Tessa Thompson And Ruth Negga To Star In Rebecca Hall’s Directorial Debut
By Ben Pearson/Aug. 6, 2018 4:00 pm EST
We may receive a commission on purchases made from links.
Learn more about the Passing movie adaptation below.
This sounds like a complex and fascinating story, and the two actresses in the lead roles seem like terrific fits for their respective parts. Negga, who’s portrayal of Tulip O’Hare is consistently one of the best aspects of AMC’s Preacher, recently earned an Oscar nomination for the period drama Loving, and Thompson can really knock a project out of the park when she has the right script to work with. Hall wrote this film’s screenplay, and Passing seems like a very personal project for her. Here’s what she said in a statement:
Angela Robinson, who recently directed Hall in last year’s Professor Marsden and the Wonder Women, is on board Passing as an executive producer. Hall has been leading up to this for a while, taking small steps on the way to the director’s chair. Last year, she produced a film called Permission and learned even more about the process of making a movie from the inside out, so I’m curious to see what the summation of all her experiences is when Passing eventually hits theaters.
“Nella Larsen’s Passing is an astonishing book about two women struggling not just with what it meant to be black in America in 1929, but with gender conventions, the performance of femininity, the institution of marriage, the responsibilities of motherhood, and the ways in which all of those forces intersect. I came across the novel at a time when I was trying to reckon creatively with some of my personal family history, and the mystery surrounding my bi-racial grandfather on my American mother’s side. In part, making this film is an exploration of that history, to which I’ve never really had access.”
