Tessa Thompson and Nia DaCosta reunited at the Toronto International Film Festival for the world premiere of Hedda, a bold reimagining of Henrik Ibsen’s classic play Hedda Gabler. After their first collaboration on 2018’s Little Woods, the duo returns with a vivid, genre-bending adaptation that moves the action into the 1950s while holding onto the story’s emotional core.

Written and directed by DaCosta, the film also stars Imogen Poots, Nicholas Pinnock, Tom Bateman and Nina Hoss.

Thompson stars in the title role, portraying a woman caught between repression and rebellion. During a post-screening Q&A, DaCosta broke down what makes Hedda so compelling. “She acts on the intrusive thought, which the rest of us are like, ‘No, don’t do that.’ Obviously, that’s terrible. And she’s someone who’s tortured… afraid to free herself and afraid to stay locked in,” she said. “She’s a malignant energy, but she’s also hilarious. And she’s also fighting so hard to be able to love.”

DaCosta and Thompson break down the character.

DaCosta added that while Hedda’s behavior can be cruel, her instincts are painfully human. “There’s no excuse for them, just to let you know where my morality lies, but you understand the impetus. She’s reactive. Every time she does something terrible—or even when she tries to do something loving—she’s immediately triggered into action.”

The director also shared that Thompson was her only choice for the role. “When we were making Little Woods, I’d pitch her a new movie every day after lunch,” she joked. “And when I wrote Hedda, I just knew it would be her.”

For Thompson, stepping into a character as storied as Hedda Gabler meant first doing her homework—and then letting it go. “I watched every production I could get my hands on, read reviews, really tried to engage with it,” she said. “But I had to throw it away, because if I thought about it too much, I couldn’t find myself in it.”

She also spoke about the dynamic energy that came from working alongside co-stars like Hoss and Poots. “Our Hedda is as much constructed by my performance as it is Nina’s and Imogen’s,” she said. “We wanted to explore the difficulty of having agency as a human. And then you add the particulars of a given time, and it gets even harder.”

Referencing Ibsen’s ending, Thompson noted, “In the original, spoiler alert, Hedda dies. I think this Hedda is a woman who’s dying to live. And I think these are two women that are dying to live in different ways, too. What I made, they made with me—I couldn’t have done any of it without them. And that set me free, too.”

When is ‘Hedda’ in theaters and Prime Video?

The film is in select theaters on Oct. 23 and will be on Prime Video on Oct. 29.