'Hedda': Everything To Know

In 1891, the first production of Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler was staged. In the hundred-plus years since then, it has became a theater standard, with new productions regularly happening somewhere. It has been adapted to film several times over the years, and now director Nia DaCosta is taking a swing at it in her upcoming film, Hedda.

This time, it’s Tessa Thompson’s turn to play Hedda. DaCosta has also taken some creative liberties with her interpretation of the story: Eilert Lövborg, a man who was once in love with Hedda, is a woman this time, because as DaCosta sees it, the change “helps themes about power and autonomy, about choice, about self-regulation.”

Ahead of the film’s release, keep reading for everything you need to know before it hits theaters.

Plot

The official synopsis reads, “From writer/director Nia DaCosta comes a provocative, modern reimagining of Henrik Ibsen’s classic play. HEDDA (Tessa 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.”

DaCosta told Vanity Fair, “Hedda is an inscrutable character. And since the beginning, for the past hundred years, people have been like, ‘What the f*ck is her deal?’ […] Hedda is someone who wants people’s animals to come out. She just feels like everyone is cowardly, everyone’s lying. She has this deepening emptiness inside of her that makes her do things she doesn’t understand — and she is living in a world that she doesn’t get.”

Cast

The movie stars Tessa Thompson, Imogen Poots, Tom Bateman, Nicholas Pinnock, and Nina Hoss.

Thompson said to Vanity Fair of playing the character, “Nia and I were really interested in this idea of what happens when we’re 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. How that perverts our fundamental nature.” DaCosta also praised Thompson: “She’s so brilliant at playing characters who have a roiling ocean inside of them but have to keep a façade. She’s just really great at that tension.”