A key scene in Amazon MGM Studios Hedda influenced where the film, an adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s play Hedda Gablerwas shot down.
At Deadline’s Contenders Film: Los Angeles event, writer, director and producer Nia DaCosta expanded on the criteria the filmmaking team presented to the owners when searching for a location for the film set in 1950s England. Production designer Cara Brower, who couldn’t be there, laid the groundwork for the search.
“The house had to be old and serious. And so [Cara] I looked at 200 houses, and I looked at five at the end because she did a lot of the prep work. But the questions were: “Can we shoot a gun from the roof?” Can we set off fireworks and annoy your neighbors? Can we drop off a chandelier at your home? Said DaCosta. “And that takes a lot of houses off the list pretty quickly.” But then she found this amazing house, designed this chandelier, and we dropped it in there, protected and listed original stone, original glass, 300-year-old orangery.
(LR) Deadline’s Antonia Blyth interviews Nia DaCosta and Tessa Thompson about “Hedda” at Contenders Film: Los Angeles
Jesse Grant/Deadline
Star and producer Tessa Thompson added that they weren’t allowed to drink water in the house, but they could ditch that chandelier.
DaCosta revealed that she wrote the adaptation in 2018 with Thompson in mind for the role.
“It came from a lot of passion and energy. One, because I was writing it to spec, it was just something that I really wanted to do, and an adaptation that I really wanted to tackle. And two, because I was writing it during Sundance, I didn’t go for it,” she said. “So I was like, ‘Instead of being angry and being on Twitter, I’m just going to use all this energy and write the first draft of the script.’ » And that’s what I did.
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Production of the film was delayed several times due to the pandemic, double strikes in Hollywood and casting changes. DaCosta was behind the tent pole photo The wonders (2023), then reunited with cinematographer Sean Bobbitt on Hedda.
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“During that process, I was like, ‘Oh man, I really want to get back to my voice and my authorship and in a more direct way.’ Hedda kept appearing. And Sean Bobbitt and I became very close [on The Marvels]” she said. “And his films are all very dark, so we would both like to make up really dark things on set about what happens to the characters, as opposed to what we were shooting. And I was like, ‘Oh, he’s going to be great for Hedda.’”
Check back Monday for the panel video.
