Vogue: I confess I didn’t know anything about Hedda Gabler before seeing this.
Nia DaCosta: That’s such a good way to go into it. If you watch 10 Things I Hate About You, you don’t necessarily have to read Taming of the Shrew. It’s its own thing but heavily inspired by this play that I love. I wanted to pull out everything I loved about Hedda and build a world around her that emphasized those things.
What did you see in it that hadn’t been expressed as strongly in other interpretations?
Hedda’s deeply sad but also funny, quite cunning, and slightly ridiculous. She feels really deeply but also feels empty, and I thought all that dimensionality was fascinating. I also found the play quite sexy and felt there should be more of that. There’s yearning, an unrequited, unconsummated obsession, and also a predatory, gamelike situation.
Did any themes feel especially urgent in this moment?
Hedda is a woman hemmed in by society in a very specific way, which relates to the limitations we have put onto us as well as the limitations we put on ourselves—sometimes because of the world we were born into, or our trauma, or our fear. I found all that stuff really human and thought it was a nice way to talk about it by showing this woman who’s very difficult to get on the side of. Yes, she can do terrible, unforgivable things, but you can see her dying to live, yearning to love, and falling short in the end because of those limitations, external and internal.
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