Click here to listen to the interview.
Nia DaCosta’s adaptation of Henrick Ibsen’s play HEDDA is the most dynamic, the most arresting, and the most suspenseful version I’ve ever seen. It’s not just that she’s moves the action to the 1950s England, nor that she’s added queer identity to the mix of what may or may not make Hedda Gabler tick. It’s the clever staging (do we have an unreliable narrator in play?), the expanded sexual stakes, and the use of a woman’s nipples as both a symbol of shame and power. In short, if you’ve seen any version of Ibsen’s play, you will find much that new, or at the very least, refreshing in its exploration of a complex woman who does not need you to like her,
Full credit, too, to Tessa Thompson in the title role, who can turn a smile into a lethal weapon, and yet never for a moment fails to remind us all that Hedda is a tortured soul who externalizes her pain no matter what the cost. It’s a performance of endless fascination given by an actress of infinite control and equally infinite passion. There will not be a better performance by anyone in this decade.
When I spoke with DaCosta, a woman of poise, humor, and scathingly sharp prescience, on October 29, 2025, I started with falling under Hedda’s spell before moving on to the change in time and place, and the carefully curated look of the film that amplifies and annotates the action without calling undo attention to itself (peacock wallpaper notwithstanding). We finished up with for DaCosta, there was no one but Thompson for the role. And, yes, the significance of a woman’s nipples in an inappropriate setting.
HEDDA co-stars Nina Hoss, Imogen Poots, Tom Batemen, Nicholas Pinnock, Finbar Lynch, and Mirren Mack.
DaCosta directed from her own script, and her other work includes CANDYMAN, THE MARVELS, and 28 YEARS LATER: THE BONE TEMPLE.
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