If you’ve already been lucky enough to read my Hedda review after seeing the new Prime Video movie (which released in select theaters on October 24 ahead of its streaming release on October 29), you might know what I mean when I say it’s terribly fun, but terribly serious.
An adaptation of the famed Henrik Ibsen play Hedda Gabler for the modern age, Hedda sees Tessa Thompson star as our leading lady, embroiled in both a plot to get her husband George (Tom Bateman) the work promotion he wants, and a love triangle with George’s rival Eileen (Nina Hoss) and her new lover Thea (Imogen Poots).
While watching, I was as immersed in the excitement as much as any guest actually attending Hedda’s soiree, but the more I thought about the new movie, the more I was left with conflicting feelings.
Director Nia DaCosta’s vision for Hedda includes gender-swapped characters (Eileen was originally a man called Ejlert), a lesbian love triangle, and a non-white lead. As a queer woman, I immediately latch onto these changes. How can I not watch Nina Hoss as another haughty lesbian after her star turn in 2022 movie Tár?
But then I came across this fantastic interview by the Independent with DaCosta and Thompson where one quote struck me: “I feel hesitant sometimes to politicize any of these things but then I realize things end up being politicized sometimes just by virtue of what you look like or who you are,” Thompson says.
I then realized that audiences might be taking away the wrong message from Hedda. Of course it’s wonderful that DaCosta has effortlessly intertwined representation through the movie, but are we doing the work as a whole a disservice by prioritising these details as the most important in the film?
Do we care too much about what meets us at face value? As it’s not something I’ve got a definitive answer to, I decided to ask the Hedda cast directly… and boy, what a discussion that led to.
‘I think that it matters to reinvent something’: Hedda cast on why representation isn’t clear cut
“What a question!” Poots tells me when I throw all of my thinking at her and Hoss. It takes a moment for the pair to collect their thoughts, with Hoss repeatedly telling me how “interesting” the premise is (included purely for fangirl purposes, I can’t lie).
But it’s Poots who sums it all up incredibly deftly. “Well, I think that it matters to reinvent something. I think that’s really cool, especially when the writing is strong enough. And obviously Ibsen, as an ideas man, those ideas are archetypal and still very relatable about the human experience.
“But at the same time, we were saying that there’s a lot of talk about, ‘let’s take this franchise and change the protagonist to a woman, and then we’ve got a progressive franchise.’ It’s like, ‘well, why don’t we just write something new and great for a woman? That would be really cool, too.’
“There’s a lot of brilliant writers out there who are yearning to write something great for people, so it would be cool to take more risks with original ideas as well, rather than keep kind of hashing out the old ones.
“I think one of the coolest things, asides from the fact that Tessa Thompson was cast in the lead part – and that’s so so huge and a big moment – is also that Eileen is now added to the canon of great female characters.”
“Exactly,” Hoss adds. “She’s there for anyone to grab now.”
It’s all very true and valid, and ultimately, I like the fact that Hedda leaves us with more to chew over the more we think about it. I think we need more of that, generally speaking, as an audience who battle against critical thinking being wiped out by AI and social media.
If another version of Ibsen’s play is going to exist, I’m very glad that it’s this one. It gets a lot right, and above all, is a cracking piece of entertainment.
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