Hedda

In the new film Hedda, Tessa Thompson plays a woman bored with her dull husband, and who devilishly manipulates the affections of everyone in her orbit. Writer/director Nia DaCosta makes some bold changes in this adaptation of the classic Henrik Ibsen play Hedda Gabler, and sets almost all of the action during a lavish party gone awry. But this is not your grandmother’s Hedda. It’s sexy, chaotic, and, above all, messy as hell. It’s streaming on Prime Video. Follow Pop Culture Happy Hour on Letterboxd at letterboxd.com/nprpopculture https://letterboxd.com/nprpopculture/ See pcm.adswizz.com https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:19Aisha Harris?

  You might already be familiar with "Heda Gobbler," the classic Henrik Ibsen play. It's about a woman bored with her dull husband and who devilishly manipulates the affections of everyone in her orbit. Well, the intoxicating new film "Heda," starring Tessa Thompson, is not your grandmother's "Heda." It's sexy, chaotic, and above all, messy as hell. I'm Aisha Harris, and today we're talking about "Heda" on Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR.

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• 1:59Aisha Harris?

  Joining me today is culture commentator and co-host of the iHeart Radio Podcast, High Key, Ryan Mitchell. Welcome back, Ryan.

• 2:05Speaker 04

  Hi, so happy to be back.

• 2:07Aisha Harris?

  Lovely to have you here. Also with us is Soraya Nadia McDonald. She's a cultural critic, journalist, and the senior criticism editor for The Rumpus. Hello, Soraya.

• 2:16Speaker 05

  Hello, hello.

• 2:17Aisha Harris?

  Lovely to have you both here. This is gonna be a fun conversation, because this movie's fun. Dark, but fun. So, Hedda's set in 1950s England and stars Tessa Thompson as Hedda, a general's daughter. She's recently wed George Tesman, an academic played by Tom Bateman, and convinced him to buy a sprawling estate they cannot afford. Filmmaker Nia DaCosta makes some bold changes in this adaptation and sets almost all of the action during a lavish party gone awry. And the guest list is an assortment of characters from George's stuffy professional world and Hedda's bohemian social circle.

• 2:52Speaker 06

  You'll meet my friends. I'll meet your colleagues.

• 2:55Speaker 07

  I have friends too, Hedda. Don't be rude. It's your friends, your friends.

• 2:59Speaker 06

  Trust me, George, they're well behaved and well bred. And Greenwood will love them in you, by extension.

• 3:04Speaker 07

  Yes, well, you better had.

• 3:06Aisha Harris?

  One guest is Eileen Loveborge, played by Nina Haas. Eileen and Hedda once had a rocky romance, and they obviously still have some unfinished business. And it so happens that Eileen is up for the same university position as George, which gives Hedda all the ammunition she needs to maniacally orchestrate the evening for her own selfish benefit. It's streaming now on Prime Video, which means we should mention that Amazon supports NPR and pays to distribute some of our content. Ryan, I'm gonna start with you. Did you enjoy your time at this fabulous soiree that we have here?

• 3:40Speaker 04

  I have two words, and it's queer icon. Hedda, this film is just so, so good. You know, as someone that didn't know this film was reimagined from a play, I thoroughly enjoyed what was done here. You know that moment where you can just tell when a director loves working with an actor?

• 3:58Aisha Harris?

  Yeah.

• 3:59Speaker 04

  You know, Nia DaCosta and Tessa Thompson really just speak the same language, and I think it's really, really noticeable. And I love seeing what they create together, right? I think that's, for me, starting there.

• 4:12Aisha Harris?

  Yeah.

• 4:12Speaker 04

  But Hedda is just a fun, pure chaos queer icon. Y'all thought y'all liked Meghan? Nah, this is the girl that we should be celebrating. I need Hedda all over the billboard. Hedda for Pride 2026.

• 4:27Aisha Harris?

  It's too late for the costumes to happen for Halloween this year, but maybe for next year.

• 4:32Speaker 04

  Absolutely.

• 4:33Aisha Harris?

  Yes, yes. Soraya, how are we feeling?

• 4:36Speaker 05

  I mostly enjoyed this. As Ryan pointed out, I love seeing Nia and Tessa work together. Nia really seems to have an eye and an ear for places that Tessa can stretch. You know, because it's a period drama, tragedy, comedy, all of the above.

• 4:58Speaker 05

  It is, I think, impossible to watch this film and not think of the partnership between Emma Stone and Jorgos Lanthimos. Particularly because so much about, I think, the production design and stylistically kind of evokes that vibe that people love so much about The Favorite.

• 5:21Aisha Harris?

  Yeah.

• 5:22Speaker 05

  And also the way Tessa, and of course, Hedda as a character, really embodies this sort of enfantée characterization, that exploration of what happens to a woman who is infantilized by her circumstances, by patriarchy, by everything, and the way folks lash out when they're sort of confined by that.

• 5:47Aisha Harris?

  Yeah. It's interesting that you mention Jorgos Lanthimos and Emma Stone, because when I think of that partnership, I think of just all the suffering that that director has inflicted upon that actress, whereas...

• 5:59Speaker 04

  Absolutely.

• 6:01Aisha Harris?

  I mean, Hedda inflicts a lot of suffering on other people, but like...

• 6:05Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 6:05Aisha Harris?

  I mean, she's suffering in the ways that like you would expect a black woman in the 1950s to suffer, but not to the extent of like begonias or something.

• 6:15Speaker 05

  No, not begonias.

• 6:16Aisha Harris?

  I also understand that sort of dynamic and to speak to both of your points of how this is a movie where like you can tell that the director really has locked in and that the star has locked in and they have this sort of symbiotic relationship. Their first partnership together was Little Woods, which is like a radically different movie from this. And that was DaCosta's first feature film as a director. That's a very small film. It's very insular, indie, and now we have both of them going big with this film and...

• 6:45Speaker 04

  I mean, don't forget the marbles, please. I know everyone hated it, but I loved it. It was a good time. All right, all right.

• 6:51Aisha Harris?

  Okay.

• 6:52Speaker 04

  It was a fun also stretch to the other side.

• 6:55Aisha Harris?

  Yeah.

• 6:55Speaker 05

  Well, that's true.

• 6:56Aisha Harris?

  That's what I find so fascinating about Nia DaCosta as a filmmaker, because every movie she's made so far, and she's made four, plus she has the 28 Years Later franchise, that's her next one after this. But every movie has been radically different in terms of vibe and genre. And to me, this is her most successful thus far. I love how she stretches what this story can do and how she makes it so that this is set in the mid-century England. You have Tessa Thompson, who I think is just fantastic in period pieces.

• 7:29Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 7:29Aisha Harris?

  Period, like Sylvie's love, passing.

• 7:32Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 7:32Aisha Harris?

  Give it all to me.

• 7:33Speaker 04

  All of them.

• 7:34Aisha Harris?

  And I love sort of like the fact that Tessa understands that Hedda herself is a performance. Like, she is someone who is an outsider. And one of my little quibbles, and this could have been speaking to me, like where I was when I saw this the first time. I've watched it twice now. And the first time, a lot of little details about Hedda kind of rushed by me, and I didn't quite understand.

• 7:56Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 7:57Aisha Harris?

  Yes. Let's, let's talk about that.

• 7:59Speaker 04

  I'm so happy you brought that up, because for me, it also took twice to watch this.

• 8:03Aisha Harris?

  Yeah.

• 8:03Speaker 04

  One, I want to start with the accent work. I think what Hedda's overall doing is fine, but it was a little rough to understand some of the dialogue, except for the second time, when I was really able to like, oh, tie in these really important like plot pieces to what was actually happening in the story. And I think really succeed is how she portrays the nuances of this character, right? Especially being that this character is no longer in its original state, being a white woman, but is actually a mixed-race woman.

• 8:33Speaker 05

  And a bastard.

• 8:34Speaker 04

  Yeah, illegitimate daughter of a highly respected general born in society.

• 8:38Aisha Harris?

  Yeah.

• 8:38Speaker 04

  Right? And what I did feel like was lacking, what I wish was painted more in the dialogue, was how this 1950 world that they were set and allowed that to happen? Because it's not like she's passing, you know? This is a black woman, like she knows that. And I think the world felt... A little raceless at times and you had to really pay attention to those specific moments that recognize those intersectionalities.

• 9:03Aisha Harris?

  Yeah.

• 9:04Speaker 04

  I feel like they were centering the fact that she was a woman and a queer woman, but really nothing else. Like, I feel like oftentimes I felt like her blackness were in the fine print instead of like out loud. And I don't know if that was a choice by Tessa in the way that she acted it out, or if it was a choice for Nia in the dialogue to like, you have to actually like work to understand what this film is doing. Like, you can't just be a passive viewer.

• 9:27Aisha Harris?

  Yeah.

• 9:27Speaker 05

  No, I do think some of that is very subtle, but in a way that I appreciate, particularly going back to what you were saying about the fact that Hedda herself is a performer.

• 9:39Aisha Harris?

  Yeah.

• 9:39Speaker 05

  So when you think about that accent, I mean, it's so posh. It's posh in that way that there's that hint of, I don't want to say overcompensating, because it's not quite that, but you hear the way that she is kind of like arguing that she belongs in this setting.

• 10:00Aisha Harris?

  Yeah.

• 10:01Speaker 05

  In the way that she's enunciating.

• 10:03Aisha Harris?

  It sounded to me more like a transatlantic accent that you would hear an American Hollywood star from that era do. Like, it's very Catherine Hepburn.

• 10:13Speaker 06

  Best time to leave parties after something terrible's happened, but before the police come.

• 10:18Aisha Harris?

  And I don't know if that was a deliberate choice or not. For me, it worked. And to me, because this is a performance and she's so on the outside, that's how I kind of justified it in my head. But I can also understand how someone might be like, this doesn't... It's hard.

• 10:32Speaker 04

  There's a lot about this film that is so, I mean, I hate to use this buzzword, but it's so camp. And I think that that takes notes in the performance, right? Like, there's moments where it's deeply unserious, but then it strikes you back in. And like, I think Tessa does a really great thing with Hedda. And this overarching question that I feel like the film is asking, like, what do you do with freedom? What does freedom actually look like? We caught glimpses of her in those moments of freedom and then she was able to reel it back in and realize like, I don't want anyone else to catch me in this moment or ever catch me slipping as like, you know, we would say at the kitchen table in a lot of ways. It's so, it's so interesting.

• 11:14Speaker 04

  There's so many nuances of this performance that I just really thought were great and some that I was like, huh?

• 11:20Speaker 05

  Yeah, there's that tension of being to the man or born, but the wrong way.

• 11:26Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 11:26Aisha Harris?

  It's interesting to me because like, I kind of liked how subtle some of the details around her race were. Like, it didn't quite clock for me. I was a little confused as to like, was her father a white man or not? Like, the first time around, I was like, I'm not sure, like, you would expect it to be, but I also didn't want to presume because there's, we know how history goes. Like, we say these things never happened, but then we learn, oh, actually, a black person invented that, or like, an Asian person did this for, like, we learn these things. And so I didn't want to assume, but I feel like where it really comes out, one moment is where she's talking with Eileen, and Eileen is saying like, I'm disappointed in you. You could have like, been more than just someone's wife.

• 12:05Speaker 06

  You could do anything. Like what? Become a professor? Tell me, how many women are at the university teaching? Two. And they're both white, I presume? Whatever.

• 12:18Aisha Harris?

  It's like, of course, like, her options are limited. And then there's also her dynamic with Judge Brack, who is played by Nicholas Pinnock, and he is the other black person in this movie who has the like, the most time on screen with Peta. I refer to this dynamic like, oh, this is like Addison DeWitt to her Marco Channing in All About Me. Like, he is the acerbic, like, I know everything, I know your game. No one else may be willing to admit it, or maybe they're too in love with you to understand, but I know you, I've helped you buy this house. Like, there's all these little like, things that come up and the way that dynamic plays out, he knows her the best, in part because he's the other black person with some sort of power in that room.

• 13:02Aisha Harris?

  To me, that subtlety is what I liked about it. I loved that relationship. It's so twisted.

• 13:08Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 13:09Speaker 07

  You made the safe choice. The only choice, really, for someone like you. Nothing you can do now, just play the part and stay out of trouble.

• 13:21Speaker 05

  There was something very sort of like Chuck Bassian about him.

• 13:24Aisha Harris?

  Yes, yes, yes. I mean, what do we think of Nina Hoss as Eileen? Because Nina de Costa had switched the gender from Ilert in the original text, who is a man, to Eileen. And so you have that, you have this love triangle, romantic triangle, sort of, with Imogen Poots playing Thea, who is like Eileen's sort of academic partner, but also a romantic partner. And, you know, Ryan, you mentioned sort of like this idea of this movie as a queer, like queer icons all over the place. And I'm curious how that dynamic played out for you here.

• 13:58Speaker 04

  I thought it really worked. One thing that I really loved about this film is the fact that regardless of the time period, it's just yet another way of saying that queer people are always here and we simply existed throughout history and time. And I think that's really important now more than ever to like really pinpoint that. And I think this film does this really well, right? It shows the complicated nature. And I know I keep using this word, but it really does continue to ask, like, what does it mean to be fully free or courageous? And I think we even get to see that relationship to that, where Eileen ultimately held a lot of complicated feelings around who she was and the life that she was living ultimately, right? For her being sober now and getting away from Hedda, because it clearly was a toxic mess.

• 14:41Speaker 04

  And honestly, who can't relate to a toxic relationship? Tessa was so good in that dance scene where she first sees Eileen.

• 14:49Aisha Harris?

  Oh, my goodness. And then that dolly, the spiky dolly shot.

• 14:53Speaker 05

  With the floating dolly, honey.

• 14:54Speaker 04

  Oh, the floating dolly. There's something there about being like a closeted queer person. And I keep just resonating with the fact that we see these moments and pieces and glimpses of Tessa being able to like show this release of emotion at times, but then reeling it in. Because often, as a queer person, if you're closeted, you're looking around you trying to make sure that no one is clocking you. And I think with that nuance and then like the unbearable hold that Eileen also has over Hedda, right? I mean, Hedda almost shot this woman.

• 15:32Speaker 04

  She almost shot this woman.

• 15:33Aisha Harris?

  Chaos, chaos.

• 15:35Speaker 06

  Why didn't you shoot me back then? When you left? When I left. Because I knew you really wanted me to. Of course. You don't want. Coward at heart.

• 15:45Speaker 04

  I really appreciated a lot more the nuances that I think this film was able to have because of that gender flip, because of the queerness that was completely a part of the DNA of this movie.

• 15:59Aisha Harris?

  Yeah.

• 15:59Speaker 05

  And I think it works because of Nina Hoss.

• 16:02Speaker 04

  Absolutely.

• 16:02Speaker 05

  The presence that you just cannot get away from every time she is on screen. I mean, your eyes just go straight to her and that magnificent cleavage, you know, certainly helps.

• 16:14Aisha Harris?

  Oh, the way that cleavage plays a role in this

• 16:19Aisha Harris?

  critical point in the plot had an ultimate mean girl. My goodness.

• 16:23Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah.

• 16:24Speaker 04

  I was like, I literally screamed and said, Hedda, you are dead wrong for sending her into that room like that. Like, Hedda is, she's quite selfish. She's devious. She's always choosing chaos. But I do feel like she's ultimately making the choices that she's making out of survival. And at some point, I think she got addicted to the chaos and quickly became bored and resentful of the life that she actually wants.

• 16:51Speaker 07

  This is all happening because you wanted it. The house, the party, lot of money and effort was expended for you. I hope you're happy.

• 17:00Speaker 06

  Don't I look happy?

• 17:02Speaker 04

  There's a lot of things that she's chosen that she's dealing with the consequences of those choices, unfortunately, right?

• 17:07Aisha Harris?

  Absolutely. I mean, she, I think she knows deep down inside that she will never be one of them.

• 17:12Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 17:12Aisha Harris?

  Truly. Like, they will never accept her fully, no matter, she says, like, the only thing my father left me were these guns.

• 17:19Speaker 04

  Guns.

• 17:20Aisha Harris?

  Like, the guns. And it's like, both, I mean, good for you, girl, because guns are powerful. But also, presumably his other children or whoever, like, they still have their place in society. And here she is with this, like, lowly, boring, butt hot, but boring, husband who is,

• 17:40Aisha Harris?

  who is an academic and

• 17:41Speaker 04

  And one step away from a panic attack.

• 17:43Aisha Harris?

  Oh, my goodness. And clueless.

• 17:45Speaker 05

  Lord have mercy, that poor man.

• 17:46Speaker 04

  So anxious.

• 17:47Speaker 05

  You know, the other thing I think is how much this film's existence I feel like I can sort of track it's meant to be in the world because of all the things that it's pulling from that you can sort of see get us here, both in terms of like historical works, right? Because it's an Ibsen adaptation. And the fact that the themes that it's dealing with is deeply unsatisfied women who feel trapped, because that's also, right, that's a big part of A Doll's House, but also Mrs. Dalloway. But also, you know, you've got sort of like the chaotic elements of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

• 18:28Aisha Harris?

  Yeah.

• 18:28Speaker 05

  It's also sort of standing on a foundation of, I think, I was thinking about Belle.

• 18:35Aisha Harris?

  Oh.

• 18:35Speaker 05

  I was thinking about Mr. Malcolm's List. It feels very stylized and contemporary, even though the setting is 1950s Britain, that feels like shades of Saltburn.

• 18:45Aisha Harris?

  Yes, that house, absolutely.

• 18:48Speaker 05

  What speaks to me and what I love about this is knowing that, like, I grew up as a black girl in small town, North Carolina, and I watched a lot of PBS dramas, like so many. And so there's this way that Tessa gets to be in her career that I find so alluring, and I'm so happy actually exists. Do a Bronte adaptation, right? Do George Eliot. She makes the argument for more of these things and the fact that they need to exist. When we think about sort of period dramas and British period dramas in particular, there's a way that we sort of either think that, like, black folks are just, like, supposed to be

• 19:33Speaker 05

  absent from those canonical stories, or that you have to notch it up to such a degree that it's Bridgerton?

• 19:41Aisha Harris?

  Mm-hmm.

• 19:41Speaker 05

  And I think this is a little more mature.

• 19:45Aisha Harris?

  Yeah, it splits the difference. This is a play that's been done so many times, countless times.

• 19:50Speaker 05

  It's such a, as part of the canon, like, so important for so many previous actresses, right, as establishing sort of their bona fides. I mean, it's so reductive to be Like, oh, it's female Hamlet, even though I understand what they mean.

• 20:05Aisha Harris?

  No, I think that's pretty accurate, though.

• 20:07Speaker 05

  What is her Hetta Gobbler? What did she do with it? I just want to see like more work from Tessa. Just throw it at her. Give her everything because she can just do so many things.

• 20:16Speaker 04

  Tessa deserves all the things.

• 20:18Aisha Harris?

  She's got the range and I don't I don't think we talk about it enough, but we've talked about it plenty here. And Hetta is absolutely something you should definitely check out.

• 20:27Speaker 05

  And the production design is divine.

• 20:29Speaker 04

  Oh, and so was the costume design, everything.

• 20:31Aisha Harris?

  The costume design, production design, the score. Everyone was just working together, symbiotically, and I love it here. Absolutely. Well, tell us what you think about Hetta. Find us on Facebook at facebook.com/PCHH and on Letterboxd at letterboxd.com/NPRPopCulture. We'll have a link to that in our episode description. That brings us to the end of our show. Ryan Mitchell, Soraya Nadia McDonald. This was so much fun. Thank you for being here.

• 20:58Speaker 05

  Thank you so much. This was such a pleasure.

• 21:00Speaker 04

  Thank you.

• 21:01Aisha Harris?

  This episode was produced by Liz Metzger and Mike Katzip and edited by our showrunner, Jessica Reedy. Halok Min provides our theme music. Thanks for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. I'm Aisha Harris. We'll see you all next time.

• 21:17Speaker 02

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