Tonya Mosley

I actually want to play a scene that really gets at the heart of this idea of safety, this conformity.

And it's also at the heart of the dynamic between Hedda and

and her former lover Eileen.

So in this scene I want to play, they've stolen a few moments alone at this party.

And Eileen, who is played by Nina Haas, she's an academic.

She's a rival, as I mentioned, to Hedda's husband in the academic world.

And she's basically telling Hedda, you're wasting your life playing a housewife.

Let's listen.

You could be so much more.

That was a scene from the new movie Hedda, written and directed by my guest today, Nia DaCosta.

I'll tell you, I had to Google that roach can live without its head for.

Were there a lot of ad libs in the film?

There's so much tension in that scene, because it's not just about their romantic past, it's

It's two completely different survival strategies.

So Eileen thinks she's free because she's refused to marry.

She has this career.

But Hedda sees something else.

And I was just curious, when you were writing that dynamic, were you consciously setting up two different kinds of traps?

After your first film, Little Woods, Jordan Peele tapped you to direct Candyman, which is a reimagining of the 1992 film directed by Bernard Rose about an urban legend, this supernatural figure with a hook forehand who appears when you say his name five times in a mirror.

But your version digs deeper into racial violence and systemic erasure and