Eight things we learned from TIFF’s In Conversation With Nia DaCosta and Tessa Thompson

Every year, TIFF hosts a series of intimate chats with filmmakers and actors attending the fest. In honour of the world premiere of their film Hedda, a drama based on the Henrik Ibsen play Hedda Gabler, director Nia DaCosta (Candyman, The Marvels, Little Woods) and star Tessa Thompson (Thor: Ragnarok, Dear White People, Passing) sat down with journalist Kathleen Newman-Bremang to talk about their careers and their latest project.

Here are eight things we learned from DaCosta and Thompson’s conversation at TIFF.

1. They both started on the stage It’s fitting that Thompson and DaCosta are at TIFF with an adaptation of a play, because they both launched their careers treading the boards. While Thompson was doing theatre in Los Angeles before she graduated to guest-starring roles on TV shows, DaCosta grew up around musicians. (Her mom is in the reggae group Worl-A-Girl, known for their song “Jamaican Bobsledding Chant” on the Cool Runnings soundtrack.) DaCosta thought she’d be an actor and even went to theatre school but eventually found herself working behind the scenes. “My mom was the one who said, ‘The way you talk, you want to be a director,’” she said.

2. DaCosta wanted to meet Thompson after watching her talk about sandwiches After working as a production assistant and making a few short films, DaCosta participated in the Sundance Screenwriters and Directors Lab, where she had the opportunity to workshop the screenplay for what would become her debut feature, Little Woods. As she was picking actors to develop the characters with her, a casting director recommended Thompson. “I went to YouTube, and I found an interview with Tessa and Craig Ferguson, and the entire interview was about sandwiches,” she said. “I was like, Oh, she has the right vibe for this.”

3. Thompson and DaCosta rehearsed for Hedda like it was a play DaCosta put all the Hedda actors through extensive rehearsals on location to make sure everyone would know exactly what to do once the tight shooting schedule began. “We had a couple weeks to film in this one house, and it really felt like a [theatre] company,” Thompson said. “I love smaller films, when it feels like you’re in the trenches together.”

4. Thompson made wrap gifts for everyone on her first TV gig even though it was just a guest role After theatre school and numerous on-stage credits, Thompson was used to the communal feeling of being backstage—especially the tradition of exchanging opening- and closing-night presents. When she landed her first job in TV—a single-episode arc as a lesbian bootlegger in the 1930s on Cold Case—she made everyone gifts to mark the start and end of the shoot. “Well, I tried to give everyone wrap gifts,” she recalled, laughing, “but everyone had left already!” Too bad for them, because they didn’t get the mixed CDs she’d lovingly made, full of period-accurate jazz tunes.

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5. DaCosta tried to one-up Thompson’s gift-giving Thompson still gives elaborate wrap gifts, DaCosta said, but after Hedda, the director bested her by giving the actor a first folio edition of The Tempest. “I was trying to live up to you, babe,” said DaCosta.

6. Thompson and DaCosta met with past Heddas to develop their version of the character DaCosta and Thompson, who also produced the film, knew they needed to have a new take on Hedda’s over-130-year-old story. So they watched every past production they could and met with actors (like the iconic British star Fiona Shaw) who had played the titular character before. They found that each person had their own opinion on Hedda. One unnamed actor thought that Hedda was very “kind,” which Thompson found funny. Her own version of Hedda is messy, more like a Real Housewife, Newman-Bremang said. “Yes!" Thompson replied. “The Real Housewives of Kent!”

7. Thompson never finished her Grey’s Anatomy arc One of Thompson’s first roles was on Grey’s, where she played a teenage girl who finds out she has ovarian cancer on the night of her prom. “I’m on my way to prom, and I’m going to have sex with my boyfriend, and then something goes wrong and I have to go to the hospital,” Thompson recalled. She was supposed to come back later in the season for one of those classic Grey’s-character deaths, but she landed another project in the meantime, so her character was recast. “Someone else died for me,” she said.

8. Thompson and Ryan Coogler fought to keep her character’s disability in the Creed films When she was cast as Adonis Creed’s partner, Bianca, a musician, Thompson was determined to create a new kind of love interest. She and director Ryan Coogler drew on their experiences with family members who had hearing loss and decided to make this part of Bianca’s character. But the studio bigwigs were wary, so when shooting began, Thompson made sure to wear her hair down to hide her character’s hearing aids until the execs warmed to the concept. “I knew it would take weeks for them to get comfortable with the idea,” she said. Thompson and Coogler triumphed, and in the second and third Creed films, Bianca’s hearing loss becomes more central: the two lead characters have a deaf daughter and become fluent in sign language. By the third film, there are full conversations in ASL.