Stars Of Sundance: Tessa Thompson
The actress enables her empowered voice to influence the characters she brings to life.
The actress enables her empowered voice to influence the characters she brings to life.
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Tessa Thompson wants a much better Hollywood. The 34-year-old actress has already endeared herself to basically every audience with her indie hit Dear White People and blockbusters like Selma, Creed, and Thor: Ragnarok. Despite that mainstream visibility, she's vocal about her politics: she led the women's march alongside Jane Fonda at this year's Sundance, and has pushed for changes to representation in her industry. "I've always been of the mind that it's really hard to separate the art from the time in which you make it and how you feel about what's going on," Thompson explains. "I don't think it's a mandate, but for me, it feels like something that's natural, and I feel really lucky to get to do work that has something to say."
Dear White People, the 2014 lacerating satire of race relations on a college campus, said a lot. Thompson, who had worked in TV, felt like the movie was "a real game-changer" for her. "I was sort of in a rut before getting it," she confides. The script gave her a calling.
Her latest Sundance sensation, Sorry to Bother You (out July 6), is at once similar to yet utterly unlike her breakout film. Directed by Oakland-based musician Boots Riley, it sends up racial divisions, but in a way that's out of this universe. Thompson is the activist girlfriend to Lakeith Stanfield's telemarketer, who gets ahead in his career by adopting a "white" voice. Along the way, he confronts a reality-shifting secret that sends the whole story (and viewers) into a spiral.
Thompson isn't worried about its reception, even with the more out-there elements. "I was so excited to work in the space of magical realism," she notes, citing Michel Gondry as an influence. "Particularly for folks of color, it just doesn't happen all that often."
