Lena Dunham is so vile. She needs to fade into the forgotten actor abyss.
Tessa Thompson
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Tessa Thompson: ‘I decided not to work until I burned for something’
She’s been nominated for a Bafta following her role in Thor: Ragnarok but, despite being an outspoken member of the Time’s Up movement, the actor says she’s still learning to channel her inner Valkyrie
By Steve Rose
Tessa Thompson laughs at the idea of herself as a “rising star”. She has just been nominated for a Bafta in that category, but the accolade feels a little late in coming. “I sort of feel like I’m cheating,” the 34-year-old actor admits. Lately, Thompson’s star has done nothing but rise, thanks to roles in Selma, Rocky sequel Creed, sci-fi series Westworld, and, most recently, as the scene-stealing Valkyrie in Thor: Ragnarok. And there is still more to come: a Creed sequel and Alex Garland’s sci-fi Annihilation. “I have clones of myself,” she says. “It was the Westworld season one wrap gift.”
There is the feeling that Thompson’s ascent encapsulates the present moment. Hollywood is being shaken by the successive earthquakes of #OscarSoWhite and the Time’s Up/#MeToo movement against discrimination and sexual harassment, and you know the terrain has started to shift when a woman of colour can land the part of a kick-ass bisexual Norse warrior traditionally depicted as a statuesque white blonde. Thompson has been actively involved in Time’s Up, speaking up, pitching in with its recent presence at the Golden Globes, and and even calling out Girls creator Lena Dunham for her lack of participation prior to the photo-opportunity stage. She later clarified that criticism as “an attempt to recentre the conversation around the work” but did not apologise.
She is ambivalent about being a poster girl for Hollywood change, however. “That’s an unfortunate thing, being inside of a marginalised group: you either become the ambassador or you internalise the sense of responsibility for how you represent said group, and while I feel that palpably, I also feel like I wanna be able to do whatever the **** I wanna do!” She giggles mischievously, as she often does when she knows she’s sounding over-earnest.
Thompson’s breakthrough role came in the 2014 race satire Dear White People, itself something of a cultural turning point. Her student provocateur fought the power with a cool head and a sharp wit, articulating racial codes, hypocrisies and micro-aggressions that went beyond the college campus. “The film itself was an indictment of Hollywood in a way, of the opportunities that people of colour are presented with,” she says. She was so taken with the script, she wrote a “fan letter” to writer-director Justin Simien: “I felt strongly that I needed to be in that movie.”
At that point, Thompson was reassessing her career. She had already been in the business nearly a decade. Los Angeles-born, she had taken acting classes even as she studied cultural anthropology in college, and interned with an all-female Shakespeare company. She had an early break in teen detective series Veronica Mars and things were ticking along, but after the BBC America series Copper, in which she played a former slave in 19th-century New York, “a lot of the parts that were coming my way were things that I’d seen before”. Slave dramas, black best friends, single moms upset with their babydaddy. She turned them all down. “I had all but decided to take a break and do some plays, and to see plays and read books and not work – literally not work – until I was going to burn for something.”
She has been burning ever since. Her character in Dear White People was of a type we rarely saw associated with women of colour: cool, smart, confident, articulate. There’s a similar thread running through some of Thompson’s other roles, although don’t mirror the actor’s own personality. “Those ‘badass’ roles are exciting to me because they’re very different than how I feel,” she says. “I don’t wake up and move through space feeling like Valkyrie on the rainbow bridge!”
She is learning to channel her inner Valkyrie, though. It was Thompson who campaigned to shoot a scene making Valkyrie’s bisexuality explicit in Thor: Ragnarok (although it was later cut). She was also also fearless enough to buttonhole Marvel supremo Kevin Fiege at a recent get-together and demand an all-female superhero movie, launching a thousand fansite rumours in the process. “It was just a Marvel social gathering; we ended up being in a semicircle, a bunch of the women, so we were just kind of talking about how fun that would be. And Kevin Feige happened to be walking past, so we sort of marched up to him and said: ‘Hey, we should do this!”
Feige’s response? “He didn’t say yes or no. He said: ‘Let’s explore.’” Even if he had said yes, Thompson would be sworn to secrecy, as she is about her upcoming role in Avengers: Infinity War, and any possible crossover with the superhero movie of the moment, Black Panther. If she hadn’t already had her superhero moment, it’s a movie you would have expected to see Thompson in, having worked with director Ryan Coogler and star Michael B Jordan on Creed. “There’s layers upon layers of community with these folks,” she says. Black Panther and Valkyrie feel like part of that same cultural moment, offering young women of colour a multitude of role models (Valkyrie’s heavy drinking aside). “For me, it’s all one.”
At any rate, Thompson has plenty enough going on. The stars seem to have aligned for her in a way they might not have done, say, a decade ago. “There’s never been a lack of talent, there’s only ever been a lack of opportunity,” she says, before going on to acknowledge those who have gone before her. But despite doing what she wants to do, and enjoying it, Thompson is focused on the broader mission. “I’ve felt this real need to ground my work in my ideals,” she says. And even if that work is a superhero movie, say says it can still be political: “Cultural change always proceeds political change.” Such cultural change might occasionally take the form of a drunk superhero staggering around, she concedes, but that can be political, too: “Hey man, fun is important. That’s also a public service!”
The Guardian
She’s been nominated for a Bafta following her role in Thor: Ragnarok but, despite being an outspoken member of the Time’s Up movement, the actor says she’s still learning to channel her inner Valkyrie
By Steve Rose
Tessa Thompson laughs at the idea of herself as a “rising star”. She has just been nominated for a Bafta in that category, but the accolade feels a little late in coming. “I sort of feel like I’m cheating,” the 34-year-old actor admits. Lately, Thompson’s star has done nothing but rise, thanks to roles in Selma, Rocky sequel Creed, sci-fi series Westworld, and, most recently, as the scene-stealing Valkyrie in Thor: Ragnarok. And there is still more to come: a Creed sequel and Alex Garland’s sci-fi Annihilation. “I have clones of myself,” she says. “It was the Westworld season one wrap gift.”
There is the feeling that Thompson’s ascent encapsulates the present moment. Hollywood is being shaken by the successive earthquakes of #OscarSoWhite and the Time’s Up/#MeToo movement against discrimination and sexual harassment, and you know the terrain has started to shift when a woman of colour can land the part of a kick-ass bisexual Norse warrior traditionally depicted as a statuesque white blonde. Thompson has been actively involved in Time’s Up, speaking up, pitching in with its recent presence at the Golden Globes, and and even calling out Girls creator Lena Dunham for her lack of participation prior to the photo-opportunity stage. She later clarified that criticism as “an attempt to recentre the conversation around the work” but did not apologise.
She is ambivalent about being a poster girl for Hollywood change, however. “That’s an unfortunate thing, being inside of a marginalised group: you either become the ambassador or you internalise the sense of responsibility for how you represent said group, and while I feel that palpably, I also feel like I wanna be able to do whatever the **** I wanna do!” She giggles mischievously, as she often does when she knows she’s sounding over-earnest.
Thompson’s breakthrough role came in the 2014 race satire Dear White People, itself something of a cultural turning point. Her student provocateur fought the power with a cool head and a sharp wit, articulating racial codes, hypocrisies and micro-aggressions that went beyond the college campus. “The film itself was an indictment of Hollywood in a way, of the opportunities that people of colour are presented with,” she says. She was so taken with the script, she wrote a “fan letter” to writer-director Justin Simien: “I felt strongly that I needed to be in that movie.”
At that point, Thompson was reassessing her career. She had already been in the business nearly a decade. Los Angeles-born, she had taken acting classes even as she studied cultural anthropology in college, and interned with an all-female Shakespeare company. She had an early break in teen detective series Veronica Mars and things were ticking along, but after the BBC America series Copper, in which she played a former slave in 19th-century New York, “a lot of the parts that were coming my way were things that I’d seen before”. Slave dramas, black best friends, single moms upset with their babydaddy. She turned them all down. “I had all but decided to take a break and do some plays, and to see plays and read books and not work – literally not work – until I was going to burn for something.”
She has been burning ever since. Her character in Dear White People was of a type we rarely saw associated with women of colour: cool, smart, confident, articulate. There’s a similar thread running through some of Thompson’s other roles, although don’t mirror the actor’s own personality. “Those ‘badass’ roles are exciting to me because they’re very different than how I feel,” she says. “I don’t wake up and move through space feeling like Valkyrie on the rainbow bridge!”
She is learning to channel her inner Valkyrie, though. It was Thompson who campaigned to shoot a scene making Valkyrie’s bisexuality explicit in Thor: Ragnarok (although it was later cut). She was also also fearless enough to buttonhole Marvel supremo Kevin Fiege at a recent get-together and demand an all-female superhero movie, launching a thousand fansite rumours in the process. “It was just a Marvel social gathering; we ended up being in a semicircle, a bunch of the women, so we were just kind of talking about how fun that would be. And Kevin Feige happened to be walking past, so we sort of marched up to him and said: ‘Hey, we should do this!”
Feige’s response? “He didn’t say yes or no. He said: ‘Let’s explore.’” Even if he had said yes, Thompson would be sworn to secrecy, as she is about her upcoming role in Avengers: Infinity War, and any possible crossover with the superhero movie of the moment, Black Panther. If she hadn’t already had her superhero moment, it’s a movie you would have expected to see Thompson in, having worked with director Ryan Coogler and star Michael B Jordan on Creed. “There’s layers upon layers of community with these folks,” she says. Black Panther and Valkyrie feel like part of that same cultural moment, offering young women of colour a multitude of role models (Valkyrie’s heavy drinking aside). “For me, it’s all one.”
At any rate, Thompson has plenty enough going on. The stars seem to have aligned for her in a way they might not have done, say, a decade ago. “There’s never been a lack of talent, there’s only ever been a lack of opportunity,” she says, before going on to acknowledge those who have gone before her. But despite doing what she wants to do, and enjoying it, Thompson is focused on the broader mission. “I’ve felt this real need to ground my work in my ideals,” she says. And even if that work is a superhero movie, say says it can still be political: “Cultural change always proceeds political change.” Such cultural change might occasionally take the form of a drunk superhero staggering around, she concedes, but that can be political, too: “Hey man, fun is important. That’s also a public service!”
The Guardian
