Nia DaCosta and Tessa Thompson are back with a new film, Hedda, a modern twist on Henrik Ibsen’s classic play Hedda Gabler.
Thompson, who plays Hedda Gabler in the film, steps into what she’s called a dream-come-true role.
Per the official description for the film, it is a “provocative, modern reimagining of Henrik Ibsen’s classic play” in which “Hedda (Thompson) finds herself torn between the lingering ache of a past love and the quiet suffocation of her present life. Over the course of one charged night, long-repressed desires and hidden tensions erupt — pulling her and everyone around her into a spiral of manipulation, passion, and betrayal.”
An interesting twist on the original
In DaCosta’s version of the 1891 play, Eilert Lövborg, an old lover of Hedda and a rival of Hedda’s husband, George Tesman (Tom Bateman), is reimagined as Eileen Lövborg, portrayed by Nina Hoss.
DaCosta discussed how the film, which is set in the 1950s, gives voice to a generation of women who were often silenced.
“I think it’s so important to think about the women we come from, especially for me as a Jamaican American, first-generation American child of immigrants,” DaCosta told us.
“I look at my mother, my grandmother, my great-grandmother, and that lineage and what I’ve been able to do because of what they lived through and their sacrifices,” DaCosta continued. “And, in the context of this movie, understanding what the struggle was for women in the ’50s and the ’60s, when my mother was born. I think it’s so important for contextualizing our own relationship to ourselves and to the now, and how we, ourselves, are still dealing with some of the things that they dealt with, if perhaps to a lesser extremity, and in other ways, to a greater extremity. I was really passionate about Hedda because I felt like this woman gave me a prism through which to do that.”
Hoss, who previously played the lead role of Hedda Gabler in a 2013 adaptation of the classic in Berlin, recalled spending a lot of time with the character on stage and how that experience informed her reimagined portrayal of Eileen.
“For years, I was playing her, and I made up my mind about the other characters that were surrounding Hedda, and now I had to step on the other side and explore what it feels like to be attacked by that woman, or to be in the hands of her scheming,” Hoss told said during our interview. “That was the first thing that I was really excited [about], that Nia [DaCosta] had the idea at all to make this gender reversal — because there was a certain depth to the character that I didn’t see.”
Shining a light on how the decision-making of women has evolved
Thompson said Hedda is a woman who could be viewed as a walking contradiction, but the lesson is what one does with her free will.
“I honestly think that she, unfortunately, might be happy to be someone’s muse. I think that she is,” Thompson said. “You experience her, over the course of the film, jutting up against some of the cages that she’s either put in or allows herself to be put in. But the truth is, I think where the door is fully open, I’m not sure that she runs through them entirely, and I think that is kind of the contradiction of her, in a way.”
The Creed actor continued, “I think she became, in making the piece, my muse, certainly, because I had to inhabit her. And while I think some of the things that she does are questionable and unsavory and not to be commended, I think the fundamental place that it comes from is this desire to try to live a life that is your own. Fundamentally, it’s a really rich one, and a really human one. Then, if you add the complexities of the female experience, playing her really made me question the choices that I make and who I make them for. And that, I think, is the real gift of having done this, and hopefully is the gift that we give to audience members, all audience members alike, but particularly to women. And I’m so curious how it lands with women who maybe, generationally, really understand some of the things that Hedda was up against.”
Nobody’s muse
At one point during the film, Hoss’ Eileen tells Hedda’s husband, George Tesman, that the term muse is not as endearing as men make it out to be, which may pose the question: Does Hedda ever allow herself to be used as anyone’s source of inspiration?
“The arrogance and narcissism of George is that he thinks Hedda is there for him to use in whatever way he needs. It’s kind of hilarious that the film starts with him basically saying, ‘This is what I need you to do tonight,’” Bateman told us. “And I think anyone who knows the text — even if you don’t know the text, even if you’re watching the dynamic between this man and this woman — you’re thinking he’s calling the shots.”
He added, “I think what George serves as is the sort of physical embodiment of this cage that Hedda has chosen to put herself into for many reasons. She thinks that she needs it to survive, but she’s constantly kicking against this, honestly, sort of weak, flawed, ambitious, angry, resentful man, under the veneer of this gentleman who’s presented as a good, upstanding member of the community, sort of thing. She’s kicking against that, and she’s trying to sort of pull away this veneer and show the man who he really is. She relishes any opportunity she has where she gets to toy with him.”
Hedda is now streaming on Prime Video.