Filmmaker Nia DaCosta and the cast of her latest work, Hedda, an adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s 1891 play Hedda Gabler, discuss DaCosta’s new take on the material, including a gender swap for one central character, with ScreenRant.

The titular character Hedda, played by Tessa Thompson in her second collaboration with DaCosta since leading her feature debut Little Woods back in 2018, focuses on the newlywed finding herself “manipulating and pushing against social constraints across one party.” The rest of the ensemble includes Imogen Poots as Thea Clifton, Tom Bateman as George Tesman, Nicolas Pinnock as Judge Roland Brack, and Nina Hoss as the gender-bent Eileen Lovborg, Hedda’s former lover.

Hoss expressed her eagerness to play the gender-swapped role and what audiences will think of the change, saying,

I think the audiences will see the change as a luxury as well, because having this woman put in there in the midst of it all challenges everyone around her in a different way and, in particular, of course, Hedda. So that was the main thing where I thought that was the biggest change for me.

For Bateman, who plays Hedda’s husband, this significant change brought “a new layer” to the rivalry between George and Lovborg as they are just as much romantic rivals as they are professional. Bateman states that while George thinks he knows the Hedda he is married to, but “she just won’t conform to this role that he wants her to play.” With that, the Based on a True Story star stated,

And so that comes with frustration, a bit of anger and resentment. But yeah, a hundred percent fear. And I think he’s not idiotic. He does understand that this woman is doing something that he doesn’t understand and that puts him in a very strange position.

With the rivalry between Eileen and George, Bateman says that Lovburg being a woman “deepens the tension between them,” adding,

To have it be a woman that’s done this thing, that him as a man who he sees women as beneath him, it challenges him on a whole new level. Everything he thinks about the entire world is being challenged throughout this piece.

With Thompson, when asked how she had gotten to understand the character of Hedda so well, the Annihilation star said, 

I think one of the reasons that Hedda Gabler has compelled and captivated audiences for centuries is that I do think that all of us have some murky, unsavory things buried inside of us as humans. And I think the time in which we live, the ways in which we’re socialized, the things that we’re told that we can and cannot do…And while I don’t agree with everything that she does, I think fundamentally where it comes from, which is to try to live a life that is your own and try to find a real sense of purpose. I think that that, fundamentally, is a really human thing…I think that we all have a tiny bit of Hedda inside of us, if we’re really honest…I think we have little shadow selves inside of us.

For DaCosta, the filmmaker who also wrote the script, wanted “everything to include character” in the film’s visual style. The Candyman director added,

I wanted to give information to the audience, so the framing, the lens choices, the way we lit every single scene, every moment was very specific to where we were in the story…And so every choice we made visually was super specific to where we were in the story, where the characters are going, where they just came from.

Hedda was released in select U.S. theaters on October 22nd before becoming available to stream on Amazon Prime Video on October 29th.