With Hedda, Nia DaCosta Rewrites a Classic

Warning: spoilers for Hedda below.

Since its first staging at Munich’s Königliches Residenztheater in 1891, Henrik Ibsen’s masterpiece Hedda Gabler has provoked audiences with the tragic tale of its incorrigible lead. For director Nia DaCosta, who adapted the play for the screen with this year’s Hedda, the story’s anti-heroine proved an irresistible subject because of, rather than in spite of, her flaws.

“I was confounded—and compelled—by this woman at the center of the play,” DaCosta tells W of her fascination with one of literature’s most complex female characters. “Usually, everything’s so literal.”

DaCosta, who became the first Black female director to debut a number-one box office film with 2021’s Candyman (she also helmed 2023’s The Marvels, and is currently in post-production for the upcoming 28 Years Later sequel, The Bone Temple), first discovered Hedda while earning her master’s degree in London. By 2018, when she was at work on her breakout feature film debut, Little Woods—starring Tessa Thompson, who also plays the titular lead in Hedda—DaCosta had begun writing her version of the play.

Like the original, DaCosta’s iteration portrays an intellectually, creatively, and sexually frustrated woman trapped in an unsatisfying marriage of convenience. But Hedda presents a few twists: it’s set in post-war England, Hedda is biracial and bisexual, and she’s caught in a gender-swapped romantic triangle with her former lover (and her husband’s current academic rival), Eileen Lovborg (played by a formidable Nina Hoss). Thompson’s Hedda is diabolical as ever, plotting and scheming out of boredom, or is it malice? As with the original play, DaCosta’s film leaves it up to the audience to decide.

The result is a period piece that doesn’t feel stifling in its specificity nor pandering in its modern updates. The costumes, inspired by the era’s Dior New Look dress, the setting (the film takes place over the course of a singular party at an English estate), and the casting make Hedda a feast for the eyes, and DaCosta’s take on the play’s iconic ending gives it new life. Below, the filmmaker talks about her friendship with Thompson, finding the perfect 18th-century Italian home in which to film, and why she would never punish her Hedda:

What made you want to reinterpret Hedda?

When I first read Hedda, I thought it was amazing. I realized, no one can definitively say what’s wrong with her, or “this is why she does what she does,” which is so rare for a story. This is a woman who is incredibly complex. Yes, she has reasons why she is filled with rage, but nothing sufficiently, for me at least, explains why she goes through the extremity that she does. I also thought the search for meaning inside her experience would lead the audience to search for meaning within themselves.

You wrote the film with Tessa Thompson in mind.

When I first told her about it, she was like, “Cool, whatever,” because I tell her everything that’s in my head. And then we released Little Woods, and she went off and became capital “T” Tessa Thompson, and I went off and did my films and became a stronger and better filmmaker. By the time we came to this film, we were more mature, braver artists. We had 10 years of friendship under our belt, so we trusted each other.

Hedda was first staged in 1891, and your film is set in the 1950s. How do you think its themes speak to the moment we’re in now?

A lot of what the film deals with is universal: What is freedom? What is personhood? How do you What is your relationship to power, to bravery and cowardice, and how does that affect the way you live your life? We’re all born into a world and into a body we do not choose, and we have to figure out how to navigate and make the best of whatever hand we’re dealt.

When we made Little Woods, we were like, “This film won’t be relevant anymore because we’re going to get our first female president, and we won’t have to worry about these things.” And of course, that didn’t happen. I think with Hedda, similarly, time will tell.

Why did you change the ending?

The original is a tragedy, and in tragedies, everyone dies. But I think you can have tragedy without people dying. For me, it was so important not to horrifically punish Hedda at the end. Hedda’s vicious, and she does things that are indefensible, but I think she’s still valid. I also knew I didn’t want Lovborg to die. I really wanted these two characters to have the opportunity to have a tomorrow, to try again. What they try, I don’t know, but it doesn't matter. The point is: the gift of life is that we get to try.

The costumes and set make the film visually stunning.

For costumes, I worked with Lindsay Pugh; we met on the Marvel film. For our first in-person meeting, she came with full looks, fabric swatches, how the look would deteriorate or degrade over the course of the film, everything. And for the setting, we looked at 200 houses, most of which were Georgian, which are quite graphic and austere. The one we found, [Flintham Hall in Nottinghamshire, England], was Italian, and it had so much character. Because it had been owned by the same family since 1789, there were layers of history there. But they also let us wallpaper, paint, and take all their antiques and precious things out.

Will you and Tessa be working together again anytime soon?

Well, she is actually producing a television show, and I’ll be directing the pilot. She’s not in the show, but we’re going to be a director-producer relationship for that one, which will be fun. The next time she stars in something, we don’t know yet—but I’m sure it won’t be too far away.