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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00:00 Hi, I am Tessa Thompson, and today we are going behind the looks with Who What Wear.
00:05 Valkyrie, when we meet her, a superhero has kind of lost her way and hasn't been in battle,
00:17 hasn't been a part of a community, and is sort of this hard-drinking, leather-wearing
00:23 misfit. But this look in particular is sort of when she returns to glory and puts on her
00:31 armor. So we wanted this moment to feel very heroic. I feel like it's shot in slow motion.
00:40 If it isn't, I'm acting like I'm moving in slow motion. It's giving very cape-blowing,
00:48 hair-blowing. My inspiration was very much Beyonce, the way that she sort of walks on
00:55 stage back and forth. It always feels like she's in slow motion. Superhero costumes are
01:00 not the most comfortable things because they're made of crazy materials, like, I don't know,
01:07 plastic sometimes. They're not the easiest thing to look cool in. Also, I didn't realize
01:13 until about four months into shooting the film that you could request a shorter cape,
01:19 which is good if it's your first time having a cape because you trip on them. And then
01:24 if you have a sword, they get caught in the sword. And then if there's a wind machine,
01:28 they flap over and they hit you in the face. They're just really hard capes. So if you
01:36 need a cape ever, I suggest practicing with a short one. And then they fix it, they do
01:42 like movie magic and make it long again. But in this particular shot, I am in fact wearing
01:46 a long cape. So Irene Redfield is probably one of my favorite, if not my favorite, character
01:55 I've ever played. The film was shot in black and white, and so there was such an emphasis
01:59 in terms of costuming on texture. Not so much color, obviously, but also there was sort
02:05 of subtleties between color that you could sense, which is so interesting. It's the first
02:10 time I've ever worked in black and white. And so it made the fittings really fascinating
02:15 because something that we would think would be fantastic, and it was, you know, in person,
02:20 we would take a photograph of it, convert the photograph into black and white, and it
02:24 just wouldn't pop in the same way. It meant that we wore a lot of textures, like rich
02:29 velvets and things that just had sort of a story and a life. Okay, Detroit from Sorry
02:35 to Bother You is my most favorite style of any character I've ever played. I had so much
02:42 fun. Our director, Boots Riley, gave me so much freedom, so I really got to shop a lot
02:47 for Detroit. I brought some things from my closet, but I also just went shopping. We
02:51 shot in Oakland, so I would scour all of the vintage stores there, but also would go to
02:58 like Michael's and make stuff that were, you know, sort of arts and crafts. All the earrings
03:03 that she wore are instrumental to her character. They're all scripted. So it was really incredible
03:10 to get to see all of those things that were sort of in the DNA of it come to life. Also,
03:16 the hair and makeup, we had such freedom. I dyed my hair instead of wearing a wig. It
03:21 took 13 hours. I had to redeposit the—it really messed up my hair, actually, but I
03:26 had to redeposit the color every week because it would come out. But it was so, just so
03:31 much fun to work on Detroit.
03:34 Veronica Morris. Veronica Morris is my second job ever. There are some very interesting
03:41 wardrobe choices. The whole idea with her was very sort of luxe fashion. She loved a
03:48 sparkle moment. She loved an acid-wash denim. She loved a studded belt. She always wore
03:57 heels to school, which I appreciate. I don't think that she owned a backpack. And she was
04:02 just fabulous and fantastic. It was definitely a time in my career before I felt like I could
04:08 say that I didn't like something. So I just put on anything they put me in.
04:15 Bianca in Creed is another favorite of mine. I remember director Ryan Coogler showed me
04:21 a photograph that he had taken of a girl at a train station in Philadelphia. And he was
04:27 like, "I feel like this is our girl." Not just what she was wearing, which is actually
04:32 something really similar to this photograph, but there was something, there was like an
04:36 energy in her eyes. There was like a kind of quiet power. And I think the way that that
04:43 communicated into Bianca's fashion was just like kind of not really a need for adornment.
04:52 And she's a singer, but in her life when she's not performing, she sort of just puts on things
04:58 that feel comfortable to her. Her time on stage is a time for her to do something that
05:03 feels sort of more performative. She had a kind of simplicity and she felt like somebody
05:08 you could see at a train station or at the post office.
05:11 Charlotte is a sort of badass executive this season. I think we wanted something that also
05:19 had, because there's stunt stuff that's happening in these sequences on Westworld, we wanted
05:25 something that could move and have some flexibility, but also felt like something a powerful woman
05:33 would wear. And I personally love wearing suits. What I think is so cool about this
05:38 look is there's kind of a juxtaposition because it's angular and structural, but it's also
05:43 delicate because it's in this soft sort of blush. And this bodysuit that she wore kind
05:48 of is an iridescent moment, which caught light really fantastically. We shoot Westworld so
05:52 out of sequence and we could be shooting, you know, parts of one episode for over six
05:59 months, I was wearing this a lot. And she had sort of her like, I mean business bag,
06:05 which in her case had a gun in it. So that's not a fashion accessory I typically like,
06:13 but it's a fun thing about playing Charlotte. So Men in Black, obviously it's, you know,
06:18 the most iconic, I mean the most iconic thing about those movies, Will Smith and Tommy Lee
06:22 Jones, but second to them, well, and the black glasses, okay. And then, and then is the suit,
06:30 obviously. And so we sort of needed the perfect suit and we were so lucky to have Paul Smith
06:35 come in and make these suits for us. And I love wearing a suit. So this was my happy
06:40 place. Chris Hemsworth is a very tall man. He's about six four and I'm just under that,
06:46 but I wear heels typically when I'm around him because otherwise I would not be in the
06:52 frame. So I'm wearing my suit with some sensible footwear, a sensible booty, which I ran in
06:58 a lot, but it's a good thing I can, I can do that. And I would make jokes with Chris
07:02 that everything he could do, I could do in heels. This is from an emotion picture that
07:08 I got to make with Janelle Monae, which was a dream. We made all of these short videos.
07:14 And in this I am wearing, I don't know what I'm wearing, honestly, but that's what I like
07:20 about it. One of my favorite things in fashion in general, when I see something and I don't
07:24 entirely know what it is, but it feels like it can be worn in some way, I typically want
07:29 to own it. So I'm wearing some sort of headpiece, some sort of something, but it's, but it's
07:38 really beautiful. This is another fave for me. So in Sylvie's Love, I love clothes. I
07:42 love vintage clothes. I got to wear just under 50 looks in the film. Our director, Eugene
07:47 Ash, really wanted this first scene to feel like the first time you see Audrey Hepburn
07:53 in Breakfast and Tiffany's. It's kind of like iconic look. And we were making this dress.
07:59 Our incredible costume designer, Phoenix, was working on something and it was in a Tiffany
08:04 blue and we just couldn't get it right. We had a bunch of fittings and then very last
08:08 minute we got very lucky and Janelle graciously sent us a couple of archive pieces that we
08:13 could borrow for the shoot. And so this beautiful dress is an archive Chanel piece, which becomes
08:19 the first time that we see Sylvie. And I think it really did feel like that sort of old Hollywood
08:26 glamour shooting this. We shot in downtown Los Angeles for New York, but it felt, it
08:32 really felt like, yeah, it felt like a modern day, for me, the experience of getting to
08:40 make something that just feels very glamorous. And I was thinking of Audrey Hepburn the whole
08:45 time. So this is from a scene in Selma and incredibly, you know, we're in all these sort
08:52 of rules and the women were wearing heels and then remembering that these marches that
08:58 we were portraying, people actually marched miles and miles and miles and miles like that,
09:04 which was sort of incredible to be thinking about. So many of the pieces that the brilliant
09:10 costume designer, Ruth Carter, pulled were actually from the period. Diane Nash was such
09:16 an incredible iconic, is still an iconic figure, an unsung hero of the movement. And there's
09:24 an incredible gentleness to her. And so we wanted the costume to sort of communicate
09:29 her fierceness. This was so fun getting to recreate Monica Geller on Friends. She, Courtney
09:38 Cox is just so cool in the show and always looks so fantastic and getting to sort of
09:43 emulate her personality, her spirit, her movement, her intonation on the show was so fun, but
09:48 also wearing those clothes. And it made me then order a bunch of tennis skirts. Sam White
09:54 in Dear White People was another really favorite character of mine. I worked really closely
09:58 with Justin Simien, who gave me so much freedom to really create Sam and a lot of things.
10:04 When I'm playing a character that is a modern character, I typically like, if it makes sense
10:10 to shop for them, I don't typically like to wear clothes of my own because I have my own
10:15 sort of memory and feelings attached to them. But I like to buy things that I then sort
10:20 of like build a closet for the character. And I did that really intensely with Sam White.
10:24 It's also the pleasure of working on independent film and people are typically grateful when
10:29 you bring some stuff because we're working on such a budget anyways. Inside of this part
10:34 of her identity that is an activist, she has this idea of how to express that. And so you'll
10:40 see in this, there's sort of fabrics that feel culturally specific, the use of sort
10:47 of African fabrics. She's always trying to make her hair bigger, more textured than it
10:52 actually is. She's really dead set on expressing her blackness because I think at this point
10:58 in the film, she has some insecurity about it. But I found it really interesting as someone
11:02 who's gone to a lot of rallies, just seeing like how activism gets expressed in clothing.
11:08 I think it's such a powerful way to talk about how you feel. And that's something that I
11:12 think Sam is trying to do throughout the movie. But I loved just getting to play with different
11:17 periods too. I really looked at the iconography of black leaders over time, like Angela Davis.
11:25 So also playing with 70s and 60s silhouettes, even though the film was set in present day,
11:32 there's this idea that we're still cycling through the same issues, the same problems
11:36 because race in America is, you know, you know what it is. Thank you so much. Let me
11:41 know. I'm curious, what's your favorite in the comments below.
11:43 [Music]