Tessa Thompson

Source: BFI

Tessa Thompson

US actor and producer Tessa Thompson called the industry’s focus on film comps “very limiting” and discussed the struggles of making independent film while speaking at the BFI London Film Festival (LFF). 

“So often what you can make is relative to what’s been made before and what is successful”, said Thompson during her LFF Screen Talk on Monday, October 13.

The actor and producer called film comparables like these, used by studios to assess the potential of a new project, “very limiting because there are films that come along and they change the way we think entirely about what’s possible”.

Thompson, who is at LFF for the UK premiere of Nia DaCosta’s Hedda, suggested that Jordan Peele’s 2017 horror Get Out “broke open” a genre space that has “been kind of relegated to only a certain kind of work”.

She said her production company Viva Maude, founded in 2020, was built in the hope of “creating new ‘comps’ - the company is interested in that kind of storytelling.”

Throughout the 75-minute talk, the actor and producer recalled the struggles in getting Boots Riley’s Sorry to Bother You and Rebecca Hall’s Passing greenlit. 

“It took a while to make that movie”, said Thompson, referring to the 2021 Netflix feature Passing, which she exec-produced. “So many people said, ‘We’ll make that movie, but only if we make it in colour. We’ll make that movie, but only if you can make the white male character have a bigger role.’” 

She said Hall would call her often, asking if she was still interested in the project as the director “stuck to her guns” in wanting to make the movie the way she envisioned it. “I’ll stay with you until we can get the funding”, said Thompson. “And, eventually, we did.”

Thompson, whose production company signed with CAA in July this year, made clear that she wants “to make something that is probing.” This pursuit led her to star in and produce Hedda, coupled with “really, really trust[ing]” DaCosta who met Thompson at the Sundance Labs whilst workshopping the script for Little Woods. That film would go on to become their first collaboration, the second being 2023’s The Marvels.  

Hedda is an adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s 1891 stage play and follows the daughter of a general who is trapped in a house and a marriage she does not want. 

“There’s so few women of colour that have played Hedda and I thought that was really interesting”, said Thompson. “It’s not the reason we made it, but I do think there is an interesting conversation about what gets to be canon, and who gets to make it.” Thompson confessed that during filming she “became conscious, - I’m not sure I would have the opportunity were it not for a filmmaker that was interested in putting people like me in the centre of a frame.”

Hedda will arrive in select UK and Irish cinemas on October 24 via MetFilm before streaming on Amazon Prime Video.

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