Megan McLachlan talks to Hedda herself — Tessa Thompson — about her character’s most honest moment and what she thinks of director Nia DaCosta’s updated ending.

There’s a small moment toward the end of Act I of Nia DaCosta’s Hedda, based on Henrik Ibsen’s play, where Tessa Thompson stretches like a cat before composing herself. It speaks to the physicality of the role, how Thompson shows audiences a side we’ve never seen before.

“That moment is an interesting one because that was not scripted at all, this moment of release,” says Thompson. “As scripted, she’s supposed to come down the stairs. She checks herself in the mirror and composes herself and moves along. And I had always intended to perform it that way.”

Since DaCosta changed Ibsen’s setting from 1890s Norway to 1950s England, Thompson considered the time period’s repression and how she might physically show that. In the scene that precedes this moment, Eileen (Nina Hoss) asks her the question, “Are you braver now?” And of course, the answer is no. Hedda is not prepared to take a chance and leave her marriage.

“She cares too much about proximity to power, about having this wealth,” she says. “She can’t make a brave choice. And I think there’s all of this incredible amount of rage and self-loathing.”

But this moment also speaks to a rare expression of honesty from Hedda.

“So much of the piece is about this person who’s trapped inside of a performance. A performance of femininity, a performance of this marriage, a performance of society, a performance of straightness, all of these things, right? And so I thought, there aren’t many private moments where you can see that performance drop and the cost, and then see that performance come back again. And so I thought that’s a really interesting moment.”

That Hedda Movie Ending – Spoilers Ahead

Nia DaCosta’s Hedda takes place over 24 hours in one location — that glorious house. Hedda and her husband (Tom Bateman) are having a party when her former lover (Hoss) shows up. In the play, Hedda is separated from the people; here, she IS the party.

“We shot as much as we could in sequence, but some of the last scenes of the film were shot first, which obviously is the last thing you ever want to do. It’s terrifying to shoot some of those harder scenes. So we shot the stuff in the library where the manuscript is burnt and the gun reveal early.”

They also shot together the lake sequences that bookend the film — which, if you’ve seen the movie, is kind of tonally insane to imagine. While Hedda dies in the Ibsen play, DaCosta leaves things open to interpretation in that final lake scene. Thompson walks into the water, rocks in her pocket, as someone in the background says, “She’s awake!” Is it referring to Eileen, who’s been shot? Or to something having awakened in Hedda?

“I haven’t heard anyone frame it this way, but I think it’s so smart, this idea that Hedda’s finally awake. Because at the beginning of the movie, too, I think you see a woman in a very Virginia Woolf kind of way, who’s dead inside and certainly is toying with the idea of what actual physical death might look like. And then she is suddenly alive when she hears the name Eileen. And I think it’s a similar thing that happens at the end of the film.”

In the original play, Hedda doesn’t have a chance to try again, but Thompson is glad DaCosta decided to keep her alive in the film.

“This is a woman who’s made some pretty terrible choices, has done some things that are indefensible, but is still valid.”

And then of course, Thompson spreads that final sneer, scripted in DaCosta’s beautiful stage direction: that Hedda breaks into a wild, wicked, and haunting smile, caught between dark finality and dark possibility. Even if the ending feels ambiguous, Thompson says DaCosta never saw it that way.

“It feels like a stop to her. But I love that when we’ve spoken to audience members, there’s so much room to interpret what happens next and even what’s happening in that moment.”

Hedda is streaming on Prime.