand the choices they make,” she says. “That standard isn’t applied to male characters in the same way.”
“…there are many ways to be audacious—by upending expectations, or simply by making something optimistic in a cynical world.”
Another twist is DaCosta’s choice to turn the character of Eilert Lövborg, Gabler’s former lover, into Eileen (Nina Hoss), an openly gay woman who shows up with her new partner (Imogen Poots) to reclaim her academic reputation after a bout with alcoholism. “By changing the gender of one character, she not only deepened Hedda’s interiority, but also created portraits of three very different women in relation to their time,” says Thompson.
The film, set to premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in September before landing on Amazon Prime Video in October, marks the pair’s second collaboration—DaCosta previously directed Thompson in her directorial debut, Little Woods (2018), before going on to be the first Black woman to direct a Marvel film (2023’s The Marvels). When DaCosta described this new project as one that would be centred around female rage, Thompson was all in. “There’s still a dearth of stories that do that,” she says. “So, if there’s a way to also make it entertaining and fun, then that sounds great.”
Thompson’s criteria—whether to provoke, to humanize, or to entertain—has guided her across a two-decade career that’s spanned indie films like Dear White People (2014) and Sorry to Bother You (2018), Oscar-nominated work such as Selma (2014), and blockbuster franchises including Thor, Creed, and Avengers. “In the industry, some people say, ‘one for you, one for them,’” she notes, alluding to the delicate dance between art and commerce in Hollywood. “To me though, all are for me, and all are for them. In everything I do, I’m trying to make someone feel seen through the work.”
Growing up in Los Angeles as the daughter of an Afro-Panamanian father and a mother of Mexican descent, Thompson has always gravitated toward telling stories that reflect a wide range of lived experience. She resists the notion that diversity is an agenda, describing it instead as a necessary part of honest storytelling: “We want to really examine what it is to be human in the times that we live in, and I think for that reason, you have to have a kind of diversity of characters reflected—that’s where our world is,” she says. For Thompson, that ethos made DaCosta’s decision to recontextualize Ibsen’s text through the lens of a different sexual identity one that felt authentic and smart.
Later this year, Thompson will star opposite Jon Bernthal in His & Hers, a Netflix whodunit that unfolds across a series of conflicting perspectives. Audiences are likely to flip-flop over who they believe, a framework she says was fascinating to construct (she serves as producer alongside Jessica Chastain). “We all have our side of a story, the version we tell ourselves,” she tells me. “Ask someone else, and they’ll have their side, which may be entirely different. The truth probably lives somewhere in the middle, and I just love that.”
“In everything I do, I’m trying to make someone feel seen through the work.”
Duelling narratives have, of course, become a big part of our ever-changing world. As has the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence, something that Hollywood continues to grapple with. And while many are feeling fearful, Thompson describes herself as a futurist. “I’m trying to be a techno-optimist,” she says. AI could solve many of the world’s problems, she reasons. “The thing that should remain most important is humans, or being humane,” she adds.
That same lens is what draws her to fashion, where the current upheaval among designers across the industry’s top houses feels like a cultural mirror for the times. “I always think that fashion is such an interesting indicator of not just where we’re going, but where we’ve been,” she says, citing the industry’s shifts—like Jonathan Anderson’s new tenure at Dior—as signs of a creative future she’s eager to watch unfold. As a producer, she’s developed a new-found appreciation for the craft, and at fashion shows, where she’s a frequent attendee, she now notices things she once overlooked, from the grandeur of the settings, to the way house codes are woven into new collections, to the details within the garments themselves.
For her part in what comes next, she says, “there are many ways to be audacious—by upending expectations, or simply by making something optimistic in a cynical world.”
Photography: Amar David
Video: Rebecca Munroe
Styling: Georgia Medley
Makeup: Alex Babsky (The Visionaries Agency)
Hair: Issac Poleon (The Wall Group)
Photo Assistants: Dan Clarke, Chris Watson
Stylist Assistant: Annie Royapen
Production: Anastasia Marshall
Editorial and Creative Director: Sahar Nooraei
Art Director: Jessica Hui
Fashion Directorr: Haley Dach
Entertainment Editor: Elycia Rubin
