I don't consider Hedda a villain at all...

TESSA THOMPSON AND WRITER AND DIRECTOR NIA DACOSTA TALK TO LYNN RUSK ABOUT THEIR PROVOCATIVE, MODERN REIMAGINING OF HENRIK IBSEN'S CLASSIC PLAY HEDDA

- 

AMERICAN director Nia DaCosta first made her mark on the film industry with a reboot of the horror film Candyman before becoming the first Black woman to direct a Marvel film - The Marvels.

The Brooklyn-born filmmaker's latest project is a provocative, modern reimagining of Henrik Ibsen’s classic play Hedda.

Nia, 35, reunites with Tessa Thompson, who starred in her debut feature Little Woods, for this gender-swapped, queer adaptation. In the film, Hedda, played by Tessa finds herself torn between the lingering ache of a past lover, Eileen Lovborg, portrayed by Nina Hoss, and the quiet suffocation of her marriage to George Tesman, played by Tom Bateman.

Set in 1950s England, the story unfolds over the course of one charged night, as long-repressed desires and hidden tensions erupt, pulling Hedda and those around her into a spiral of manipulation, passion, and betrayal.

Nia says she chose to set the story amid the chaos of a party to explore the tension between the characters’ public facades and private selves.

“Bringing all these characters to the party was really important to me, which is why I set the story over one increasingly chaotic, catastrophic night,’ explains the director.

“I wanted to see everyone in both their public and private spaces, and to create a kind of pressure cooker, an engine that would push each character to act and reveal where that might take them. That was a hugely important element for me.”

For her adaptation, Nia gender-swapped the character of Ejlert Lovborg, reimagining him as Eileen. Making Lovborg a woman meant there were now three women at the centre of the story who found different ways to be, or try to be, free.