Inhabiting the character of Clare, who poses as a white woman in 1920s Harlem, Passing star Ruth Negga cycled through “joy, fear, anxiety, manipulation, devastating honesty” in quick succession.
Passing is a stunning directorial debut from Rebecca Hall, starring Negga and Tessa Thompson as childhood friends who now live on opposite sides of the color line.
Passing is a hyper-personal film for Rebecca Hall.
It’s a place where you can try on who you are in order to find out who you are, and I think that’s super important.
I grew up in a lot of different places and I think people are confused by my heritage, which is Irish and Ethiopian, because for a long time it was considered unique and exotic.
It makes me feel uncomfortable because it’s like she’s exoticizing her own-self and her community, and is that what passing does to someone? Is that a good thing or a bad thing? Do we condone that, condemn that? Sometimes we do like to have something neatly-packed and delivered to us, so we can grab it easily and say, “Oh, this is wrong or right.” Nella really evades that neatness beautifully, I think.
But we did have countless conversations, and I found it such a safe space to talk about race, class, gender—all of the myriad ideas and themes in Nella’s book— really honestly.
I just feel that this space is a space where I felt I could do that because in Nella’s book, she places us in a dilemma sometimes, because for example, Rene’s an upstanding citizen of her community, she’s a great mother, a great wife, and she’s intelligent.
And, should that be the case? For me, I kept going back to Black women sacrificing a lot for the cause, for the world, fulfilling a role for everybody else and not having enough space and time to fulfill the role for themselves.
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