Interview: Nina Hoss on Reshaping Ibsen’s Play With a Female, Queer Perspective Inside Nia DaCosta’s Reinterpretation ‘Hedda’
There is no better introduction to a character in film this year than when we are first introduced to Eileen Lovborg in Nia DaCosta’s latest film, Hedda. Over the course of the first twenty to thirty minutes of the film, we’ve only heard rumors and stories from Hedda (Tessa Thompson) and others about not only Eileen’s brilliance as a writer and also how she is the only obstacle standing in the way of Hedda’s husband George (Tom Bateman) landing a permanent teaching position at the college they work at, but that Eileen and Hedda were once lovers. Their romantic bond was fierce, toxic, and tragic, leading to their separation but as Eileen walks in, we get a signature double dolly shot of Hedda gliding across the room, twiddling her fingers as she’s both excited to see her former love as well as hatching a scheme that will take down Eileen as the night goes on. From this moment on, Hedda becomes a showcase for not just Thompson as the titular character, but veteran actress Nina Hoss, who marvelous work as Eileen is a brilliant examination of how someone with so much promise and intelligence can quickly lose it over the course of one night at the hands of someone they once loved.
Based on the play Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen, Eilert Lövborg is transformed in Hoss’ Eileen, a gender reversal that brought a new, exciting challenge for the German actress to play, as she joined DaCosta and Thompson on this new collaboration that brought the Little Woods director and actress back together after seven years. But it’s not just gender dynamics that Hedda is subverting, but racial, sexual relationships as well, with DaCosta creating a wholly unique world within this classic material from Ibsen; modernizing it with a confident voice we haven’t seen from the director in some time. Hoss, whom I spoke with a few years ago for her incredible work in Todd Field’s TÁR, has continued to work within independent cinema since, making films like Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World and Langue Étrangère, but with Hedda, she delivers some of her best work yet. In her review of the film out of the Toronto International Film Festival, our own Sophia Ciminello expertly stated that Hoss’ work “sensational” and that Hedda allows the actress “to stretch into a new space” that she’s yet to explore within her impressive body of work.
In my recent conversation at the 2025 Middleburg Film Festival, Hoss and I talked about her relationship to the original play, her collaboration with DeCosta and Thompson, breaking down Eileen’s complexity as a queer woman trying to make her way into a male dominated world of academia, and her take on reinterpretation classic work within our modern context. Before we began, I spoke briefly with Hoss and we chatted some about our previous conversation for TÁR, where I showed up late on the Zoom call because I got the time zone wrong for the interview. As I apologized to her, she said “no apologize needed,” and as we sat for the conversation, we joked about sitting in these fancy red leather chairs in the library of the Salamander Hotel, laughing that they made us look like either Bond villains or that they were a great way to hide yourself if you were looking at someone’s side profile, with her even briefly playing peek-a-boo. Humorous, curious, inquisitive, Nina Hoss was an absolute delight to speak to; one of our finest actors who with each new role reminds us about her incredible ability to transport us into the minds of people we’ve never seen before with an ease that’s rarely seen by many of her peers.
Ryan McQuade: I want to start from even the very beginning and your relationship with the original text. Had you had a connection with the original Ibsen play? And if so, what was your intro like into the world of Hedda and all these characters?
Nina Hoss: Well, the thing is that I’ve played Hedda for six years on the German theatre stage.
RM: Really?
NH: Yes, it was for six years or seven years or so, it’s because I always have to explain it’s not like you play her every night. It’s like because we have this repertoire system where you continuously play the play, but maybe three times a month or sometimes six times a month or so, so you have gaps. But that’s why you can play them for years. And in a way, I knew the material inside out. I studied Ibsen. I love watching Ibsen. I love Nora in A Doll House.
So in a way, I was very familiar with his women and was so surprised when Nia gave me the script and I was like, “But who is in this that I could do if… I was clear it’s not Hedda. Then I thought it can’t be theater. And then I saw she made this general rehearsal, which when you know the material well, you actually think, “Why has no one ever thought about this?” Because it makes so much sense that Eileen as a woman, because of all of these conflicts that she had, she’s going for the same job as George Tesman.
She’s competing in this academic world and all of that. Being a woman, being a queer woman in the 50s, cause that’s where she set it, all of a sudden I thought, “Oh, my God, this is so much…” I loved Lövborg, the male version isn’t nuanced and complex and all of that, but there’s so much that goes so deep. And her whole arch, the bowl of that character is just so beautifully painted by Nia. Also, because we, in the play, I don’t know if you’re familiar with it, the party, you never see the party. You just hear about it. And here she puts us all into it so it’s like a pressure chamber.
RM: It’s a different kind of claustrophobia than the play.
NS: Yeah. And you always feel because there’s this Hedda who does something to the room, to the people, and Eileen knows that’s what she’s doing and she’s fascinated and drawn to it, but at the same time, she knows how dangerous it’s going to be. So that all of a sudden became so, I don’t know, fascinating and daring and… Yeah, I was amazed that that’s possible with this play.
RM: Not only just with what Nia’s giving you with the script and this brand-new interpretation that you’re very familiar with, but then she tells you who you’re going to be working opposite in Tessa Thompson. So when you heard that as well, that’s got to be an immediate yes to work with that combo, right? The chance to work with this pair who worked wonderfully together with Little Woods.
NH: Yeah, and it’s just, in the best way, challenging. It’s just the best because they are two people you really want to collaborate with. And I found it such a great idea that Tessa is playing Hedda. This was for me, the character and the actor have found each other. It’s so mesmerizing to watch her. And I always said it’s like we’re like dancing partners. And to have someone like her who’s so skilled also, and you never pretend that that’s what the role brings in it, but you never know what comes around the corner and what her motives are and what she challenges you with. No, it is definitely, I am so appreciative to be able to be part of this whole endeavor. It was phenomenal working with those two. And also like you say, this partnership, because I know a bit about partnerships and I know how amazing it is that you challenge yourself and while you’re working on something, you think of other things already. And it’s just like something you want to support also, because you’re so curious of what that partnership will bring. Because I don’t know who else necessarily would’ve given Tessa a Hedda. And then Nia who knew straight away, “If I’m doing this, this is for Tessa, and this is what I want to do with it.” And then in a way, I’m so appreciative because I had the same feeling, they’re not excluding you in the… It’s completely the opposite, they’re inviting us all in. I think Imogen felt the same. Tom Bateman felt the same. Nicholas felt… We were really very much like an ensemble, and that’s due to those two.
RM: And then in that ensemble, you get to become part of the web that Hedda is spinning.
NH: Right. Right.
RM: You talked at the start about the gender dynamics of your character switching. But then there’s also elements within Tessa’s performance we’ve never seen from this character. And of course, this is now a queer story, and tons of the history and memories of these characters are fleshed out over the course of the film. And given the time period that Hedda is set in, we don’t normally get to see this a lot on the big screen.
NH: That’s true.
RM: So when you’re talking with Tessa and Nia about these women, you have to talk a lot about their past history because all those moments we will never see are all leading to this night within the film. So could you talk a little bit about building the relationship that’s so lived in between Eileen and Hedda, and how you want to differentiate from the original relationship in the play?
NH: You hit it on the spot, ’cause that is one of the main differences and also a big change for Tessa’s Hedda, so to speak. Because in the play, Hedda never consumes their relationships. Her and Lövborg possibly what you can read out of what they’re saying, they’ve never had sex with each other, but they’ve talked about it a lot. So Lövborg would go out, have an adventurous life, go to parties, drink, all of that, have affairs, going back to Hedda and telling her about it. That’s where their tension is. Whereas here, Hedda is someone who has been out there, who has engaged into a relationship with a woman at the time pretty much unheard of and then decides to live the life that she thinks is expected of her. And so we had to make sure what was the moment where it broke apart where she nearly killed me and then didn’t because she saw that’s what she wanted. So you can tell there’s a little twisted mind.
RM: A bit of a puzzle to their relationship?
NH: Yes, it’s a puzzle to the relationship, but also something really unresolved. And I think that’s what draws Eileen back into her facilities so to speak that she’s, “What was it? What is it? And why can’t I get rid of it? And what is this fascination with Hedda, which is so dangerous for me?” And it’s the same in the way for Hedda, because Eileen is also dangerous for her. And that’s what I also loved, because I think Nia thought about Hedda, that’s the character she wanted to talk about. And she knew Tessa was playing it, and she was then thinking about it, but something in Eilert Lövborg is not challenging enough. It’s not surprising enough for me. And what if it’s a woman? And then she explored it and then she went, “Oh, hang on. But then they’re all queer.”
So in a way, I love how that happened. It wasn’t intentional. It just all happened to be that way and it was a natural progression. And that’s how all of us felt. That’s the story we’re telling. We’re talking about humans and our crazy human condition that we sometimes don’t know why we’re doing things and why we’re not good to each other and all of them, why we’re strangely fascinated by that also. And on the side, if you wish, you can find all these topics highlighted like the queerness, the racial aspect of it, and you find it, but it’s not highlighted. And I think that’s what Nia has very intelligently done. Does that answer your question?
RM: No, it does.
NH: I kind of went weird. (Laughs)
RM: Oh, no, no. It does, because that was the thing when I was picking up as the film was going on is that she is a queer woman. She’s highly intelligent, Eileen, and you would think in most films and in modern society in that time, her sexual identity, who she’s with would be weaponized and used against her. But as she’s fighting for this job, it’s not about that. It’s about her work. This book, that is the thing that is the center of it, and that’s where Hedda hurts her the most. They know ultimately that if these two cross paths, they’re on collision for something. And that’s for us, the audience to then fully dive into what that something’s going to be.
NH: Totally.
RM: I wanted to ask you about Thea and her being in this story. From Hedda’s stories, we are told about this wild relationship with Eileen but once we meet your character, she’s more reserved. And this is where your wonderful performance shines, is when we get to see her unravel over the course of the night. And at the core of the evening is Thea, who is just trying to keep Eileen center. Could you talk about working with Imogen (Poots) and creating that relationship? It’s a very different relationship both professionally and romantically than the one that she has with Hedda.
NH: From Eileen’s perspective, I think Thea is the one, she met Eileen at a moment in her life where she just got out of this relationship with Hedda, and was probably very much lost and didn’t know where her life was going. She was heavily addicted to alcohol. She thought you can only exist with the alcohol and be brilliant with it. And she met someone in Thea who said, “You’re enough who you are and who you are without any help, and I want to work with you to bring your brilliance out.” And while doing that, Thea explores her own brilliance in a way. So she becomes someone who’s aware and probably also, I always thought through Eileen telling her how amazing she is, and how great it is what she’s coming up with and what she does… And they fall in love, and it’s a very wholesome love. Something where you then think, but why do you go back into the bear’s den? But that is, we all know what it’s like to love.
RM: I think we’re all Thea in those moments right?
NH: Exactly. She’s the one who watches the whole night and sees it all very clearly but is the only one out of the three of them who actually makes a choice. She already has made an amazing choice by getting out of her marriage, being without any security net behind her, without knowing what’s next in her life. But she knows, “I can’t live that kind of life. I know now I…” Somehow she freed herself from it. Whatever that brings. You never know. Afterwards, when we leave the film, you don’t know what happens to Thea, but it’s very strong and it’s very… Whenever I watched Imogen, I was like, there is this beautiful stubbornness in Thea, and it’s like, “I’m going to finish the reign of this lady. I’m going to find something for her..” Because she sees what is happening to the person she loves, but also in all of these relationships, there’s something transactional in it as well. So it’s just very complicated and beautifully complicated.
RM: Very much so. But also deeply tragic.
NH: Deeply tragic.
RM: For Eileen, it’s the loss of sobriety.
NH: Yes, and also the loss of her work, her status in life.
RM: But it’s also the fear and pain in everything she gave up by coming to the party. Can you talk a little bit about all that, the fact that all these characters suffer deep consequences by, using your phrase, “poke the bear” that is Hedda? Even Hedda falls victim to the destruction she’s caused.
NH: Exactly. She’s being overlooked. She’s not needed anymore. She doesn’t hold the power. And this is what this is about also, you can think about what is it that people strive for by getting power over others? What is that in us humans? That’s also in this play. And the moment that Hedda knows she’s in the hands of Brack, she loses this power over Eileen, over Brack, over George in a way, because he’s focused on getting the script up again with Thea. He’s not interested in Hedda anymore. That’s also a big theme in this whole material, the idea of power and controlling it.
And for Eileen, of course, for me, it’s really this moment, the last scene where she tells her, I just can’t do it all again. I’ve been battling all my life. And I know I’m brilliant, and I know I can write, and I try to get it out there and give the world something new to think about, and now I should do it again? Get sober again? Go into rooms full of men again and try to convince them with wit? And then the moment I turn my back, they say, ‘Get your kid off, lady,'” or whatever. This constant struggle of trying to come into your own, that to me is so beautifully written from Ibsen and Nia. In this case, it’s really written by Nia for Eileen. So that’s her tragedy.
RM: I have to ask you about your costume in the film. It is breathtaking.
NH: It’s pretty out there. (laughs)
RM: It’s pretty out there. (Laughs) I wanted to ask you about the conversations that you had about the creation of the dress because it’s such a unique look for the time. And then we can talk a little bit about the deconstruction of it…
NH: You mean when she’s getting exposed?
RM: Yes, and how that plays, I think, into her strength because in a massive moment of vulnerability, yet she’s actually her strongest in that room holding the attention and commanding court amongst a room full of men that she’s trying to gain respect and power from.
NH: When I read that scene, firstly, as an actor, you go, “Oh, my God, I can’t wait to do this. But also, it’s the core scene for the character because you see the whole struggle Eileen is always having, but also how she’s capable of facing it. So that is very empowering and breathtaking in a way. And because we knew this dress has to fulfill this one thing for the scene that she will be exposed, meant that it has to be a very light fabric that when it’s see-through. But we didn’t want her to have a flowy dress that is made of silk and just, I don’t know, like a bathing wardrobe or whatever. But also, we didn’t want to go down the Katharine Hepburn route where she could be in a suit, of course, and then maybe have a blouse like this and then would be exposed or whatever without the jacket or so.
I wanted her to be someone who’s unapologetically female, doesn’t fit the cliché of a lesbian woman, who doesn’t work with her femininity how Hedda is working it, because she basically cares about her brain, but she’s also a female that comes into the room and says, “Here I am. You can’t overlook me.: So the skirt had to take some space. I wanted her to… or that’s what we all discussed. It would be great that she has a corset nevertheless, which is within the time period. But because also Eileen enters the room and knows she will be vulnerable because it’s for the first time in two months that she’s facing the seduction of having a drink, so she needs structure and something to hold herself and to remind her that this is not going to happen tonight. And so it was this finding the balance of it, but also that it’s slightly lopsided. It’s not perfect. It’s also a bit odd and maybe too loud even, because she’s not that. That’s not what she’s about, but she may have had this dress for 15 years in her wardrobe or something.
RM: And she’s been waiting to use it?
NH: And she’s been waiting to use it. And she’s flamboyant. She’s a woman, I was always thinking of sheer height, for example, the height report. That was, to me, lucky enough, the documentary came out while we were working on this, and I said, “Ah, that’s what it is.” It’s something groundbreaking that she puts out there about female sexuality that changes the look for men and women onto female sexuality. But her not hiding, embracing herself as a woman, putting makeup on, having jewelry, having a fancy dress on, being surrounded by bulimia and so not hiding away, that’s how this dress came about.
RM: Lastly, I wanted to ask you about reinterpretation and reimagining. We talked a little bit about that earlier, but when speaking for Tár, Cate (Blanchett) and yourself talk about how women don’t normally get roles like that. You get to showcase a different range of tools with a performance like that. And I think that in relation to what you’re doing here with Nia and Tessa, and how you are creating those opportunities from the past and making them modern. What do you think of the idea of reinterpretation as a vehicle to spark change in what we’ve seen before on screen?
NH: I’m all in for creating new material. You don’t necessarily have to reinterpret it. It’s maybe a great vehicle to see what’s possible. Because I think why we feel so at home and seen when we watch who Eileen is because there’s the male and the female parts in it. I think men can see themselves in the struggle of Eileen and women can see themselves in the struggle of Eileen. And that’s who we as women feel we are and probably you as men feel you are. I think we have to be more, how do you call it, embrace the fact that we tell these characters that we all are and reinterpret ourselves, show ourselves as we feel we are and not how we’ve been told for centuries who we’re supposed to be. That’s also Hedda’s struggle. So in a way, I don’t know if we always need to reinterpret classical characters that are there, but… because they have great writers out there, and I feel a slight fear maybe of going there, of creating new characters that are all of that.
RM: But then you get to do something like this and it shows that possibility.
NH: Exactly, and that everyone can relate to it. And for that, it’s maybe great to take the means to take a classical piece and show, listen, it’s not so far away from each other. We’re basically all talking about the same thing. So yeah, I don’t know. I’ve said that before, but I always feel maybe as a classical character, I would like to see, I don’t know if I need to do it, but I just always thought, “What about Richard III being a woman?”
RM: Yes!
NH: I don’t know if it works with the whole construction like with Lady Anne and all that. I don’t know if that’s interesting. But the core aspect of it could be someone who gets so mean and so dictator-like, what if that’s a woman?
RM: It would be fascinating. What would that look like?
NH: Yeah, exactly. That could be very interesting, for example. But I really hope we get to tell our stories from our perspective the way we feel today and how we feel challenged in that, that we found something and it looks like people want to take that away again. So this could be so amazing that we… and I think it’s happening. It’s happening, so I’m looking out for all these lovely works from writers that dare to go there.
RM: One project at a time, right?
NH: Exactly.
RM: Thank you so much for your time, Nina.
NH: Thank you. Thank you.
Hedda is currently available to stream on Prime Video.
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