Nina Hoss on working with Tessa Thompson in 'Hedda': 'She was dangerous and that was mesmerizing'

Actress Nina Hoss spilled the beans about her electric on-screen chemistry with Tessa Thompson in Nia DaCosta’s 'Hedda', the modern reinterpretation of Henrik Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler.Hoss, who plays Eileen Lovborg, a reimagined, gender-swapped version of the classic character Eilert Lovborg, during a press conference attended by ETimes, shared her experience working with Thompson Hedda as both volatile and magnetic. “I loved working with Tessa. She did such great, strong choices and holding this new… I looked at her transforming, you know, which was somewhat mesmerising, and she was really dangerous. It’s like when she was Hedda, I was a little bit fascinated. And that’s the thing that these humans have that are slightly dangerous they’re also very fascinating.”The pair’s scenes together, Hoss revealed, were charged with emotion and improvisational energy. “Both women want to change each other, but actually how they are is what attracts them to each other,” she explained. “They would make up a great couple, I would believe. But the way they are right now, they’re just not good for each other.”DaCosta’s adaptation, which reimagines the Ibsen classic as a post-war English drama exploring repression, female desire, and the cost of self-control, gave Hoss a chance to dive deep into new emotional territory. “It was revelatory,” she said. “It’s something new, it’s a different thing. I don’t care what it was before, I’m fascinated by what we can do with this material.”Thompson, who also serves as a producer on the film, echoed that sense of creative collaboration with DaCosta, with whom she first worked on Little Woods. “When I read her first draft, I was just so blown away,” Thompson said. “It really captured the spirit of the piece while allowing itself to be a whole new beast.”The two actors’ on-screen connection is one of Hedda’s emotional anchors. Hoss explained that she and Thompson spent hours crafting the unspoken tension between their characters. “We kept the tension up so that you feel, as the audience, that there is always something unresolved between them,” she said.