If there is one thing that has become abundantly clear in the development of Tessa Thompson’s career, it’s that she loves to challenge and be challenged. The kinds of characters Thompson has gravitated toward in recent years, as her star power has grown, are intelligent, capable, singularly-focused, determined women. Characters that know their own minds, are resolute, unshakable even when the odds seem stacked. One could say it feels like Thompson chooses to play characters that are an extension of herself, that showcase the myriad admirable qualities of the version of herself she wants to share with the world.
The characters she plays allow women to feel seen, to aspire to something bigger than themselves, to feel as if their womanhood is validated even if it doesn’t present as traditionally “feminine.” As such, Thompson has proven that the tired label “strong female character” no longer applies. In her hands, female characters have evolved past reductive adjectives and instead warrant consideration for their ability to not only stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the boys but to stay at least 10 steps ahead of them.
Playing Agent M in Men in Black: International is just the latest in a long line of prime examples of what Thompson brings to the screen. As seen in trailers, M is a young woman who manages to find the famously well-hidden MiB headquarters after being clued into the existence of aliens as a child and spending her entire life searching for the organization. In the trailer, M tells Agent O (Emma Thompson): “You are the best-kept secret in the universe and I found you. That’s what makes me perfect for this job.” This line might have signaled to viewers that M is basically the Hermione Granger of the MiB world, an overly-confident know-it-all who feels the need to step up her game to mask feelings of insecurity at working in a male-dominated field. But it’s clear that M, as played by Thompson, is an agent that is comfortable taking the reins, doesn’t feel the need to dumb herself down to her male peers (in this case, Agent H played by fellow MCU alum Chris Hemsworth).
M has a take-no-prisoners, focused, fearless attitude that reverberates within Thompson herself. In an interview with TotalFilm (later reported by SyFy Wire), Thompson revealed one key element she chose to incorporate into playing M as a way of illustrating that M’s athleticism matches her brains: wearing four-inch heels. In her words: “It’s like that Fred Astaire thing, like Ginger Rogers. ‘I had to do everything he did, backwards and in heels.’ And the truth is, I could keep up with him. I ghosted him once on one of those streets, running in London in four-inch heels.”
Thompson’s commitment to defying expectations of female characters, especially female characters designed to be badasses, brawlers, tough chicks, schemers, and all the rest is to ensure that there is thought put into the performance. She thinks about every aspect of her character’s past, present, and future, considering them as well-rounded beings, not just two-dimensional things as they exist on the page. The deliberate decision to wear heels in a movie where she is running around and keeping another character in line, especially a male character, indicates Thompson understands how to subvert expectations about how a woman — any kind of woman — should look and behave onscreen.
M follows in a long line of characters Thompson has played that have quietly destroyed any possibility she might be pigeonholed into the dreaded “strong female character” box. In Thor: Ragnarok, Thompson played Valkyrie. Presented to viewers as a hard-drinking scrapper who wants to forget her past, Valkyrie in the hands of another director would have been softened by Thor’s presence and turned into a love interest. Under the care of Thompson and director Taika Waititi, however, Valkyrie was allowed to exist as a female co-lead whose agency existed wholly independent of Thor. If she was going to soften, it was because she wanted to feel vulnerable again in the presence of new friends and teammates. Thompson as Valkyrie was coarse, brusque, tender, considerate, ferocious, strong and all other adjectives that apply to a woman who is trying to heal from a traumatic past while figuring out how to regain some purpose in her life.
Another career-defining role that proves Thompson isn’t messing around when it comes to pushing the boundary of possibility for women onscreen is Charlotte Hale in HBO’s Westworld. Charlotte is one of the head honchos in Westworld, a young woman with real power who confidently throws her weight as an Executive Director around when in a room with older men, like Westworld park creator Robert Ford (played by Anthony Hopkins).
But again, it’s clear that Charlotte’s confidence and ease in the knowledge that she frequently has the power and intelligence others don’t want to believe she has are a seeming reflection of who Thompson is in real life. Thompson’s approach to playing Charlotte, as seen in interviews, is to infuse her own power and intelligence into Charlotte’s being. Speaking with Vanity Fair, Thompson opened up about what it was like to be the only woman in her Westworld scenes and how it shaped her performance, indicating she is a hyper-aware but confident performer.
“Very often I am in scenes where I am the youngest of my acting partners—in some cases by decades—and I’m also the only woman,” Thompson told VF. “Getting to boss folks around and not look people in the eye while telling them what to do—with Charlotte, I’ve gotten [a] license to behave with men in a way that I have never in my life. It’s made me move through space differently, particularly in the weight of all the stuff that we’re talking about now in Hollywood. Charlotte doesn’t suffer any of that shit, you know?”
And it’s not just MiB: International, Thor: Ragnarok, or Westworld where Thompson has been actively choosing roles that push the boundaries of perceptions about women onscreen, but also roles in films like Annihilation, Creed, Little Woods, and Dear White People. As Thompson’s star has risen and she’s been given more of a chance and choice to come into the forefront, she has never wasted the opportunity to play a woman who is full of nuance and a multidimensional kind of strength, even when external factors like script or direction have tried to rein it in.
Thompson has become one of the most in-demand actors with nearly 15 years of onscreen work proving she deserves to be top dog. Her rise from supporting roles on TV shows like Cold Case, Veronica Mars, and Hidden Palms to now standing shoulder-to-shoulder with veteran actors, monumental franchises, and all of the attention on her career moves is earned because she is a formidable, capable actor. One who has chosen roles that speak to a personal drive to reclaim and reconfigure the ways Hollywood has traditionally designed female strength, female intelligence, female friendship, and female desire in film. Thanks to Thompson, the days of the simplified “strong female character” are gone. For that, we’re thankful.
