- 7 minutes ago
Tessa Thompson takes us through her iconic character style from Veronica Mars, Westworld, Dear White People, Thor: Ragnarok, Passing, and many more from the cover shoot. Watch above to see Thompson share details on the character styling in each film.
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00:00Hi, I am Tessa Thompson, and today we are going behind the looks with Who, What, Where.
00:08Valfrey, when we meet her, a superhero has kind of lost her way and hasn't been in battle, hasn't been
00:18a part of a community,
00:19and is sort of this hard-drinking, leather-wearing misfit.
00:25But this look in particular is sort of when she returns to glory and puts on her armor.
00:33So we wanted this moment to feel very heroic.
00:38I feel like it's shot in slow motion. If it isn't, I'm acting like I'm moving in slow motion.
00:44It's giving very cape-blowing, hair-blowing.
00:50My inspiration was very much Beyonce, the way that she sort of like walks on stage back and forth.
00:57It always feels like she's in slow motion.
00:59Superhero costumes are not the most comfortable things because they're made of like crazy materials.
01:06Like, I don't know, plastic sometimes. They're not the easiest thing to look cool in.
01:11And then also, I didn't realize until about four months into shooting the film that you could request a shorter
01:18cape,
01:18which is good if it's your first time having a cape because you trip on them.
01:24And then if you have a sword, they get caught in the sword.
01:26And then if there's a wind machine, they flap over and they hit you in the face.
01:31They're just really hard capes. So if you need a cape ever, I suggest practicing with a short one.
01:39And then they fix it and they do like movie magic and make it long again.
01:44But in this particular shot, I am in fact wearing a long cape.
01:47So Irene Redfield is probably one of my favorite, if not my favorite character I've ever played.
01:55The film was shot in black and white and so there was such an emphasis in terms of costuming on
02:01texture.
02:01Not so much color, obviously, but also there was sort of subtleties between color that you could sense,
02:09which is so interesting. It's the first time I've ever worked in black and white.
02:12And so it made the fittings really fascinating because something that we would think would be fantastic
02:18and it was, you know, in person, we would take a photograph of it, convert the photograph into black and
02:23white,
02:24and it just wouldn't pop in the same way.
02:26It meant that we wore a lot of textures, like rich velvets and things that just had sort of a
02:32story and a life.
02:33Okay, Detroit from Sorry to Bother You is my most favorite style of any character I've ever played.
02:41I had so much fun. Our director, Boots Riley, gave me so much freedom.
02:45So I really got to shop a lot for Detroit. I brought some things for my closet, but I also
02:50just went shopping.
02:51We shot in Oakland, so I would scour all of the, like, vintage stores there, but also would go to,
02:58like,
02:58Michael's and make stuff that were, you know, sort of arts and crafts.
03:02All the earrings that she wore are instrumental to her character. They're all scripted.
03:08So it was really incredible to get to see all of those things that were sort of in the DNA
03:13of it come to life.
03:15Also, the hair and makeup, we had such freedom. I dyed my hair instead of wearing a wig. It took
03:2113 hours.
03:22I had to re-deposit the, it really messed up my hair actually, but I had to re-deposit the
03:27color every week because it would come out.
03:29But it was so, just so much fun to work on Detroit.
03:35Veronica Morris. Veronica Morris is my second job ever.
03:38There are some very interesting wardrobe choices. The whole idea with her was very sort of luxe fashion.
03:46She loved a sparkle moment. She loved an acid wash denim. She loved a studded belt.
03:56She always wore heels to school, which I appreciate. I don't think that she owned a backpack.
04:01And she was just fabulous and fantastic. It was definitely a time in my career before I felt like I
04:08could say that I didn't like something.
04:12So I just put on anything they put me in.
04:15Bianca in Creed is another favorite of mine. I remember director Ryan Coogler showed me a photograph that he had
04:22taken of a girl at a train station in Philadelphia.
04:26And he was like, I feel like this is, this is our girl. Not just what she was wearing, which
04:32is actually something really similar to this photograph.
04:35But there was something, there was like an energy in her eyes. There was like a kind of quiet power.
04:41And I think the way that that communicated into Bianca's fashion was just like kind of not really a need
04:51for adornment.
04:52And she's a singer, but in her life when she's not performing, she sort of just puts on things that
04:58feel comfortable to her.
04:59Her time on stage is a time for her to do something that feels sort of more performative.
05:05She had a kind of simplicity and she felt like somebody you could see, you know, at a train station
05:10or at the post office.
05:11Charlotte is a sort of badass executive this season.
05:17I think we wanted something that also had because there's stunt stuff that's happening in these sequences on Westworld.
05:25We wanted something that could move and have some flexibility, but also felt like something a powerful woman would wear.
05:34And I personally love wearing suits.
05:36What I think is so cool about this look is there's kind of a juxtaposition because it's angular and structural,
05:42but it's also delicate because it's in this soft sort of blush.
05:45And this bodysuit that she wore kind of is an iridescent moment, which caught light really fantastically.
05:51We shoot Westworld so out of sequence and we could be shooting, you know, parts of one episode for over
05:58six months.
05:59I was wearing this a lot and she had sort of her like, I mean business bag, which in her
06:06case had a gun in it.
06:08So that's not a fashion accessory.
06:12I typically like, but it's a fun thing about playing Charlotte.
06:15So Men in Black, obviously, it's, you know, the most iconic.
06:19I mean, the most iconic thing about those movies, Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones.
06:23But second to them, well, and the black glasses.
06:27Okay, and then, and then is the suit, obviously.
06:30And so we sort of needed the perfect suit and we were so lucky to have Paul Smith come in
06:36and make these suits for us.
06:37And I love wearing a suit, so this was my happy place.
06:41Chris Hemsworth is a very tall man.
06:42He's about 6'4", and I'm just under that.
06:46But I wear heels typically when I'm around him because otherwise I would not be in the movie.
06:52So I'm wearing my suit with some sensible footwear, sensible booty, which I ran in a lot.
06:59But it's a good thing I can, I can do that.
07:01And I would make jokes with Chris that everything he could do, I could do in heels.
07:05This is from an emotion picture that I got to make with Janelle Monae, which was a dream.
07:12He made all of these short videos.
07:14And in this, I am wearing, I don't know what I'm wearing, honestly, but that's what I like about it.
07:21One of my favorite things in fashion in general, when I see something and I don't entirely know what it
07:25is,
07:26but it feels like it can be worn in some way, I typically want to own it.
07:30So I'm wearing some sort of headpiece, some sort of something, but it's really beautiful.
07:38This is another fave for me. So in Sylvie's Love, I love clothes, I love vintage clothes.
07:43I got to wear just under 50 looks in the film.
07:46Our director, Eugene Ash, really wanted this first scene to feel like the first time you see Audrey Hepburn in
07:53Breakfast and Tiffany's.
07:54This kind of, like, iconic look. And we were making this dress.
07:59Our incredible costume designer, Phoenix, was working on something and it was in a Tiffany blue and we just couldn't
08:05get it right.
08:05We had a bunch of fittings and then very last minute we got very lucky and Chanel graciously sent us
08:11a couple of archive pieces that we could borrow for the shoot.
08:14And so this beautiful dress is an archive Chanel piece, which becomes the first time that we see Sylvie.
08:21And I think it really did feel like that sort of old Hollywood glamour shooting this.
08:28We shot in downtown Los Angeles for New York, but it felt, it really felt like, yeah, it felt like
08:37a modern day for me, the experience of getting to make something that just feels very glamorous.
08:42And I was thinking of Audrey Hepburn the whole time.
08:45So this is from a scene in Selma and incredibly, you know, we're in all these sort of rules and
08:53the women were wearing heels and then remembering that these marches that we were portraying, people actually marched miles and
09:01miles and miles and miles like that, which was sort of incredible to be thinking about.
09:07So many of the pieces that the brilliant costume designer Ruth Carter pulled were actually from the period.
09:15Diane Nash was such an incredible iconic, and is still an iconic figure, an unsung hero of the movement.
09:23And there's an incredible gentleness to her.
09:26And so we wanted the costume to sort of communicate her fierceness.
09:30This was so fun getting to recreate Monica Geller on Friends.
09:37She, Courtney Cox is just so cool in the show and always looks so fantastic.
09:42And getting to sort of emulate her personality, her spirit, her movement, her intonation on the show was so fun,
09:48but also wearing those clothes.
09:50And it made me then order a bunch of tennis skirts.
09:53Sam White in Dear White People is another really favorite character of mine.
09:57And I worked really closely with Justin Simeon, who gave me so much freedom to really create Sam and a
10:03lot of things.
10:04When I'm playing a character that is a modern character, I typically like, if it makes sense, to shop for
10:11them.
10:12I don't typically like to wear clothes of my own because I have my own sort of memory and feelings
10:16attached to them.
10:17But I like to buy things that I then sort of like build a closet for the character.
10:22And I did that really intensely with Sam White.
10:24It's also the pleasure of working on independent film and people are typically grateful when you bring some stuff because
10:30we're working on such a budget anyways.
10:33Inside of this part of her identity that is an activist, she has this idea of how to express that.
10:39And so you'll see in this, there's sort of fabrics that feel culturally specific.
10:45The use of sort of African fabrics.
10:49She's always trying to make her hair bigger, more textured than it actually is.
10:54She's really dead set on expressing her blackness because I think at this point in the film she has some
10:59insecurity about it.
11:00But I found it really interesting as someone who's gone to a lot of rallies just seeing like how activism
11:06gets expressed in clothing.
11:07I think it's such a powerful way to talk about how you feel.
11:12And that's something that I think Sam is trying to do throughout the movie.
11:15But I loved just getting to play with different periods too.
11:18I really looked at the iconography of black leaders over time like Angela Davis.
11:24So also playing with 70s and 60s silhouettes even though the film was set in present day.
11:31There's this idea that we're still cycling through the same issues, the same problems because race in America is, you
11:38know, you know what it is.
11:39Thank you so much.
11:41Let me know.
11:41I'm curious what's your favorite in the comments below.