Henrik Ibsen’s “Hedda Gabler”dates back to 1891, but writer-director Nia DaCosta (“Little Woods,” “Candyman,” “The Marvels”) pulls it out of 19th-century Norway and drops it into mid-20th-century England. She also changes the gender of a crucial character and sets most of the play’s action in a grand mansion during a night of bacchanalia and treachery. What remains timeless is Ibsen’s world of vicious power struggles between characters (particularly women) imprisoned by the mores of the day.
What made you want to adapt “Hedda Gabler” for this time?
DaCosta: You know what’s funny? I wasn’t even thinking about it being timely. I was just compelled by it. It haunted me in a really beautiful way. I thought the world that Ibsen wrote was fascinating, and I spent some time trying to figure (Hedda) out. (Laughs) I was like, “What is her deal?” But then I realized the point wasn’t to figure her out. The point was to start to ask questions about yourself. It really frees you up to stay in the confusion and make some choices as you’re adapting.
Turning Eilert into Eileen causes a seismic shift in the play’s power struggles.
That was one of the first changes I made. I really loved the idea of Hedda being a woman in pursuit of personhood and agency and power, trying to free herself. And I wanted to have another woman dealing with the same things but choosing a different path. I thought that would be compelling and interesting, and I also felt that Eilert made more sense as a woman, frankly. That was super exciting and opened up a lot of doors.
It feels as if you were already taking “Hedda Gabler” into an arena where it’s dealing with the issue of race, and now you’re dealing with the issue of sexuality on top of that. It’s getting into issues that perhaps weren’t there originally.
Oh, absolutely. I think the reason why it works and doesn’t feel like I’m forcing things. These changes happened when I decided to cast Tessa Thompson and then when I decided to make Eilert into Eileen. I wasn’t trying to like prove a point with race or with sexuality, so it ended up just being really lived in. It was not didactic, but about real people and how those aspects of their humanity deepened and added nuance to what Ibsen was doing. And that was really, really fun.
What were the trickiest parts of doing the adaptation?
I think it was really wanting to feel like there was a cinematic imperative for the film. I’m not just taking a play and having people talk in a room on film. But my way of breaking out of the play was to make it set over one night at a party. Some of my favorite films are set in one location at a party that gets out of hand. And also, it let me play with the murder-mystery tropes. Murder mysteries take place in one location and they’re super engaging and you have all these characters and you’re watching all this action. And so that, to me, was how I kind of overcame that initial challenge.
Typically, when you think of taking a play and making it more cinematic, the solution is to take it off the stage and add more locations. You went in the opposite direction and set it all in one place.
Yeah. I get doing that, but I also feel like sometimes you’re just really stretching it. If you could bring the action to one place, then you get the excitement of feeling different locations, but without doing it.
That one place is such an elaborate and crucial location, both the house and the grounds. Did you spend a lot of time trying to get that right?
For sure. My production designer Cara Brower went up and down the British Isles and she looked at, like, 200 houses. And once we found the house, everything fell into place, and then I could really imagine, OK, this is where this happens, this is where that happens. And when we had rehearsal, I could figure out the blocking, I could figure out exactly where everyone was going to be and how it would flow from room to room and scene to scene.
Coming out of “The Marvels,” was it important for you to do something more intimate?
Absolutely. I love making big films and I will make another huge tentpole movie again. But I’ve always wanted to do a variety of things. In my first few films, I was growing exponentially each movie. And then with this one it was like, OK, I’ve gotten to the top of the mountain in terms of size. I feel like I can do anything now, and what I really want to do next is this. It’s so nice to take all of the education I got from making bigger films and bring it to a more intimate setting.
How difficult was it to get an Ibsen adaptation financed and distributed?
It wasn’t, actually. It really was a very straightforward process. Orion came in super early and really believed in the movie. And we continued to get support when Amazon took over MGM. I feel really lucky, because I feel like now perhaps I would not get money for this movie. (Laughs) It’s a slight miracle that it exists, but I’m glad it does.
This year, we have seen “Hedda,” a couple of different takes on “Hamlet” and Guillermo del Toro doing “Frankenstein.” Do you think there’s something about these classics that makes them feel vital 100 or 200 or 400 years later?
A thousand percent. And I think there’s a real commonality between “Hamlet,” “Frankenstein” and “Hedda.” These are all very controversial, very complicated, very dynamic characters that force us to engage with our humanity. And I think that is why these stories can be adapted in so many ways and stand the test of time, because we’ll always be trying to figure out who the hell we are. It’s no accident that those are the kinds of classical texts that are getting adapted again and again.
A version of this story first appeared in The Race Begins issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine. Read more from the issue here.
