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Every actor knows Hedda Gabler. The protagonist in Henrik Ibsen\u2019s 1891 play is considered one of the great dramatic roles in theater. Elusive and complex, Hedda is a newlywed who, already bored with her marriage and the life she\u2019s chosen, manipulates and terrorizes those around her\u2014leading to deadly consequences.<\/p>\n
Maggie Smith, Isabelle Huppert,<\/strong> Annette Bening, Rosamund Pike, Mary-Louise Parker,<\/strong> and Cate Blanchett<\/strong> are just a few of the actors who have taken a stab at the role onstage. There have also been several screen adaptations of the play, including the BBC\u2019s 1962 version, starring Ingrid Bergman; a 1981 movie with Diana Rigg; and a 1975 film, which earned Glenda Jackson an Oscar nomination for best actress.<\/p>\n\n
\n<\/noscript><\/picture><\/span><\/div>\n<\/p>\nTessa Thompson, Nina Hoss, and Imogen Poots in Hedda.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/span>Courtesy of Amazon MGM Studios.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\nBut there has never been a version of the main character quite like filmmaker Nia DaCosta<\/strong>\u2019s Hedda Gabler. Hedda,<\/em> which will have its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 7, is a voluptuous cinematic reinvention of the text, with a towering performance by Tessa Thompson<\/strong> in its lead role. \u201cHedda is an inscrutable character,\u201d says DaCosta. \u201cAnd since the beginning, for the past hundred years, people have been like, \u2018What the fuck is her deal?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\nDaCosta\u2019s adaptation digs deep into that question. Hedda is often characterized as just a bored, moody society wife, but DaCosta builds a character who has a lot more. In the film, Hedda is hosting a party at her new home with her husband, George (Tom Bateman<\/strong>), and over the span of a single night, she struggles with unfulfilled yearnings for a past lover while wreaking havoc on those who come into her orbit. \u201cHedda is someone who wants people\u2019s animals to come out,\u201d says DaCosta. \u201cShe just feels like everyone is cowardly, everyone\u2019s lying. She has this deepening emptiness inside of her that makes her do things she doesn\u2019t understand\u2014and she is living in a world that she doesn\u2019t get.\u201d<\/p>\nThe film, which Amazon MGM Studios will release in select theaters on October 22 and globally on Prime Video on October 29, is set around 1954, but told through DaCosta\u2019s modern sense and singular vision, showcasing Thompson\u2019s agile work as a troublemaking woman for whom audiences can\u2019t help but fall. \u201cShe\u2019s mad and bad, but she\u2019s still a person, and you kind of love her because she\u2019s so ridiculous,\u201d says DaCosta.<\/p>\n
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\n<\/p>\nHedda<\/em> filmed in England at Flintham Hall, a stunning estate featuring a 40-foot high conservatory in stone and glass .<\/p>\n<\/span>Courtesy of Amazon MGM Studios.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\nDaCosta discovered Ibsen\u2019s work while studying at London\u2019s Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. \u201cI thought that this character was terrifying, but also how brave to write a character like this, who is\u2014to me, at least\u2014unredeemable and does horrible things, but you\u2019re telling it from her perspective and have huge empathy for her,\u201d she says. She spent hours watching Hedda Gabler<\/em> stage adaptations at theater libraries, but much of what she saw didn\u2019t quite capture everything she thought the text could be. \u201cI liked it, but I thought, This is not as funny or dark or sexy as what I read or what I felt when I was reading it,\u201d she says. \u201cSo I was like, Wouldn\u2019t it be cool to do a movie where I make all the subtext text?\u201d<\/p>\nWhen DaCosta wrote the first draft of the script a few years ago (around the time she was working on her 2021 Candyman<\/em> sequel), she made one major change: Eilert L\u00f6vborg, a man competing with George for a teaching position and who was also once in love with Hedda, would be a woman. \u201cMy initial instinct was this character should be female because it helps themes about power and autonomy, about choice, about self-regulation,\u201d says DaCosta. \u201cI think Hedda is someone who imprisons herself a lot as well, as much as society does.\u201d<\/p>\nEileen Lovborg (Nina Hoss<\/strong>) is openly in a relationship with another woman, Thea Clifton (Imogen Poots<\/strong>), when she arrives at Hedda\u2019s home, on the verge of social redemption after a drinking problem. She is a threat to Hedda\u2019s carefully crafted life in several ways: She is up for the position that Hedda\u2019s husband hopes to get, which would provide financial stability, and she is Hedda\u2019s former lover. The love triangle helps to show the contrast between the choices Hedda has made and those of Eileen. \u201cYou do have this extra layer of another thing that these women are fighting against to just feel like they\u2019re people who matter in the eyes of the men that tell them what they should and shouldn\u2019t be doing,\u201d says DaCosta. \u201cThis made it more potent, more powerful, and also more unfortunately tragic.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
\n<\/p>\n\u201cNia and I were really interested in this idea of what happens when we\u2019re pretending to be something that we’re not, trying to fit into a world, a life, a marriage, a house, a place that doesn’t suit us,\u201d says Thompson. \u201cHow that perverts our fundamental nature.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/span>Courtesy of Amazon MGM Studios.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\nThompson and DaCosta first met at the Sundance Directors Lab before working together on DaCosta\u2019s 2018 feature directorial debut, Little Woods.<\/em> The pair stayed in touch over the years, and DaCosta brought Hedda<\/em> to her first. \u201cShe\u2019s so brilliant at playing characters who have a roiling ocean inside of them but have to keep a fa\u00e7ade,\u201d says DaCosta. \u201cShe\u2019s just really great at that tension.\u201d<\/p>\nThompson was aware of the character of Hedda Gabler, as every actor is. \u201cI had always just been really fascinated by the work of Ibsen, the questions that he asks, particularly about female personhood and how hemmed in or boxed in we can be by societal expectations,\u201d she says, adding that she studied every adaptation of the play on which she was able to get her hands. \u201cObviously, he was writing so, so long ago, but how resonant some of those ideas continue to be.\u201d<\/p>\n
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