Tessa Thompson found a new emotion: “happily terrified.” That’s how she felt taking on one of theatre’s great dramatic roles in her new movie Hedda.
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The Creed actress plays the lead in Nia DaCosta’s adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s classic play, Hedda Gabler. She admitted to feeling both thrilled and nervous about tackling such a significant, dramatic role.
“I felt happily terrified,” Thompson admitted to Deadline. “I didn’t go to drama school, but I remember an actress saying to me, ‘You always have to have your Hedda ready.’ And I was like, wow, that’s very cool.”
The Thor: Ragnarok star compared Hedda to a part along the lines of Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
“She’s a part of the theatre canon as one of the roles that you must play if you’re a woman in theatre,” she told the outlet. “If you look at the history and the canon, there’s very few for us that are those ones that you just strive for.”
Tessa Thompson Called Hedda “Beautiful and Horrifying”
In the new film, director Nia DaCosta (2019’s Candyman) reimagines Hedda as a woman so dissatisfied with her marriage and life that she resorts to manipulation and chaos. The story is set in 1950s England, and the male character Eilert is changed to a woman named Eileen.
Thompson described the character as “beautiful and horrifying” and said she enjoyed contributing to Hedda’s enduring legacy while observing others’ interpretations of the role.
“I think that felt really ripe to me and to get to engage with people that have interpreted it – I loved talking to [co-star] Nina [Hoss] about her time playing Hedda, and I just loved watching everything I could get my hands on and seeing what people did with the material,” she explained. “I think that’s what makes these plays so tremendous, is you can continue to engage with them for centuries.”
You can now stream Hedda on Amazon Prime.