Tom Bateman explains how key Succession character inspired his performance in Hedda

Nia DaCosta's lavish new update of Henrik Ibsen's iconic play Hedda Gabler has just been added to Prime Video – meaning you can now enjoy Tessa Thompson's tremendous performance as the title character from the comfort of your own home.

Thompson is joined in the film by an impressive supporting cast, and one of her co-stars is Tom Bateman, who takes on the role of Hedda's husband George. While this is a role that has been played by numerous actors on both stage and screen, Bateman actually found inspiration for his performance from a rather different source: Tom Wambsgans from Succession.

"When I first met Nia about this and we were talking about the film, I'd just finished – relatively recently – Succession," he explained in an exclusive interview with RadioTimes.com. "And I thought, what she's written on the page, there was so Matthew Macfadyen's character from that.

"I thought there are so many elements of that this man who sort of laughed at and he's seen as this slight sort of idiot, but there's this angry kind of bully as well, underneath this burning ambition to be part of this world, but to be superior to it.

"And I mentioned it to Nia, and she went, 'Oh.' And she literally flipped her notes and had written his name down. And I went, 'Oh my God.'"

Bateman added that while he had already been dead set on the role, seeing that DaCosta had the "exact same thought for what he should be", only made him all the more determined to take it on.

"I think effectively what I was looking at there was the brilliance of Matthew Macfadyen doing what he did with a character that could be very basic and one note," he added. "To go, actually, there is so much more that makes this person tick... tap into that ugly underbelly of what this person is."

One of the other key characters in the play – Judge Roland Brack – is played in this version by Nicholas Pinnock. And although he didn't draw on any other characters in the way that Bateman did, he was very interested in how DaCosta's script brought out new qualities in Brack that perhaps haven't been seen in previous adaptations.

"I knew Brack from the play, and in the play I always felt he was in the shadow of George," Pinnock explained. "I always felt there was more that he could have contributed to the schemings and dealings of what was going on."

He added that by shifting the action such that it all takes place over the course of a party on a single night, the character was able to exist in an environment "where he thrived".

"So what Nia brought to the screenplay was great," he continued. "There wasn't any one character or any other characters from other pieces that I felt I needed to channel or understand to play Brack, because she put it all on the page."

As for Imogen Poots – who plays the role of Thea Clifton in the film – she pinpointed one key moment in DaCosta's script when she realised she had to play the role.

"There was one moment that really struck me as I was reading the screenplay, and it's Thea alone when she first arrives at the house upstairs in the bedroom," she said.

"She removes her wedding ring and she throws it across the room, the idea being that it lands in the fire or something. And I was just like, 'I'm in!' I found that such a interesting image and kind of set up for a character.

"And then, of course, over the course of the story, she starts as very much a wallflower and then graduates into this person who's really paying attention to her instincts and acting on her impulses, ironically, in a way that Hedda does not. So [they were] just really cool ingredients for a person!"

Hedda is now streaming on Prime Video.

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