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.
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 a part of a community,
00:20and 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.
00:34So 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.
00:49My 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, like, I don't know, plastic sometimes.
01:08They'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 cape,
01:19which 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.
01:27And then if there's a wind machine, they flap over and they hit you in the face.
01:31They're just really hard capes.
01:35So if you need a cape ever, I suggest practicing with a short one.
01:40And then they fix it, and then 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.
01:56The film was shot in black and white, and so there was such an emphasis in terms of costuming on texture.
02:01Not so much color, obviously, but also there was sort of subtleties between color that you could sense,
02:09which is so interesting.
02:10It's the first time I've ever worked in black and white, and so it made the fittings really fascinating
02:15because something that we would think would be fantastic, and it was, you know, in person.
02:20We would take a photograph of it, convert the photograph into black and white,
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 story 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.
02:42Our director, Boots Riley, gave me so much freedom, so I really got to shop a lot for Detroit.
02:47I brought some things from my closet, but I also just went shopping.
02:51We shot in Oakland, so I would scour all of the, like, vintage stores there,
02:57but also would go to, like, Michael'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.
03:06They're all scripted, so it was really incredible to get to see
03:11all of those things that were sort of in the DNA of it come to life.
03:15Also, the hair and makeup, we had such freedom.
03:19I dyed my hair instead of wearing a wig.
03:21It took 13 hours.
03:22I had to re-deposit the, it really messed up my hair, actually,
03:25but I had to re-deposit the color every week because it would come out.
03:29But it was so, just so much fun to work on Detroit.
03:35Veronica Morris.
03:36Veronica Morris is my second job ever.
03:38There are some very interesting wardrobe choices.
03:42The whole idea with her was very sort of luxe, fashion.
03:46She loved a sparkle moment.
03:51She loved an acid wash denim.
03:54She loved a studded belt.
03:56She always wore heels to school, which I appreciate.
03:59I don't think that she owned a backpack.
04:02And she was just fabulous and fantastic.
04:04It was definitely a time in my career before I felt like I could 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.
04:18I remember director Ryan Coogler showed me a photograph that he had taken of a girl at a train station in Philadelphia.
04:26And he was like, I feel like this is, this is our girl.
04:30Not just what she was wearing, which is actually something really similar to this photograph.
04:34But there was something, there was like an energy in her eyes.
04:39There was like a kind of quiet power.
04:42And I think the way that that communicated into Bianca's fashion was just like kind of not really a need for adornment.
04:52And she's a singer, but in her life when she's not performing, she sort of just puts on things that feel comfortable to her.
04:59Her time on stage is a time for her to do something that feels sort of more performative.
05:06She had a kind of simplicity and she felt like somebody you could see, you know, at a train station or 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 six months.
05:59I was wearing this a lot.
06:01And she had sort of her, like, I mean, business bag, which in her case had a gun in it.
06:08So that's not a fashion accessory I typically like, but it's a fun thing about playing Charlotte.
06:16So Men in Black, obviously, it's, you know, the most iconic, I mean, the most iconic thing about those movies,
06:21Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones.
06:23But second to them, well, and the black glasses, okay.
06:28And then, and then is the suit, obviously.
06:31And so we sort of needed the perfect suit.
06:33And we were so lucky to have Paul Smith come in and make these suits for us.
06:38And I love wearing a suit.
06:39So this was my happy place.
06:41Chris Hemsworth is a very tall man.
06:42He's about six, four, and I'm just under that.
06:46But I, 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.
07:12We 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.
07:20One of my favorite things in fashion in general, when I see something and I don't entirely know what it is, but 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, but it's really beautiful.
07:38This is another thing 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 Ashe, really wanted this first scene to feel like the first time you see Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast in Tiffany's.
07:54It's kind of like iconic look.
07:56And 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 get it right.
08:06We had a bunch of fittings.
08:07And then very last minute, we got very lucky, and Chanel graciously sent us a 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 a modern day for me,
08:39the 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,
08:53and the women were wearing heels, and then remembering that these marches that we were portraying,
08:59people actually marched miles and miles and miles and miles like that,
09:04which 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, and so we wanted the costume to sort of communicate her fierceness.
09:30This was so fun, getting to recreate Monica Gellar 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.
09:57I worked really closely with Justin Simeon, who gave me so much freedom to really create Sam and a lot of things.
10:04When I'm playing a character that is a modern character, I typically like, if it makes sense to shop for them.
10:12I don't typically like to wear clothes of my own, because I have my own sort of memory and feelings attached to them,
10:17but I like to buy things that I then start to, like, build a closet for the character,
10:23and 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,
10:30because we'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.
10:44The 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 insecurity about it.
11:00But I found it really interesting as someone who's gone to a lot of rallies,
11:04just seeing, like, how activism gets expressed in clothing.
11:08I think it's such a powerful way to talk about how you feel.
11:11And that's something that I think Sam is trying to do throughout the movie.
11:14But 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.
11:25So 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,
11:36because race in America is, you know, 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.
