Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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This is Fresh Air. I'm Tanya Mosley. Today, my guest is actor and producer Tessa Thompson. Many of the characters she's played share something in common. They're public-facing but privately conflicted, grappling with visibility, identity, and control over their own lives.
She starred as the warrior Valkyrie in the Marvel Universe, the musician Bianca in the Creed franchise, civil rights strategist Diane Nash in Selma, a woman navigating the fraught boundaries of racial identity in the film Passing, and a biracial college student wrestling with racial politics and dear white people.
And this Sunday, she's up for a Golden Globe, nominated for Best Actress in a Motion Picture for her portrayal of Hedda, Nia DaCosta's reimagining of Henrik Ibsen's classic play. Tessa is also starring in a new murder mystery, the Netflix limited series His and Hers.
She plays a once-prominent news anchor who returns to the small Georgia town where she grew up after a murder pulls her back into the spotlight. And the detective leading the case is her estranged husband.
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Chapter 2: What themes do Tessa Thompson's characters often explore?
It doesn't take long for them to realize that they're both hiding something. There are at least two signs to every story.
Yours and mine. Ours and theirs.
His and hers. Which means someone is always lying.
The series is adapted from Alice Feeney's bestselling novel and is structured around competing versions of the truth. Tessa Thompson, welcome to Fresh Air.
Thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure.
Am I right that this is your first lead in a murder mystery?
This is my first lead in a murder mystery.
Yeah, I hadn't thought about that until just now. You're very intentional in the roles that you choose. I think that most actors are, but there is something that is very specific. I talked about it a little bit in the intro. There's a through line in many of your characters. Many of them are, of course, they're highly intelligent, but they're also deeply self-reflective and aware.
They use control as a way to survive. Anna, this particular character in his and hers is no exception. And I actually want to play a scene where she's having lunch at a diner with a cameraman. His name is Richard Jones, and he's played by Pablo Schreiber. And he's married to your nemesis, another news anchor, which I should just say is really real.
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Chapter 3: How does Tessa Thompson navigate her biracial identity in her roles?
It's so true. And there are also so many anchors that have some photographs. you know, testy relationships, which I learned when I did my time shadowing some of them. Oh, you did? So you shadowed? Yeah, I shadowed, which was, it's just such a delight. I did a ton of it in Atlanta, and I'm so grateful to all the folks there that were so generous with me.
But, you know, it's gotten better now, but it has been, you know, for a very long time, a very competitive industry. And for women in particular, there is a scarcity of opportunity, which creates its own sort of drama.
Yeah.
Did you go out on stories with them or what was your shadow? Yeah, I got to go out on stories. They got to help me with my copy. So I would send my copy in the show. They would help me rewrite. I got to go in studio and watch them work.
It's one of the great extraordinary pleasures of what I get to do is to really, in the process of preparation and research, to meet so many extraordinary people that do incredible work and to really get a window into worlds that I think I might know something about, but truly, like anything, you know nothing about it the closer that you look. Oh, I'm so curious.
What's something you learned that was a surprise to you about the job?
Something that was really surprising to me is I had always sort of assumed that anchors in particular were people that were just reading the news as opposed to writing it, that they actively are really, you know, writing those stories and have so much to do with that. And then also just being in the room where they're deciding what stories are important or when something's breaking.
But, you know, I had a similar thing just sitting across from you because when I played Sam in Dear White People and got to play someone that worked in
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Chapter 4: What is Tessa's experience with her role in the Netflix series 'His and Hers'?
in a radio station. I still, every time I do a podcast or I'm in a radio station, I have like a rush of that feeling again because I just loved doing it. I just so enjoyed doing it. Sometimes when I play parts, this isn't always the case, but sometimes it feels like I get a sense of a window of like another trajectory I might have taken were I not an actor.
You know, sometimes I find things that I go, God, I probably would have really loved to do this thing. And And doing what you do is one of those things I thought when I was working on it, goodness, I really like this.
You also went to the small town that this was based on, or it was based on a small town, right?
Yeah, so it's set in this tiny little town called Dahlonega. And thankfully, when I've had my first conversation with Will Olroyd about making the series, he said, I want to set it in this town, Dahlonega. I happen to be in Atlanta, Georgia, shooting The Last Creed movie.
And I literally got off the phone with him and drove an hour and a half to Dahloneka right away because I just was so fascinated. I'd spent many, many, many months over the course of years shooting projects in Atlanta, but I'd never heard of Dahloneka. It was one of the early sites of the gold rush, this really fascinating tiny town.
So I drove up there and I was just so taken by it that I thought, yeah, I definitely want to make the show. And then when we were working on the show, we got to shoot there and I got to spend increasingly more time there. But it is a rarefied thing to get to shoot in the place sometimes. And I think it's really a gift.
Right. When that happens, what are you looking for? When you drove there, what are the things that you're trying to suss out as you're trying to figure out the character that you're going to embody?
Yeah.
Trying to get a sense of the place. I mean, Dahlonega I knew on paper was almost 98% white. But then to be in Dahlonega and feel what that feels like to come from Atlanta, which is this mecca. Chocolate mecca. Chocolate mecca. To go into Dahlonega, into that space and be inside of a black body in those spaces to feel what that is.
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Chapter 5: What insights does Tessa share about the competitive nature of the news industry?
But they'll never really respect you if they think you can't do it like the boys do. Heather, please. You saw Greenwood's face earlier when you asked for a soft drink, like a soft woman. What did you see? Condemned. I'm used to condemned. Contempt for your extracurricular interests, yes, but for your mind. Your character. He can think what he likes. A woman of principle.
That was my guest Tessa Thompson in the film Hedda with Nina Haas as Eileen. Man, we get to see just how she manipulates that. And Eileen goes on to take a drink because she wants to be seen by her peers, all of these men, as she's up for this professorship. What do you think Hedda actually might want from Eileen? And maybe is it to destroy her?
Is it to actually feel something in that moment with her? What is your interpretation? Oh, goodness.
I mean, I have a tremendous amount of empathy for Hedda having embodied her. I think if I'm honest, I think in that moment she's pretty dead set on destroying her. Hmm. I think she's come from this attempt at vulnerability, which is to say, if we could have done things differently in the past, if we could have been together, which is basically her way of saying, could you have me now?
Would you have me now? And she feels terribly rejected in that moment. And I think from that moment on decides... Then I have to destroy you. And the truth is, I think, thankfully, we are conditioned to not give credence to those sort of. Yes.
I've heard you say that you think envy gets a bad rap.
And I want to know more about that. Because there's so much competition. And I really wanted to feel like I'm happy for people if something doesn't come my way, particularly for other black women. I feel like I win every time someone like me wins, like really and truly. I feel that. I feel so deeply a part of that community.
And yet, of course, in all of us, particularly when you want something, when you cannot have it, I think there's something inside of us that gets quelled from when we're children. We're told it's bad to feel that. We're told it's bad. We're told it's ugly. And particularly as women, we're told to feel that about each other is unsavory.
And yet, I think understanding and being able to connect to moments of jealousy or envy actually helps us understand the lives that we want to live. It's that thing of like when we're scrolling on Instagram and we feel petty about someone's, I don't know, job that they post or recent weight loss or engagement. I think what they help us understand is maybe I'm not in the job that I want to be in.
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