Tessa Thompson and Hedda cast on the "fascinating" process of modernising iconic play

Henrik Ibsen's 1891 play Hedda Gabler has been adapted for the screen many times – with Ingrid Bergman, Diana Rigg and Glenda Jackson just some of the legendary actors to have embodied the title character – but never before have we seen a version quite like Nia DaCosta's new production.

The film – which is simply titled Hedda – is a lavishly staged and brilliantly acted reinvention of the classic play, with Tessa Thompson shining in the lead part aided by some top notch support from Imogen Poots, Nina Hoss, Tom Bateman and Nicholas Pinnock.

While DaCosta's film is still very recognisably a version of Ibsen's play, a number of interesting changes have been made by the director – not least the fact that the setting, in terms of both place and time, has been altered.

Rather than staging the action in late 19th century Norway, the events of this version are all transposed to 1950s London, with Da Costa explaining that sticking with the original setting would have felt "limiting".

"I instinctively was drawn to the '50s, because I feel like it was this decade where everyone's trying to figure out how to be after World War Two," she explained during an exclusive interview with RadioTimes.com. "How to be back to the nuclear family, how society should be run.

"A lot of beautiful, important things were born under the trauma of World War Two, but I also think this energy of repression was really prominent in the '50s because of it. And I just thought that'd be really fascinating to set this story there. And speaking of repression, I think England makes a lot of sense for that!"

That shift in setting is just one of many notable alterations. The choice to set the whole play over one night at a raucous party thrown by Hedda and her husband George (Bateman) gave DaCosta the opportunity to add plenty of pizzazz to the piece, while perhaps most crucially the gender of one key character – Hedda's former love – is switched.

Both these changes were ones that made Thompson even more eager to get involved with the film, which reunited her with DaCosta after they previously collaborated on the latter's feature directorial debut Little Woods in 2018.

“In the original source material, all the action happens off stage, and then characters come back," she explains. "In this one, it all happens one night at this party, and you get to see it all in real time.

"I think also what Nia did with changing some of the fundamental elements – with making Eilert into Eileen – I think she really put three women at the centre of this story, in a way that I found really fascinating."

In addition to adding a queer angle to the text, the aforementioned gender change also allowed for a nice coincidence when it came to the casting, with the new role played by German star Nina Hoss – who had previously starred as Hedda Gabbler herself in a stage production in Berlin.

"I'd had no idea she played it," Thomson admits. "I had done a bunch of research to try to watch all these other productions, but that one was not in any of the archives. So it was only when we came to rehearsal and talked about it that she mentioned it in passing.

"And then I was like, 'What? How? Who? What'd you do? How'd you do it?' I talked to her, and she didn't tell me that much, except that her Hedda has a band and sang, which I thought that was really cool!"

For her part, Hoss was very curious to see what Thompson did with her version of the character.

"I always say that Hedda doesn't belong to anyone," she says. "It's just such a well written female character that no one can get it right or whatever – you just bring your own thoughts, experiences, wishes, or whatever it is, into her.

"No one will ever understand Hedda and all of us actors highlight something else in her, what is more personal to you," she adds. "And that was so interesting for me to see, Tessa was very much drawn to the fact that Hedda thinks she needs to use her femininity for her manipulation, and that cages her in slightly because she doesn't allow her brilliance to shine through."

The fact that the play was already so familiar to her from her stint on stage also made the changes DaCosta had made all the more exciting for Hoss – who explains that she basically had "a completely new play in front of me" due in large part to Eilert becoming Eileen.

"It just makes so much sense that I thought, 'Why did no one ever think about this before?," she says of the change.

"[And] what Nia did with the material – putting it in the '50s, where us females still are pretty much under social pressure and stuff – it was like working on new material. It was so refreshing."

Hedda is streaming on Prime Video from Wednesday 29th October 2025.

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