Tessa Thompson interview: ‘Men should have the responsibility to deal with their toxicity’

Exclusive: The ‘Creed II’ actor talks with Alexandra Pollard about the ‘palpable difference’ the #MeToo movement has made to film sets, working with female directors, and refusing to label her own sexuality

Tessa Thompson brings a fresh perspective to the testosterone-charged ‘Rocky' franchise (Michael Buckner/Deadline/REX)

Four years ago, after nearly a decade of film acting and not a single breakout role, Tessa Thompson was on the verge of calling it quits. Sick of the same tired roles being assigned to black women time and time again, she vowed she would stick to theatre. “You can play all sorts of things on stage,” says the 35-year-old. “The film industry, at least at that point, had not been so generous to women of colour.” Then Dear White People came along.

“It changed the game for me,” says Thompson of the 2014 comedy drama, in which she plays a politically provocative student at a fictitious, predominantly white Ivy League college. “The film itself is sort of an indictment of Hollywood. With black people, why is everything that we do wrapped in Christian dogma? Why do we only have to be the sassy black friend? It was incredible to be able to talk about the frustration that I’d had in this industry, in a film. And then it did so well. So that became my North Star.”

Since then, that star has ascended. The American actor, raised between Los Angeles and Brooklyn, played civil rights activist Diane Nash in Ava DuVernay’s Selma; the badass, bisexual Valkyrie in Marvel superhero film Thor: Ragnarok; a scientist investigating an iridescent phenomenon alongside Natalie Portman in Annihilation; and a ruthless park director in HBO’s high-budget android drama Westworld. This year, as well as being instrumental in the formation of the Time’s Up movement against sexual harassment, which has raised millions in legal defence funds, she starred in musician Janelle Monae’s “emotional picture” Dirty Computer. Playing up to persistent rumours the pair are or were a couple, they played apparent lovers trapped in a totalitarian state.

We’re here, though, to talk about Creed II – the latest addition, directed by Steven Caple Jr, to the immortal Rocky series, and the follow-up to Ryan Coogler’s critically acclaimed Creed. The film sees boxers Adonis Creed (Michael B Jordan) and Viktor Drago (Florian Munteanu) – whose fathers fought each other 30 years earlier, with deadly consequences – preparing to take each other on. It is both as punishing and as tender as its predecessor, packing an emotional punch alongside its countless physical ones. Director Caple Jr took a risk in allowing Viktor, the “villain” of the piece, as much of a dramatic arc as the hero, but it’s a risk that pays off, adding yet more pathos to a film that, at its heart, is never really about boxing.

Thompson, meanwhile, plays Bianca – a no-nonsense, hearing-impaired musician who falls in love with Creed. Though he is the protagonist, Thompson was adamant Bianca should not function merely to advance his story – a danger for any supporting character, but particularly for women.

Tessa Thompson in ‘Creed II’ (Warner Bros)

“We’re so used to female characters feeling like ciphers, like they don’t resemble any women that we know,” she says, sitting with her legs pulled up to her chest on the sofa of a London hotel room. Dressed in a mint green suit and gold shoes, and with two tiny neat plaits circling her hair, she looks immaculate – though she doesn’t feel it. “I’m a little sleepy – we went out last night,” she says, rolling her eyes at herself. “We went to a club… I don’t even know what it was called.” If this is Thompson drowsy, though, I can only imagine what she’s like firing on all cylinders. She talks fast, rarely averts her gaze and is unfailingly smart and vociferous.

Too many female characters, she continues, “don’t have their own rights, they don’t have agency – we don’t even know what they care about, what they’re after”. It was important to her Bianca should not only “occupy her own narrative”, but also push back against the hyper-macho world in which much of the Rocky franchise takes place.

Thompson in ‘Thor: Ragnarok’

“Because it’s set in the world of boxing, and about men, there’s a real danger of it just existing in a real toxic masculinity space,” she says. “And while I don’t think it should be the role of the women in the film to soften that entirely – like, men should have the responsibility to deal with their toxicity,” she laughs, “I do think that there’s a nice opportunity for the women in the film to come in and be like, ‘Hey…’ you know?”

The first Creed was filmed before the #MeToo and Time’s Up movements emerged. On Creed II, and indeed “on every set that I’ve been on since this watershed moment”, Thompson felt a “palpable difference”. “The thing that’s been really great about Time’s Up,” she says, “in terms of looking at the industry, and not just addressing gross abuse of power, is acknowledging that there’s just an imbalance of power. We look at workplaces and we go, ‘How do we make them more safe? For all people, but specifically for women?’ We just have more women in the workplace, and women in positions of power. So I do feel like there’s been a seismic shift, which I’m proud of.”

On Creed, she adds, “our crew is really inclusive. There are tons of people of colour, there’s tons of women, the director of photography on the first film was a woman... so that’s incredible.” It is perhaps for this reason, as well as the fact both Coogler and Caple Jr are “fantastically sensitive filmmakers”, that Thompson’s character avoided going the way of many other female supporting characters. “We shoot a bunch of stuff that ends up getting cut,” she says, “because that’s how it happens, in tons of movies, but I still feel like you can sense that she’s rich and alive and a human.”

Thompson is used to her scenes being cut – though one instance, despite being just a few seconds long, caused more controversy than the rest. It was a scene in the Taika Waititi-directed Thor: Ragnarok, in which a woman leaves Valkyrie’s bedroom after spending the night with her – the only explicit reference to the Asgardian’s bisexuality in the film. “One thing to clarify about that,” says Thompson, “is it was so in passing. I hope we get to that space, where someone’s sexuality is as immaterial as me drinking this green juice.” Said juice is on the coffee table untouched – Thompson has been too busy talking to take a sip.

“It wasn’t Marvel or Disney or anyone extracting that because it was an issue,” she continues, “it just was like, that particular moment didn’t make sense in the context of the scene. And there were other beautiful things where you get a sense of her back story. The woman that dies is her lover. In performance we were, like, ‘That’s your lover.’ So in my mind it isn’t cut; I played her as a woman that’s queer. I hope that we get to a space, in terms of the stories that we tell, where that’s something that gets to exist, and it doesn’t have to be noteworthy.”

Thompson was somewhat taken aback, earlier this year, when her own sexuality proved noteworthy. In an interview with Net-a-Porter, she spoke of having dated men and women – but she didn’t see it as a grand confession. “The thing for me is, I was just speaking candidly,” she says. “Some people categorised it as coming out or something. And I have never been in, so I don’t know what that means.”

She was perplexed, too, by the immediate attempt to put a label on her. “There were a lot of people that said, ‘Oh she’s bisexual’,” she recalls, now sitting cross-legged with a cushion clasped in her lap. “I never said that word, because I don’t think in those binaries. I feel like that’s important to say, just for me, because that’s not the way that I specifically identify – but I have had a lot of people say, ‘That’s my experience and you really set me free. You helped me have a conversation with my family.’ And that I’m so happy for. I think it’s hugely important, and that’s why I felt it was important to be candid in that way, because I have been so lucky to have a family where you can be whatever you want to be. So many people don’t have that, don’t have a support system, and are really riddled with so much shame. They can’t really love in the way they wanna love, be who they wanna be, and so it’s important, I think, to say that it’s okay.”

Thompson’s next role – or one of them: she’s also starring in a Men In Black spin-off and voicing a cocker spaniel in Disney’s remake of Lady and the Tramp – is as a prescription drug-runner in western thriller Little Woods, directed by newcomer Nia DaCosta. “I love working with women,” says Thompson of the opportunity to collaborate with a female director. “I just… I can let out a sigh working in the company of women. And also, we talk about opportunities for women of colour, but for women directors, it’s crazy still.”

In 2016, of the 250 highest-grossing films, just 7 per cent had female directors. “I mean, really and truly, it’s embarrassing,” says Thompson, accentuating every syllable of that word, “how seldom women get the chance. You talk about a filmmaker like [Wonder Woman’s] Patty Jenkins. Her debut film [Monster] was stunning, and then 13 years to make her next film?”

She exhales, slowly. “So when I get to be in the company of women,” she says, “I’m just so elated. Unfortunately, it still feels like a small miracle.”

Creed II is released in UK cinemas on 30 November